A little before 9pm on Wednesday night and I’m standing on the ‘VIP’ balcony of San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, holding a can of something called ‘MySpace Buzz’ and waiting for Weezer to take to the stage. It’s a weird scene, all told, and not just because I thought Weezer was dead.
The bulk of the weirdness stems from the make-up of the crowd: a dozen feet below me in the main auditorium there are maybe a couple of thousand writhing teenagers – Weezer fans to a (wo)man, cheering and shouting and jumping and sweating and doing all the things I remember doing a little over a decade ago.
These are the invited fans; those lucky enough to have been chosen to attend this ’secret show’, organised by MySpace. You know, for kids. Every so often one of the stage lights picks out a tiny puff of smoke in the crowd. Ah, you crazy kids and your pot: I feel like I’ve been transported back in time.
By contrast, there are no kids up on the VIP balcony. Instead there are the ‘important guests of MySpace’ – or at least those who had enough sway with Dani Dudeck to get on the invite list. If you’d told me back in 2001 – the last time I last saw Weezer live – that when I next saw them I’d be standing next to noted-non-rock-kids Scoble and Loic LeMeur (”is zis Weezer a famous band?”), I wouldn’t have believed you. I’d also have asked you what ’scobul’ is.
And yet despite the obvious differences between the two groups -the kids down there and the grown ups up here – there is one thing we have in common. Almost everyone – young or old – has a phone in their hand.
As befits their demographic, the kids are using their Nokias as cameras – pointing them at the stage in anticipation of their heroes’ arrival. And as befits our demographic, we grown ups are using our iPhones to tweet that same anticipation, but only – of course – after we’d checked in to the venue on Foursquare. “Wow. The real-time web is awesome”, I remarked, to no one in particular.
And Weezer, to their credit, agreed with my sarcasm. After their first song – Hash Pipe, if you’re interested – Rivers Cuomo came to the front of the stage to talk to the audience. For a man who has been doing this longer than most of the crowd have been alive, he was oddly ill at ease. Still, he had the measure of his fans: “remember,” he said “this is a secret gig, so shhhhhh, no writing about it on Facebook or Twitter.”
Somewhere across the room, a MySpace PR groaned, and threw herself off the VIP balcony.
Cuomo was joking of course – a ham-fisted attempt at a target reference – but there was a strange and tragic truth in his plea. I mean, what were we all doing? Filming and tweeting and checking in rather than just putting our phones away and enjoying the gig. Why does the world need two thousand photos of the same band on the same stage, all taken from a slightly different angle. That kind of 360 degree imagery might have been useful on the day Kennedy was shot – not least because it would have kept Oliver Stone quiet – but for a Weezer gig? And what’s the point of checking in on Foursquare at a ticketed event that no one else can get into. You might as well tweet “I’m a dick” and be done with it.
And yet this real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside; first with whatever news might be broken. And it’s not just journalists doing the live-blogging, but anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection.
Hell, we can’t even have lunch or drinks with a friend without tweeting, Foursquaring and probably photographing the occasion. No matter how unimportant the event, the actual experience of something has become secondary to our capturing of it and telling our followers. (Even celebrities aren’t immune – to the point where studios like Disney have started to include non-Tweet clauses into contracts to stop their stars real-time broadcasting spoilers and gossip from on-set.)
Worse still, we’re told that this is the future. The real-time web – a web where every single thought that enters our head, or image that passes our eyes, can be instantly captured, shared and archived for the approbation of our friends and followers. At O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit both Google and Microsoft announced deals with Twitter to integrate tweets with search results. Marissa Mayer proudly boasted that this would allow Google users to find information so fresh that there hadn’t even been time for anyone to write a proper indexable blog post about it. No more of that irritating forethought or composition.
The week before O’Reilly’s event, ReadWriteWeb hosted a ‘Real Time Web Summit‘ to talk about all things instant. Last year’s LeWeb in Paris had the somewhat nebulous theme of ‘Love’; this year the theme is – yep – the real-time web. Hell, even TechCrunch is in on the game with its ‘Real-Time Crunch-Up’s. And of course every ten minutes somewhere in the world, Jeff Pulver is hosting another of his 140 Characters conferences. I hear the one in Antarctica is a sell-out.
The assumption at all of these events is the same: real-time is where we’re heading; real time is good. Newspapers were good, cable news was great, blogs were better, instant attention bursts are best.
Hmmmm.
This week, the Christian Science Monitor reported that American judges are having to remind jurors that they’re not allowed to tweet from the jury room. I shit you not. In February, a juror in the trial of an Arkansas lumber supplier tweeted – during deliberations – his opinion that the defendant’s company will “probably cease to exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter.” Meanwhile in Philadelphia, a juror posted daily updates from the courtroom including – and this is awesome – on the eve of their verdict: “stay in touch for a big announcement on Monday everyone.”
