People said this picture summed up the events of this week perfectly.
I say it marked an entire era.
The pure irony behind it is staggering. This is:
- A grainy, smartphone shot
- Uploaded on Twitter (A massive equalizing communication tool)
- Of someone playing an augmented reality game (Pokemon Go)
- In front of a line of riot police
- Because a person was killed by the police while a woman streamed the whole thing on Facebook Live
- And because a police drone was deliberately used to blow up and kill another alleged offender during a standoff.
I mean, if someone had written that story in a novel somewhere, they’d have called it far-fetched. And this is real, it’s happening now.
Notice I didn’t say “a black man” on point 5. I said a person. Because that person was killed in front of a woman and a small child, and that just shouldn’t happen. But the dialogue on this is enormous, I don’t want to touch on that.
Yes, this photo is a chapter-break in our history. We have a full-scale dystopia posing as utopia, civil rights violated, technology both liberating and influencing ourselves, our minds, our decisions.
I worked a bit on a couple of news channels, and have a unique perspective on what things mass media want to show or not. I can’t actually write examples, but trust me on this: The media shows what it wants to. But you already knew that, deep down.
Also, with technologies like Live-U (multi carrier video broadcast from a mobile unit through any and all available cellphone companies) and Youtube, and Twitter and every person carrying a computer in his pocket, media has become more instantaneous. If the shot is there, the news channels will want it. A news crew carries top-of-the-line equipment worth easily 60-70 thousand euros, but if a kid on his iPhone got a better shot of the news-story, the news channel will broadcast the latter. Doesn’t matter if it’s shaky, doesn’t matter if it’s grainy, dark, out of focus. It will play, because it is valuable as news.
One day we had some faulty equipment and in our frenzy, we joked about having the weather guy just live-stream through Skype.
Then we got the go ahead, and we just put him through just like that. Fingers crossed and praying the line won’t drop.
And if you don’t care what we do in tiny little Greece, here’s the same event in USA. “Twitter’s Periscope Becomes a Lifeline for Democrats After Republicans Turn Off C-SPAN.”
But it’s not just news. Our lives, what we care about, the events we like are getting online right now. Periscope and Facebook are becoming our allies (now that’s ironic) in world events. Facebook’s safety check feature worked despite Turkey’s blackout, and band Radiohead is helping fans live-stream their concerts.
There is no conclusion to this post. Read the linked articles and make up your own.
