Once, while on a run, I saw a guy taking a picture of an apple core on a picnic bench. He was using his cell phone.
I thought “People take pictures of everything now.”
Our hunger and capacity for recording the world around us, and our role in it, seems bottomless. Perhaps we should dispense with the labels like the information age or the digital age. Since the consumer adoption of the 45 RPM record after World War II, we have really been in the recording age. Digital technology has just taken recording capacity and availability to astonishing levels.
Vancouver, 2011
On June 15, 2011 the city of Vancouver experienced a riot following a hockey game in which the home-town team lost the Stanley Cup. While early comments talked about ‘upset fans,’ it soon became clear that the real cause of the riot was a small group of young men looking for an opportunity to incite “…a bit of the old ultra-violence,” to borrow a phrase from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Their destructive energy rapidly spread, as it will when amplified by alcohol and whatever else was in the mix for that crowd that night.
Much of the riot was photographed and videoed by participants, on-lookers, and the media. In the aftermath of the riot, thousands of images were turned over to police or made public, resulting in criminal charges, loss of jobs, and the jeopardising of friendships, for people caught on camera.
Los Angeles, 1992
On April 29, 1992 a jury in California acquitted 5 white officers of assault and the use of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King, a black resident of Los Angeles. The beating had been videotaped by a by-stander, and that tape was the ignition point for 6 days of rioting in Los Angeles after the verdict. 53 people died. Thousands were injured.
There have been examples before of recorded images igniting a response from communities, good and bad. The events in LA make those in Vancouver pale by comparison. Nothing new here folks. Move on.
Or is there?
Questions and Reflections on Community, Recording, and Social Media
I do think something new happened. I just don’t know exactly what it is. I do know that it has something to do with the relationship between recording, our society, privacy and anonymity, attitudes towards thoughtless and destructive acts in our communities, social media, narcissism and ‘mob’ behaviour. I believe Vancouver may be remembered as the day something tipped, tilted, or reset. I don’t know how it has changed (and neither will anyone else for many years), but I have some open-ended questions and rambling reflections.
- Is there a new outrage? What makes the outrage in Vancouver after the riots, different from the outrage that turned into a nightmare of rage in 1992 in Los Angeles is that in Vancouver we pointed the camera at ourselves. Often literally. It was less about us and them in this case. Sure, there is lots of talk about ‘those thugs’ but the growing realization is that ‘those thugs’ are our kids, our employees, our neighbors and friends. They are ours. And we hated what those among us did. in the aftermath, parents have turned in sons, friends have turned on friends. The visceral reaction of the community, fueled by images on social media like the mobs were fueled by alchohol, are actually a bit frightening to witness. How closely are we prepared to look at ourselves in the role we played in this?
- Is there a new line drawn in the sand? It is young, passionate, ordinary people who have said this is enough. Not the elders of Salem, or McCarthy’s senators, but citizens of every persuasion. The voices seem to be saying we don’t want police brutality, but we don’t want the douchebags and thugs either. We’re done. We need the police to do their job (as the members on the street did that night, and well). We need our parents held responsible for the actions of their children. In a world where there is so much conflict right now, driven by very real economic, social, and political failures, this event seemed more like a violent orgy of narcissism, selfishness, and pointlessness. I don’t think it is an accident that the young man on the U-18 national water polo team, but identified as an alleged arsonist during the riots, has become a poster child for this event. It seems like the boy’s success in life and the success of his wealthy family only served to underscore the meaninglessness of his actions, and provoke an even more extreme reaction from the community. Are we just done in a way we haven’t been before?
- Did the city, in its soul, somehow shift from this:
To this:
And this… ?
- Have we finally understood that big brother is us? As it has always been? Village gossips and community busy-bodies have always been with us. Has digital recording (and its distribution arm, social media) changed the rules and perceptions? I disagree with Alexandra Samuel’s take on the respective roles of social media and society in all this; her basic assumption that there is a ‘we’ that shouldn’t allow the use of social media in this way (turning in fellow citizens; publicly outing participants in the riots). She states that the online mobs are potentially just as bad as the off-line mobs in the street and should be controlled by ‘us’. Sorry. There is no sub-committee of ‘we’. It’s all us. The recordings and the outrage were spontaneous, and not ‘approved’ by anybody. It just happened. It was a natural extension of an ancient impulse to self-monitor and regulate our communities, with the digital reach and speed of social media. We are Big Brother, or at least Vigilant Mother. We can’t on the one hand celebrate the democratic and levelling effect of the internet, and then turn around and say that only the authorities should be allowed to record and control. We the people… etc.
- Did we finally wake up to the fact that people really do take pictures of everything? Even of us doing bad things? What is the impact of that? Has there been a change in the behaviour of our elected leaders, police, and armed forces since they became aware that there is a camera on them pretty much 24/7? What are we to make of people who not only were photographed being goons in Vancouver, but took pictures of themselves, and bragged about it on Facebook? Does the apparent complete lack of remorse, even in the face of recorded evidence, mean that too many of us just don’t think we are doing anything wrong any more? Will this be about the disappearance of shame, or its re-ignition in a digital village?
- Is this another reset of the concept of privacy? Will this transform that long-touted anonymity we all feel we have in the big city? The anonymity to do sometimes what we would never do in the more watchful hamlets many of us once lived in, or return to each night? This is not a question of privacy. This is about anonymity. The destructive acts that were captured on camera in Vancouver occurred in public spaces; something omitted in many of the articles attacking the ‘online vigilantes.’ The Facebook outers are being accused of putting our privacy at risk when they publicize our behaviour. I’m sorry, it was already public. The real value at risk here is not privacy, it’s anonymity. And I’m not saying that’s any better, but the distinction is important. In a world where social media are rapidly restructuring the boundaries between public and private, this is an important conversation.
I know much of this article is what my kids would call ‘random’. But when something this profound happens in the life of a my community, and is so widely broadcast around the world, precision is an illusion. There cannot be precision and single focus when the present is still in an emotion-laden state of flux and potential. But I also know that anything that starts a conversation right now can help us get to an understanding more precise than what we have right now.
