Another confession, Mum. I’m writing this posthumously. All the opinions and positions in this document have gone through at least two hazy evenings, 3 hamburgers and a bucket or two of Shiner Bock (mixed with razor blades and hipster cred). In fact, the number of hamburgers, seared on the side and glowing salmon in the middle, that I’ve eaten has astounded me. It’s a contest, I suppose: My brain cells vs my weight. One’s a race to the bottom while the other increases in order to decrease…
Bill Simmons, a writer for ESPN, has postulated (smart talk for: said) that we should wait 5 years before selecting a best movie/actor/director/etc. Why? Perspective, of course. The matured opinion is usually the reasonable one. We want to make sure what we say holds up to posterity.
I’m not bringing this up to support the late nature of my next few posts. Those were conditional, not intentional. No, I bring it up in order to address the relationship between real-time, always-on communication platforms like twitter and foursquare and events like SXSW. Do they add anything to it? Are they more than just background noise? Do they pump out any content that I, Kerry Janes, finds interesting or enjoyable?
The short answer is, No. The long answer is Noe.
I’m being obnoxious, of course. But, take a look at #sxswi. The thread runs from anticipation to arrival, through talk and party, and ends with everyone bitching about the airport. There’s really not much substance. Sure, you could farm the feed and find some interesting quotes and a few links but, for the most part, it’s a steady diet of nothing.
Now, I’m willing to accept that I might not “get” twitter. I use it frequently and have plenty of consistent follows but, I also use the word irony to position a mere coincidence (Alanis!), so, perhaps, there’s not a lot of value in my experience with medium. It just might be that I have set an expectation on twitter that it was never meant to satisfy. I might be misguided. Perhaps twitter is about watching, not saying? We could just be in the collection phase? Hell, I’d be willing to accept that. But, I’m too impatient and, to a certain extent, have seen the bar set too high.
Explanation: Take some time and look at how comedians use twitter. Read #ronhuebel. Take a scan of that screen. Yah, I like jokes but I want to point out something more salient: his thread is both timely and directly contributing to his craft. It’s value is apparent. Most Comedian threads are like this. They extend from tweet to tweet and a layer of commentary is wonderfully present. It’s not just watching; it’s saying.
I don’t think it’s unfair to ask why sxswi, up to its guts in Strategists, Planners, Gurus and Creatives, can’t manipulate or influence a medium like twitter enough to form even 5 minutes of worthwhile content. Is it always going to fall to the editors of the world to organize, cull and celebrate the greater story? Isn’t this our arena? Is it that we might not care as much about quality as much as we care about quantity?
Maybe Simmons is right and we should just stay out of the opinion game until we’ve had time to let it sink in? I’m sure all the pundits, rehashers, social media gurus and branding ninjas will litter my rss feed with their perspective on another sxswi. Some will be great, some will be facile–but none will be live. Apparently, we’re not as good at the internets as the funny guys.
