I'm sure you've seen it, gosh, you've probably done it, but in all honesty we have to admit it's a sad fact of our current existence.
The day of the concert
My wife and I last year made it a point to coordinate our time in Florida together with a live show we've been meaning to catch. A progressive metal band called Tesseract from Britain was visiting the swamps and such an event was too good to miss.
As it often is the case, the amount of cellphones in the crowd was distracting and also disappointing. It may be a small venue, maybe 3000 people in total, but there are more than a thousand videos being recorded of the exact same thing at different angles.
Through the screen
If an alien was observing us from a distance, it would probably conclude we need the screen to experience things. Maybe it would write down on it's notes that our visual cortex is so inferior it needs to be enhanced by external technology. An observation none of us would fault them for making.
To be fair, the older chaps among the crowd, me included, knew better. Against the trend, the masses, the consensus, we just enjoyed the show; unobstructed by a lenses and software.
What for?
I can only guess this part, because even among those that record everything, there is probably a tiny percentage that can give me a cogent answer.
Maybe it has to do with the attempt of capturing lighting in a jar, as the old saying goes. The idea that someone, that you or me can all of the sudden capture an event so amazing, a video so valuable, that our lives would be affected forever.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that we experience everything through a screen these days. No matter how much investment a production may have, in the end, when it reaches the consumer, it will be consumed out of a tiny screen a shitty speakers.
Maybe it's brag rights; to show people that the experience you just had was amazing, and thus that your life is amazing as a result. Without a doubt most of these shitty videos, because they are all shitty, end up on social media.
But here is the kicker...
Nobody cares
There might be a time twenty, thirty years from now. When the collection of these poorly recorded videos will be part and parcel of everyone's online footprint, but I doubt they will have value even then.
But maybe, I'm wrong... time will tell.
MenO
So you know we do a lot of weddings. The number of people recording things during wedding ceremonies is astounding. 99.9% of that stuff goes on the trash but it’s almost like the culture is such that we need to capture it “just in case”. We’ve now started to see couples have the officiant announce before the before walks down the aisle that this is an “unplugged event. The couple have hired professional photo and video to capture their day on please put your devices down” and yet…people will still record and snap photos with their phones. Its crazy!!
Wow... they feel cheated if they can't capture their own shitty video!
The idea of living the moment is out the door... who cares if I enjoy this, people need to know that I enjoyed it... Wut?
When I go to a concert I may take a couple of photos as memories, but rarely do video. There are likely to be others who do it better and put it on Youtube. A concert is to be enjoyed in the moment.
I've been to a few where they expressly ask you not to use cameras, but not sure if they enforce it.
they cant really take people's phones... so they can't really enforce it...
I'm the same as you... it's cool to take a footprint (This happened), so you can go back and relive, remember... but if you forget to be there... then you stole the experience from yourself.
I was watching a documentary about King Crimson. They have people at their shows who will tell fans to stop filming. They put up signs at the start about this and say photos are allowed once the show has finished and they take their bows. Other bands don't seem to mind so much.
I have noted that recordings from long ago have value to me as I age, and I have seen that the young also value such recordings as a window into a world that used to be. I love old pictures of blacksmiths and wheelwrights plying their trades in their stout aprons that I would sometimes acquire of properties I purchased where that used to be the purpose of the property. Such historical context always provides a savor to ownership meaningful to me.
But I don't manually take a lot of pictures or videos myself. Sometimes I take pictures of instructions or recipes so that I can have them handy in action (because my phone can't contact the internet), or of jobs to do and the finished work, tricky steps in processes, and etc. I don't take any pics of me doing these things. I did one time, and posted a video on chain of me covering a 98" countertop with 96" of formica using magic, but that's really a one off. Only my hands appear in the video anyway. Future generations will just have to do without a total recall of my life in video and pictures, somehow.
I think for most people recording events signifies their investment in the event, that they value it highly, it's unusual, and perhaps for legal or other purposes, as I do. When I was actively parenting I was surprised to realize that I wasn't in the pictures I took of my family. In the same way my own father was rarely in photographs or videos of my childhood. Surveillance videos of us just don't have that same value nowadays, and only spooks keep them. All the surveillance videos my security system creates in which I appear get wiped after a month by new ones on the DVR. Hopefully there isn't one last one that ends up on America's Best Gore or something.
Thanks!
the ending took me for a surprise! lol