Desperate For Attention

I saw this tweet this morning from Alex Leiberman.

Could you imagine how infuriating it would be to spend $20,000 for Bowl Game tickets, and have a group of millennials get the seats in front of you all dressed like Cheeseburgers, recording every single moment of it and filling the air with quips and fake laughs and smiles that are filtered specifically for an edited video of a make believe experience?

It’s so gross.

Or this one … (Click here to watch the tweet since it’s actually a video, but Substack doesn’t have an API to Twitter so I can’t embed the tweet).

Recording a video of fireworks to show proof to strangers that you saw fireworks instead of actually watching the fireworks.

It’s madness.

We would rather watch a video of fireworks after the fact than watch the fireworks.

What is this? We are so desperate.

Look, I’m not against media or social media. I’m not some purist. I love media. I love making it, I love watching it, I love reading it. I love newsletters and YouTube videos and great movies and great books. Media is stories, and story telling is fundamental to the human experience.

My point is not that we need to disconnect ourselves from media.

My point is that in the process, we are losing the moment.

We are sacrificing the present for a documented future. Wtf are we doing?

Don’t be desperate.

Provide value in the world. Create art. Create memories. Move people with stories and emotion and humanity. Do something different that effects people in a way where they will always remember where they were when they read your article, or saw your movie, or discovered a new way of seeing the world that you introduced.

What 99% of people is so fucking stupid.

You’re all recording the same fireworks to show everyone that you were there. But everyone else is doing the same thing.

No one cares.

Enjoy the fireworks. Enjoy the football game.