Julian Casablancas - 4 Chords of the Apocalypse
Cookie Monster is confronted with the phenomenon of “om nom nom.” [Rocketboom]
Luisa! Fill this out!
The Caracas menu reads like pornography on a lazy Sunday.
Enough Tumblfighting, Brown. I’m trying to watch Burt Reynolds’ chest Deliverance.
Sure, it’s definitely incentive enough - but its not the impetus for the phenomenon on a whole, not by a long shot. There’s an undeniable instinct to prove one’s very existence in the act of commiting something to permanence: “If I had an opinion, and no one was around to hear it, did I really have an opinion?” etc etc. I’m sure, in the realm of breaking news and “celebrity journalism”, that mainstream acknowledgment (compensation even!) plays a more significant role, but its not a singular cause… and, in the grand scheme of the vox populi represented via our fun new technologies, it’s an outlier at best.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s always been a feasible notion that by being the person closest to the proverbial car wreck, you should get attention too. People have been selling each other out to the press since forever. It’s just now easier with Twitter and the constant readiness of a camera—and easier for the press to identify you as a witness by making that sharing publicly available in real-time search. Who needs to call Page Six anymore? They’ll come to you. Read this bit from the TechCrunch post on Tearah Moore:
“Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires.”
Moore was aware that the Fort Hood incident was a breaking story getting a lot of press attention. She broke hospital rules and eschewed any common decency because she knew how easy it would be to have her speculations validated by the media. Sharing with her friends was a means to have them spread her information even further.
Regarding this assertion:
People don’t turn to their cameraphone because they’re share-happy egotists, they do it because the actual press has an appetite for what they’re releasing, and, sometimes, will even pay for it.
I’m pretty sure no one is going to pay for this “sighting”, also pretty sure the simple delight in ‘publishing’ something warrants enough justification for the “share-happy” thesis.
First!
Any press validation is incentive enough, even in the case of celebrity sightings. A girl was flipped off by Michelle Trachtenberg a few weeks ago and called Page Six herself to report the incident. Trachtenberg denied it and there were no witnesses, but here’s a citizen “report” that the Post deemed suitable to run.
Read this.
“There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did [Tearah] Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim ‘got shot in the balls’.”
Real journalists may decry this unsolicited citizen journalism, but too many are enablers—using amateurs’ mangled, irresponsible reports and buying their exclusive footage and images for real publications. People don’t turn to their cameraphone because they’re share-happy egotists, they do it because the actual press has an appetite for what they’re releasing, and, sometimes, will even pay for it.
Anyone else cut their Saturday night plans short to go home and watch Taylor Swift on SNL? Because even though the show is hardly appointment television these days, Taylor is really talented and charming and her hair is so pretty and you guys could totally be best friends in real life if she ever got to know you? Just me?
If I’m sweeping my floors and coins wind up in the dirt pile that aren’t quarters, I’ll sweep them into the dustpan and throw them out. Conversely, I found a plastic headband today that has been under my bed for at least a year, rinsed it off and put it in my hair.