Don’t touch that dial, folks, we’ll be in jaw-dropping contempt of court right after these messages.
Less illegal, but just as worrying, is how the real-time generation reacts whenever disaster strikes. I first noticed the trend back in 2005 when London’s transport network was bombed by mentally defective al-Quaeda fan-boys. The first footage to emerge from the attacks was not from the BBC or CNN but camera phone imagery taken by survivors as they walked through the Underground tunnels to safety. The pictures caused all manner of hand-wringing at the time: is that what has become of London’s famous Blitz spirit, pundits asked, documenting our fellow man’s suffering as if it were some macabre reality show that we might want to re-watch time and again with our friends? Just four years later – after the Hudson crash and a hundred other real-time news events – we wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
Advocates of the real-time web argue that this is simply a branch of citizen journalism – a desire by those holding the cameras and laptops to ensure that the world knows that something dramatic is happening. In truth the desire is far more cynical: to ensure that the world knows that we were there when something dramatic happened. I was on the scene, I was somewhere you weren’t – and I have the photos and tweets and videos to prove it. Check out my YouTube account; follow me on Twitter. LOOK AT ME, LOOKING AT THIS.
And it’s not just a question of micro-ego: when a juror is tweeting teasers from the jury room, part of them must know that a guilty verdict is much more exciting to their audience than one of innocence. How can that not subconsciously influence them? Likewise when we – the real-time generation – watch someone being attacked in the street or a plane crashing into our building and instinctively reach for our phones, can we be sure that our first impulse will be to dial 911, rather than firing up Tweetdeck or clicking the camera icon to ensure we get props for being there? I mean, really sure? In a perverse twist on the uncertainty principle, knowing that our behavior is being observed inevitably changes it for the more dramatic. Just look at reality TV.
And that’s when the real-time web – for all the attention it’s getting right now – starts to look less like a brave new world, and more like the path to a hideous dystopia. A world where our reaction to any event, no matter how serious, is influenced, not by what’s right, but by how it will play with our micro-audience. An audience that, thanks to Google and Microsoft’s wholehearted support of the real-time web, is about to get even bigger and more tempting.
OK, I’m scared.
oh oh oh oh!
Someone call Obama and tell him to add an emergency IP to Al Gores internets!
That way, instead of wasting time dialing 911 before I tweet, I can do both at the same time!
Dick.
tweeted
I rather read Paul Carr daily than IPhone fanboys skewing history by telling us on TC that communism fell in 2007….. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Pure garbage. Mike, please take him off TC.
I actually thought it was an insightful article. It isn’t something many of us stop and think about too often, even though we keep on texting and twittering and facebooking.
LOL Sounds like grandpa screaming ’bout how the “devil box” was going to destroy the world.
Can you in that case disarm his arguments in his article by any means. IMHO he seems to make quite a fair point. (Althought I wouldn’t have minded IMHO if the weezer part would have been slightly shorter.)
He does not make arguments, just wild assumptions. Such as the “cynical” motivation of those recording on the scene documentation, total nonsense.
Get the browser plugins that filters out his nonsense at DontReadTheDouchebag.com
As a working photographer I understood whole-heartedly the problems that arise from documenting rather than experiencing very early on. I’ve seen some of my favorite bands live, inside the barricade, but don’t remember the first four songs because I was too focused on getting the shot. At least I was getting paid though, the sacrifice of experience was compensated. Don’t lose the experience by trying to validate it.
hmmm. problem is, if you stop and think, grandpa was probably right
Ya grandpa was right, but its like the other side of the coin…. there are people who can use twitter and facebook for good work to… Something which is beneficial to society, I mean like one of my friend does uses his status msg bar just to spread awareness against global warming. he updates news and links to articles over there…. he uses it well, so can we…..
Uh oh. Someone is having a social networking meltdown. Yummy.
I thought this was a great article. Keep up the good work.
I find it so amusing that without fail, one of the first comments on Paul’s posts is someone saying the post was bad and for Paul to be dismissed from TC.
Quite a ludicruous combination of action/comment: to be one of the first commenters you must have leapt to read it as soon as it was released, and you clearly know he is a regular columnist. Why jump to read something you won’t like? I have favourite columnists at TC and they are the ones I read. I don’t sit and bitch at all the other writers who aren’t my favourites… strange people out there.
Anyway, the real-time web is certainly a trend that has the potential to erode the integrity of experiencing a situation, although there have always been parallels: walking around the Colosseum or Pisa, you trip over the tourists who are looking at the world through their cameras, and it was like this decades ago. The difference isn’t necessarily the behaviour, but how quickly and broadly it can be shared.
Another pet hate is when you are with a friend at a bar/restaurant, and they spend a huge chunk of their time tapping away at their iphone/BlackBerry.
In both cases, it often just takes a gentle reminder “We are here, lets just enjoy this”. I want to believe that the desire to share is an impulse that can be calmed, rather than a trend that will engulf us all. I hope so, anyway.
