I have seen the future and I’m not sure that I like it…
Much has already been written here and here and here and here about how the emerging social media, especially Twitter, outpaced traditional outlets during the Victorian bushfires. Fast and flexible, Twitter spread information through people’s overlapping social circles faster than industrial-age media could react.
As Mark Parker wrote, “It angers me that as I was getting official reports from credible/reliable sources this same information was taking hours to get distributed into the mainstream community. It wasn’t until close to 8pm AEDT [Saturday] that the Australian mainstream press finally started providing timely updates — nice work team.”
Key Twitter feeds like the unofficial @cfa_updates, @sbsnews and the ABC’s @774melbourne were must-reads. It’d be nice to imagine that someone, somewhere, got information via Twitter that saved a life — though with fewer than 1 in 5000 Australians on Twitter perhaps that’s unlikely.
But there was a darker side…
As slumbering media giants awoke to the fact that a major disaster was unfolding, they reported the rising death toll. 20 … 25 … 30 … 35 … would it never stop? As every new figure was posted, it was retweeted endlessly, as were links to every new photo, every new report, every new snippet of information which revealed the true horror of this, the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history.
The CFA pleaded for people to stop visiting its overloaded website unless they had a genuine need. Google stepped in to provide their own real-time map, relieving the burden.
People asked why there weren’t any Twitter updates from @KevinRuddPM, as if the PM didn’t have rather more important duties. When Rudd eventually appeared on TV every gesture, every word, was instantly examined for some sign. What does he know? He knows it’s worse, doesn’t he? He does!
From the safety of an air conditioned home in Sydney, 1000km away, it seemed surreal. And I wasn’t alone in that thought.
As Fake Stephen Conroy tweeted, “Sick of retweets of the #bushfires death-toll; it’s not a cricket score, you dumb f-cks. It’s just ghoulish and gross.”
The person behind one of the most widely read Twitter feeds for three wearying days told Crikey there were times they wouldn’t post some material. “It was just too much and I knew it would get retweeted!” they said.
“Thankfully I don’t have to deal with it any more.”
Another Twitter user told me privately, “It’s almost a competition to see who can publicly emote the most.”
For people threatened by bushfires, or those concerned for the safety of loved ones, up-to-date news is vital. No argument. We also need to share our emotions as a community — that’s what makes us a community. It was heart-rending to see one 17 year-old tweet (and I won’t link), “Just got told that a few friends who live in the bushfire area haven’t been found yet. Where’s a tissue, I have a tear in my eye.”
But for everyone else, obsessively tracking every latest horror “to see what it looks like” is nothing but selfish “recreational grief”. The morbid rubbernecking so hated by police and emergency workers.
I once read a sci-fi story where every time there was an accident the unwashed mob would teleport in to gawk. Today in the real world we don’t even need the teleportation booths. We can watch as much disaster p-rn as we want without stirring from home. Without even putting on pants. And it’s sick.
Twitter is the embodiment of “Blind Faith” by Ben Elton. A truly ugly future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Faith_(novel)
… well maybe, but the logical extrapolation of such morbid curiousity is the breakdown of one of the greatest conceptual taboos of the 20-21C.
That people dying in their millions in other poor parts of the world are not real in the real version of Brave New World. Only rich western folks dying is real.
And if and when that cultural wall falls down via eventual interconnectness, say via the $100 laptop project, people won’t feel too great about all those exceedingly stupid car adverts and the late models lining nearly every street of every suburb in every city in this country.
So much useful money gone on the car obsession that could be saving lives somewhere.
Now I’d like to see that.
Of course there’s going to be a bit of a tool factor with anything to do with teh interwebz, but I dunno about the rubberneck thing being much of a big deal. People have always loved some carnage- well, okay, ‘loved’ might not be the right word- but so what? Where does the avalanche of donations fit into this? Could it be that the same people giving freely of any help they can manage are also rubberneckers? This rubbernecker wouldn’t be surprised one little bit.
Twitter is the latest in mind control media – if you have noticed how many of your friends have become ‘facebooked’ and ‘myspace’ these were just earlier incarnations of same. The name of the game is to shift human consciousness from the present moment to an alternative moment of vitual meaningless – thus – facebook junkies obsessed with facebooking their experience rather than having an ‘real’ experience’ thereby creating a situation in which the masses have steadily lost the ability for original thought, enabling device control to root itself deeply into the mass consciousness.
How bad will the situation become? The base quality of the current media- ignoring key aspects of fundamental reality – in favour of cheap polarising politics ( the Nero’s fiddle while Rome burns) is evident.
The recent superbowl advertisement featuring Alec Baldwin suggests the strategy is going all the way – with Hulu – the ultimate campaign to complete the mind mush process across all devices.
http://news.rosettamoon.com/?p=235
Mark Parker, I didn’t intend to lump you in with the rubberneckers. I actually thought your comments in your blog were quite thoughtful. As are your comments here.
I agree 100% with your point that the world of commercial news, with their endless grandstanding about how wonderful they are, were way behind — which is why I quoted you. Maybe if they spent a little less on hair, makeup and self-promotion and a little more on actually, you know, reportage…
Tom McLoughlin, you have a very good point there. One of the key “benefits” of the “new media” is that people have more choices, and they’re slowly discovering that there’s more happening in the world than portrayed on their Identikit 6pm bulletins of 6 stories, sport and weather plus the cute dog with the balancing trick at the end.
Maybe we’ll find that instead of spending $2000 on a fancy gas BBQ which they use 4 times a year to impress their friends, that same money could buy two entire houses ($750 each from Oxfam Unwrapped) for cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu — and still have money left for a BBQ to celebrate what good global citizens they were.
Maybe.