+2
Great writing, great insight.
Thanks, Mr Carr.
Is it really great insight, or a painfully long article rehashing what has been rehashed a million times on the web, including TechCrunch?
http://www.tech...nt-use-twitter/
Marc’s observation is on the money
Alas I feel that feedback like this may be getting the best of @arrington and one of Paul’s posts will sooner rather than later be his last (for TC).
That would be an incredible shame because, while I don’t agree 100% with him on much of what he has to say, it’s good to have a candid counterpoint when the rest of the media industry is busy kissing the ass of the latest fad (Facebook, Twitter, and what, Foursquare now?) – no doubt to ensure a continued stream of invites to such events.
I don’t care what you had for lunch, who you had it with, or how long it took to pass through your system – please keep it to yourself. There’s a lot to be said for respect for human time (including yours as the writer!) and wasting it is like inflicting murder by way of a million of tiny tweets.
On the other hand, with the legacy media industry taking steps to euthanise itself by way of pay-walls, citizen journalism is becoming increasingly important. We should do whatever we can to foster this critical service to society and improve the journalistic standards (ethics, reliable sources, etc.).
Sam
>media industry is busy kissing the ass of the latest fad (Facebook, Twitter, and what,
+100
Perhaps you could justify your critique, Adam?
This is the best piece of work I’ve ever read on TC.
I agree, terrible writer..
I’m getting more and more annoyed by the retarded and pointless (no offense Paul) articles techcrunch authors are posting.
I agree. I think if TC wants to have a “funny” post quota, JUST BE FUNNY.
Stop trying to be everything with a post. Those that might enjoy the funny don’t get all the other gibberish. Those that don’t care about funny find the setup awkward.
Stop, please?
It’s fucking Sunday.
Both of you calm down.
He has a perfectly valid point that affects a large amount of the techcrunch audience. So what if it isn’t about startups? It fits what the majority of readers care about and are involved in. If you want to complain about the quality of the article, sure, but complaining because of what the article is about?
Shut up.
What on earth are you talking about?!?
This is a great article about a major problem in our human experience with modern social communication technology.
It’s not a joke, it’s not supposed to be funny (although it has funny parts) … it’s making a valid point.
That you can’t see it says more about you than about the article or the author.
++
I’m kind of amazed (and saddened) that people aren’t getting this. Paul’s article struck a chord with me and, honestly… kinda bummed me out. =P
Amen.
This was a great essay on an important topic. The kind that puts TC in competition with NYT.
Paul, keep up the good work.
I agree. Last time I read a newspaper was so long ago, I forget when. I use newspapers to packaging, fish n’ chips, and stuffing my running shoes. They should be redefined as “snoozepapers”
In the 1950s, flying cars were going to be the norm by 2001.
Why weren’t they? Not because we didn’t have the technology. It was because people realized it was a terrible, terrible idea. Let’s hope it happens again and people learn to behave with this new technology.
Although, since people are texting while driving, I don’t know how much faith I have. Can you imagine texting while driving in a flying car? Holy shit.
+1 to that.
I didn’t ever hear of flying car technology being easy and mainstream. I think it is the cost/complexity that made sure it did not happen. Need another analogy.
You humorless turd.
WTF is NSFW and the point of this post?
1. Weezer was the MySpace secret band – check..
2. People tweet stupid shit – check…
3. It’ll just get worse with the real time web – check..
woohoo, that’s news. thanks.
Apparently the video of the girl throwing herself off of the balcony is the NSFW part…
Basically, saying “NSFW” is just another way of adding the “SEX” tag to something.
It sells, that’s all. You have generated a page view (ad $).
You can now move on.
Thanks.
Not in this case it isn’t, what with there being no sex in the post. NSFW/Not Safe For Work has been the name of my column since I was at the Guardian.
Doesn’t do much to rebut the charge. Adding sex (or terms loosely associated with it) to the title doesn’t mandate including sex in the article. It still draws attention, which is fine as long as you’re honest about your intentions.
See GoDaddy TV commercials for similar use of ’sex’.
Er? Isn’t this an article for TC, NOT The Guardian? Why were your previous posts nor prefixed with NSFW? I think you’re just covering yourself here – a bit of tired “controversy” to get more page views.
Very tired writing style – not funny, not informative, very cliched.
@Andrew “Why were your previous posts nor prefixed with NSFW? ”
Er, a lot of them were.
http://www.tech...om/author/Paul/
Thanks for your comment.
Paul Carr’s rants are annoying. This is the last one I will read.
On problem is you can’t tell what the article is about by reading the title. You have to waste your time reading the article first. By the time you’re 3/4th’s of the way done, you realize it is junk and you stop. However, you walk away annoyed because you just spent your hard earned minutes plowing throuth 3/4 of the article.
This guy is a waste of bandwidth.
I like the article and will boycott TC if Paul Carr stops writing for it (since we are being childish today). I give Foursquare 16 – 18 months before it finds itself in the Deadpool. The extra 10 months are simply because of the blogworld enthusiasm and will drag out the inevitable. That being said, useful real-time search will continue to grow, and the useless part will be determined by the unpredictable desires of fickle users.
ha.ha. I confess that’s a brilliant observation! check.
sooooooooooloooooooooooong and booooorrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggggg
Exactly. The author realized that while documenting an event you miss out on the event itself.
Nice work … It’s like a community college epiphany.
You prefer articles to be 140 characters?
I don’t understand why people who dislike your column continue to read. Don’t click the link and live in Paul Carr oblivion for the rest of your lives. Spare the rest of us from your bitching and whining.
That being said thanks for the good read. There are many angles and consequences of the real time web that have not become apparent yet. How will it change the way we lead our lives and is it really going to be for the better?
This vote with your feet/dollars/clicks argument is tired. We’re trying to keep TC (or any other publication we’ve liked so far) alive and are free to have our opinions.
What you’re saying is: If you like it, comment. If you don’t you shouldn’t be reading. Let’s see you say something the next time you don’t like a service/article/person you decide to use/read/communicate with and have them tell you the same thing.
It’s not the comments that get tired. It’s that incessant whining noise from the cheap seats.
It’s not that, Arjun – for me anyway. Decent negative commentary is fine, and as legitimate as praise, IMHO.
You won’t like everything you read, and you are welcome to say why. Comments such as yours are to be welcomed. It’s the feckless prats who don’t bother making any kind of considered and/or amusing critique or counter argument that frustrate….how many entries in this section are there where someone just makes a statement along the lines of “this article sucks” or “sack the author” without bothering to explain why they feel that way?
It’s crude, lazy, spiteful and too damn easy to do on the interweb. Why is it wrong – because it’s cowardly behaviour that carries no real-world consequence…do it in the real world, someone will eventually punch you in the face. Or vote you into public office. It’s quite reasonable to ask such people to shut the fuck up and grow up enough to have something worthwhile to say, if you ask me. Which of course you didn’t, but hey..
That IS a boring argument, I agree with arjun. Dammit, when I read lazy journalism, I like to slap it about the face. Nothing worse than just passing it by. The article wasn’t up to scratch – full of cliches, both literal and metaphorical – languid.
What gets me about Carr’s posts about the US is they are “gushing” and – he’s over-awed by what he sees in the US, like some kid on his first trip abroad. That may be good for him as an individual, but as a reader, it’s boring to read “isn’t the US / modern life wacky?!” article after article. Who cares – really – wow, people use their phones to take pics? To tweet? Who knew! And perhaps we should paraphrase a “deep” quote like “life is what happens when you’re busy tweeting” ha ha ha…. :/
@andrew – This is your second lit-crit comment on this one post. For a man who claims to be bored by me, there’s obviously something here that’s keeping your attention.
Before you descended into jibberish towards the end there, you talked about my obsession with talking about the wackiness of the US. I guess that would be more plausible had I not used the London bombings as the first – and main – example of what I was talking about.
Hey ho.
WTF? How does this article have anything in perticular to do with the US? I live in Europe and we too have twitter / youtube and a few other websites. We’re even getting Foursquare soon!!!’nn
I thought Carr’s article was about the realtime web not about America.
Great Op Ed.
I like this a lot.
Get over yourself Paul – how many times can you say “the kids” condescendingly… yet there you were, at a Weezer concert.
Do you have a Youtube link of the PR girl throwing herself off of the balcony?
Thanks for raising these points. Interesting concerns. Certainly got me thinking a bit.
Solid post but most of it has already been said by others.
@heinstrom haha, exactly.
I thought this was funny, relevant, and well-written. It’s unnecessarily narrow to simply report on technology and ignore the culture surrounding it’s use. This is exactly the type of content I’d like to see alongside news at TC.
But if a tree fall in a forest, falls on a campfire someone forgot to put out, sets the entire forest on fire, and kills thousands of people, but nobody tweets about it…does it matter?
thoughtful post.
all of the knuckleheads whining above must have identified too closely with the “I’m a dick” comment.
I resent that
Too long, please translate into 140 characters.
The real-time web makes people prioritize what is instantly entertaining over what is right and good. For further details see comment above.
(140 characters on the nose)
How do you know though at the time?
You use the force.
Duh!
@PaulCarr: The real-time web can also enable people enable to filter for what is “right” over what is instantly entertaining, if they so choose.
Plenty of streams of conversation to choose from, some of which is in fact good and not banal.
I quite agree that to always be documenting life can frequently detract from experiencing it. To take a picture of a moment is to in some way step outside of it, though of course a great photographer can then capture and share it for the rest of humanity to enjoy.
We are all inevitably influenced by the action of documentation, just as our subjects tend to be if they are aware of being on the record.
It’s a Shrodinger’s tweet phenomemon, if you will.
That said, your overall intent seems to be to call into question what all the hype is over this “real-time Web” business. Well punctured.
Now, how about addressing the strongest arguments made in the comments?
It’s useful to consider that the early effects of real-time have been here since radio waves and then telegraph wires were first strung up.
Perhaps the relevant difference is that the tools for communication have been democratized, commodified and are by and large free for much of humanity to use and consume online.
The way that we experience events has changed, for good or ill. Now it’s up to politicians, doctors, lawyers, broadcasters, public health officials, teachers, and, yes, citizens to decide what it means and how to make it useful. Getting signal from noise is the central challenge given the massive explosion of microcontent.
As Anon pointed out, in fact, “not only is recording these events important in terms of early response, but accidents are generally complex, and having a comprehensive record of what happened can help piece the puzzle together for Gov. agencies, safety professionals, manufacturers, and insurance companies. There is a difference between a bystander recording a tragedy and an impish little ego tweeting about the size of his penis during a business meeting.”
We’re not all great photographers — but then, we’re not all great polemicists, either. You and Hitchens have taken up that mantle with great alacrity and I commend you both for it, though perhaps not for the throwaway line about “a plane crashing into a building” near the end of this column.
I’m not convinced by your argument, in the end, that this trend towards the real time is sending us beyond Huxley’s Brave New World into a hideous dystopia that propagates a mindless panopticon wherever cellphone-carrying humans collect.
You’re right – there will be inevitably more crass comments, throwaway observations and self-obsessions made public. For those that want to listen, there will also be more images, news and trends to find and analyze than ever before.
Fortunately, that sort of outcome will be quite SFW.
Oh, and I should have written Schrödinger’s tweet. Perhaps my perception of the accuracy of the word changed while I was writing it.
win…and OWNED!
You forgot to use the “zany” and “hip” letter combinations – “pwnd” – “k00L” – you kRazy, k00L kat, you.
Oh, to be 13 and American again – and we DO speak German AND have no teeth, you know.
Cheers Paul! Ci vediamo…
I thought it was a good read and prescient, too.
I was at a Halloween store today and spent five or so minutes taking and pushing a couple of photos to FB and FF with my phone – my Daughter told me to stop and look at stuff with her.
She was right.
You didn’t answer the big question! What’s a ’scobul’?
yyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn
Nice to see some perspective on these new forms of communication. They should be a means to, but are becoming a goal in it self it seems.
I agree with the points made in your article, but I do wanna say Foresquareing really isn’t as big as you make it sound to be
I’m sure a similar rant was written when the camera was invented. However, thanks to the very topic you are ranting about, more people get to read yours. Oh the irony.
+1 for a good read
Paul, please stop assuming that your habits apply to an entire generation of people. It’s even more egotistical than the habits themselves. Maybe people like you who have BS job titles like ‘blogger’ can get away with sending public status updates/images/videos from private functions and business gatherings, but most can’t, and wouldn’t even if they could. You see, the people who don’t are the ones actually getting things done and making things happen. The people like you … well, they are the consumers. They are the sheep and the brain dead waste who engage in the habits of poorly educated and spoiled teens/tweens. You’ve been had. You are a loser.
BTW, when you were at the super secret invite only MySpace/Weezer show hanging out next to other notable(?) bloggers and thinking about all the old Weezer shows you went to because you are so rock and so cool, did you hang in the VIP? I may have missed that detail.
Hard to know where to start with that comment.
You accuse me of generalising but then go on to dismiss the people I was actually talking about; jurors, witness to the Hudson crash and July 7th, thousands of young people at a concert as being “sheep and the brain dead waste” who aren’t “getting things done and making things happen”.
Perhaps one day those people – who you can’t possibly know a single thing about – will be as important as you. You who posts a shitty anonymous comment on TechCrunch at midnight on a Saturday night.
At least, as you rightly point out, I’m paid to be here. Which I’m pretty sure makes you the consumer in this scenario. Thank you for choosing TechCrunch.
My brother died that way.
Well, I only alluded to adults who publish from private functions and business gatherings (e.g. you), so I don’t see your point. That said, anyone publishing from a jury or a concert are idiots who contribute nothing. Yes, I fell comfortable generalizing there. It’s one thing to be on you BB taking care of business or engaging in a private IM, it’s another to tweet out your life like a little school girl. Again, outside of your little blogger bubble, people just don’t do that. You’ve become a complacent consumer who lives their life in a virtual space and you’ve become disconnected from the real world. You need to get a grip. That said, I have no problem with the point you made in the article, just that, like other bloggers (read: not journalists) , you use exaggeration and sarcasm in an attempt to hype up and sell the garbage you are pushing. Your methods are transparent and lame, and justifying your childish behavior by applying it to an entire generation is egotistical and insulting.
Also, regarding the Hudson crash or any similar event, I don’t feel the same way as you. Not only is recording these events important in terms of early response, but accidents are generally complex, and having a comprehensive record of what happened can help piece the puzzle together for Gov. agencies, safety professionals, manufacturers, and insurance companies. There is a difference between a bystander recording a tragedy and an impish little ego tweeting about the size of his penis during a business meeting.
If I understand you correctly, you’re arguing that anyone who tweets or blogs from work is “like a little school girl”. This I’m sure will be news to the countless politicians and CEOs who do precisely that.
Also you keep throwing the word blogger around as if it’s a bad thing. I’m not sure if you’re trying to bait me into mentioning my day job, which (as I suspect you know) is writing brilliant and critically acclaimed books about myself, but I’m more than happy to fall into your trap.
http://www.paulcarr.com/book .
Are you my publicist in disguise? If so, keep up the good work. If not, then I’m still amazed you can’t see the irony of criticising those who engage in social media by posting an anonymous comment on a blog.
I mean, you’re clearly trolling, which is fine. But at least try not to sound like a hypocrite when you do it.
Again, thanks for reading.
Paul
What’s trolling?
Paul, for all we know, *You* are writing under the psdeuonym of ANON, making this a hilarious dialogue!
Yikes paul. You were doing good in your first reply, but these ad hominem attacks suggest you’re cornered. You might be right, but I think anon won.
Seriously though, were you in the VIP that night?
Yes. I say as much in the first line of the post. Precisely how far through did you get before you posted your comment?
^Not even 140 characters it seems.
For the rest of the whiners, “ohhh it’s too long, too boring, too ludite”…. the back button is a pretty useful feature of a web browser.
I saw weezer and plane crash next to each other in the same headline and had to do a double take. What a low class way to grab attention.
What an utterly bizarre comment. I apologise for forcing you to do a double take. Hope you didn’t hurt your neck.
Bizarre? How many musicians and entire bands have died in plane crashes?
When one is scrolling through twitter, and sees: “_bandname_, plane crashes” — what would you expect for people to initially think?
You’re right, it was bizarre—until I saw the techcrunch logo, and realized it was just rag-mag reporting.
I would expect people to think “oh look there’s a FUCKING COMMA BETWEEN THE TWO PHRASES, maybe I’ll read all thirteen words of the headline before clicking”.
But that’s just me. I’m old school.
(Tip: don’t visit CNN.com for a while. The current main headline includes the phrase: “Flu shots, tutors”. OH THE HUMANITY!)
Paul — you are a dick.
It’s ok … just know it and move on.
For instance, I’m an asshole for pointing it out but I am ok with that.
I’m pretty sure your a better reporter than anyone at CNN.
I’d be more satisfied with a semi-column rather than a comma. . . but I’m no writer. . . just a reader.
Nice read, but honestly the title was imo the best choice…. no offense Paul.
was not the best choice*
Well they did have a hit with “Buddy Holly”
Is ReWriteWeb intentional or merely or dropped letters?
Brilliant post btw.
Total typo – good spot, thanks.
Interesting perspective, and good food for thought. I think the idea of appropriateness is going to return to cultural life, where a lot of folks see the consequences (texting while driving, texting while on jury duty, live streaming a concert, kid’s first step, etc) of when and where others live stream, and think before they stream.
Anyway, it’s probably not as bad as it seems: for example, online comments devolve into rude name-calling and attacks pretty fast (this very post is a case in point). but, for every nasty comment, there are folks reading and thinking who may or may not agree, but who understand the value of bringing up the point. For everyone lifestreaming inappropriately, there’s someone who thinks about what they’re doing, and creates something of value.
loved this article. thanks for putting it down. there’s some fantastic meta-social-cultural criticism buried within a weezer concert story here. i mean i hate weezer but your title got my attention.
after I read it I was glad I spent the time and forwarded it around to a bunch of good friends and posted it to my FB page.
it’s so good I think you should drop the reference to weezer entirely and just go ahead and change the title to:
“You might as well tweet “I’m a dick”…And everything else worrying about the real-time web…”
Thanks again man. Will keep an eye out for your further ongoing thoughts along these lines…
Sometimes reading something you don’t agree with is good for you. Have you ever enjoyed the experience, despite not enjoying the subject you were experiencing? The writing here is a good break from normal TechCrunch info-saturated news, and worth the read.
it’s so funny half you guys are so used to getting nothing but headlines from techcrunch that you spit up your mountain dew slurpee when you read something from a different angle that challenges you to formulate a point from a story.
HEADLINE 1: there are various forms of literature
i don’t have time to read every TC headline and I hate weezer like i hate cindy lauper.
BUT i like tangy articles and i thought this was one. a lot of fun and a fun way of looking at how behavior is changing from the first person.
you “anon” kids with your damn comments about PC smearing a generation. puhlease. you be illin. if you’re gonna talk smack post your handle and deal with the talkback or instead just write an email to yourself next time.
‘And what’s the point of checking in on Foursquare at a ticketed event that no one else can get into. You might as well tweet “I’m a dick” and be done with it.’ < Heh. Basically.
I felt that way many years ago when I video-taped part of a holiday: I was more concerned about filming what I saw than enjoying what I saw. It got to the point of ‘are you doing something, or are you filming something’ – the two are diametrically opposite in terms of experiencing an event. It’s even more pronounced with this real-time phenomenon.
In order to truly experience something, one must fully engage. No distractions.
Strangely enough, when its over, there’s less _need_ to broadcast it. And if it’s truly worth recounting, 140 characters is ridiculous.
If it’s your business to get and spread the news, by all means, go mad. But if it isn’t then trying to tell everyone what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, why you’re doing it, and how you feel about doing it (with pics/videos/electronic smells) is just going to get in the way of doing whatever it was that you wanted to do.
(See what I did there?)
The real fallout of all this information being broadcast is the increase in noise. Easy to get it out there, but now we all have to start filtering it out! Just adds to the information overload.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the real-time web is waaaaaay over-hyped and over-rated.
A few times a year, something happens where real-time is significant and important: earthquakes, terrorist attacks, tsunamis, etc. In those cases, the ability to transmit information in real-time is invaluable. But 99% of the time, there’s nothing happening in “real-time” that I need to know RIGHT NOW.
There’s so much hype about Google and Bing adding Twitter to their results. But I question whether that’s really a good thing. Why is information better just because it is new? Are our lives seriously impacted because we have to wait a whole 30 minutes before information gets indexed by Google?
I also don’t see what’s so new and revolutionary about real-time anyway. IM and chat is real-time and that has been around, what, 20 years? More? I just watched the movie APOLLO 13 the other night, and the whole world saw that unfolding in “real-time” on their TV, 40 years ago.
There’s more noise now that everyone is a broadcaster, but the I see nothing revolutionary about the real-time aspect of it.
Although as usual I find the writer irritating, he writes about an important subject and deserves credit for that.
For decades and perhaps even centuries the attention span of individuals has been steadily decreasing. The real significance of this decrease is that useful thinking actually requires *time* – some significant time spent on steady focus and concentration and chains of reasoning.
I strongly recommend Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian SF novel (and movie) Fahrenheit 451 for an excellent fictional treatment of these ideas. Bradbury, decades ago, insightfully noted the trend away from books (which by their nature do require time and sustained thought) to range of the moment mindless immersion in wall TVs and total censorship (all books are burned.)
Phil, in all due respect, *what* we think and *how* we think are two mutually exclusive ideas in real time. There is less “how” and more “what”. I think your trying to put a square peg in a round hole with your observation.
My 16 year old daughter enjoyed text messaging when we gave her her first cellphone. Now she turns her phone off so she won’t feel obligated to respond to text messages.
If you’re the one behind the camera at family events, you will not be in the video of the event, and you will have missed being in the immediacy of the event. You weren’t really ‘there’ at all.
I think most people will eventually treat real-time as yet another entertainment choice out of many, and will allocate their time according to the entertainment value it provides. Shirley the real world will remain more interesting.
Yea its Real Time and I’m drowning in it; I’m sheding sites and feeds…anything beginning The Top x Ways To…or As My Good Friend Just Posted..or SEO.., you know. TechCrunch was close to going because of its blizzard of tech updates, most of which doesn’t pass the So F’What Test, to me anyway. But I enjoyed your article…for the context, I’m missing context in all this noise. I’m sick of opinions; observations can be good: the observation of somebody else’s Real at the same Time as yours.
Great post Paul. I was actually surprised to read actual commentary on something related to tech. I suppose I have been desentized by your, though still entertaining, troll bait.
If you keep moving NSFW towards actual technology based opinions I can’t wait till next weekend.
A little long to read, but you definitely got a point, realtimeweb has its ego drawabacks… This was a real problem during the events in Iran too…
the only reason I read this is because I’ve been a long time weezer fan. not one of those hardcore guys, but just a general fan of albums like the blue album.
Anyway, I hadn’t read a Techcrunch post in months and wouldn’t have ever come across it, if it wasn’t about Weezer. As an internet marketer myself, I would have to say it was a pretty good way to get me interested, not only in the band, but it’s relationship to the technological world we live in. Well done to the authoer to bring in some new targeted readership.
Superb piece!
I know what you mean about the scariness of the Real Time Web.
I feel the same about another invention you may of heard of…the mobile phone? One day, we’re all going to be carrying one and people might not bother phoning 999 anymore, they’ll just phone their mates to tell them all about it!
God help us.
Great post. And goodness, there are more than a few trolls in these comments.
I think I am a troll…
nice job
Great post. Tweeting from trial made me lol.
And it is all true. I LOVED Twitter during the protests in Iran. For about 10 minutes. And then this steady stream of nonsense started to pour in. Stupid statements from stupid people repeating something said by other stupid people. And not a word of it true! I don’t use it again for four months and only returned when I realized I could follow real news from real media and simply avoid anything #.
Hey Paul, that’s a relevant post.
These are interesting topics of discussion. Good to see you can do irony, including self-irony.
Is TechCrunch preparing to announce that the “real time web” has finite appeal?
Where does the appeal cap off?
How does the web help people focus on living their real lives as opposed to reality-TV or virtual lives? Isn’t that what its all about in the end?
And what’s the next wave – and how does it address such issues? Ah! Wouldn’t we all like to know… But what’s your guess?
I like the line of thought, keep it up.
Good stuff Paul.
…though you’ll need an audience that will at least entertain the idea that ethics are more than just our imagination.
+1.
Well done Paul.
I never did look at specific authors before on TC, from this one onwards I will make sure I do and look for more written by Paul
While this is well written and well thought out, I disagree with the basic premise. Sure, many people use the real-time web to say “look what I’m doing”, while others use it to say “holy crap, look what happened”. Rather than rubbing it in the faces of others, they’re simply doing what you say they’re not. They’re reporting on it. Take the London transit bombing. Were they really taking pictures to say “Look at these dead and injured people, I’m cool, I survived”? Or were they doing it to say “Oh my god, the Tube was just bombed! Keep away”. After all, the “real” news media couldn’t be there quite as immediately as the people who were escaping it. That’s citizen journalism.
Let’s take people taking pictures or tweeting bands. While I’m not one to do that and prefer to enjoy the music (though I’ll admit to checking Twitter during the shitty songs), many are actually providing other fans a service. Consider the Phish summer tour. An enterprising fan called @phishtube on Twitter went to the shows with his jailbroken iPhone and a microphone attachment and used it to stream the shows to the web live as they were happening. Thousands of people jumped on because they couldn’t be at the shows but wanted to see what the band was doing. In this case, it’s a simple issue of the band not giving the fans what they want… a live stream of the shows. They’ve got the technology, and they could easily make some money off it. But they didn’t bother and someone stepped up to the task. Continuing to use Phish as an example, the band tweets the setlist as it unfolds and updates a website. While I don’t see the point of attendees tweeting the setlist, I can see the value in them tweeting it with details the band left out (such as teases in the jams, band antics, stage banter, etc). The people at home want to know what’s happening. It’s not a case of having it rubbed in their faces that they couldn’t be there, it’s a case of having an audience who isn’t there, but wants to know this stuff.
Now, when it comes to juries, that’s just wrong, illegal, and just plain stupid. That’s one of a few cases where I don’t see the point. The classroom is another issue. Conferences, however, I feel are a perfectly fine medium to tweet. You can tweet what you’re learning so others can learn it as well.
Completely agreed.
Good piece Paul. Lot’s of comments here quickly slamming it but they strike me as intellectually lazy, which is just what you’d expect from people who spend their lives consuming twitter streams while watching the Real Wold Decade 3 and imagining that they themselves live in their own little 15 minutes of fame reality show, where everyone actually cares about their tweets, and pic uploads, and status updates, and check ins. Definitely worth stopping, taking a breath, and asking questions about cultural and societal developments, even if just to spark a debate. Thanks for taking the time.
“That kind of 360 degree imagery might have been useful on the day Kennedy was shot – not least because it would have kept Oliver Stone quiet – but for a Weezer gig?”
Let’s go back in time and pretend everybody had cell phones and cameras. Pictures from earlier motorcades would fall into the “LOOK AT ME, LOOKING AT THIS” category, but that day the 360 view is valuable. Hmmm. How would anyone have known that they were going to be a “citizen journalist” rather than just “a dick”?
People will always talk about and take pictures of what they’re doing because it’s important to them. With technologies for sharing, maybe, sometimes it will be interesting to other people, too, and for completely different reasons.
I enjoyed this article as much as the comments.
I think what Paul is saying (and I could be wrong) is “don’t let the real-time web turn us all into mindless idiots where life passes you by” but for some of the commenters in here, it may be too late for you.
OK, back to my sunday morning bowl of cereal.
+1
The comments are a better read than the article.
Personal opinions are fine, but when there is 2 pages of drawn up detailed specifics about his opinion it gets boring very quick.
If this was a simple couple paragraph article it would be fine…
I’m not biased, whenever TC posts an article, I don’t check to see who it’s written by (I don’t care!) I just read it. Now I’m going to have to start checking the author line and SKIP Paul Carr’s articles ’cause their pointless, all over the place, and unrelated to startups and actual interesting news.
too late for you… LOL!
+1