I’m gonna take a wild guess that you’ve heard about the Coldplay-KissCam-Andy Byron thing. You and, apparently, every other living soul on the internet.
My question is, why do 100,000,000 people care about this? With the ghastly news coming out every day that will dramatically affect your life and your children’s lives, why has this trivial incident captured everyone’s attention?
Certainly, there’s schadenfreude. But to take real delight at another’s misfortune, we have to care about that other person–either because we know them, or we have feelings about their circumstances. We cheer the downfall of an opponent, a tormentor, or a person we envy because they dare to fly closer to the sun than we do.
But all we know about Andy and Kristin is that they’re (presumably) rich. So maybe we cheer their downfall because we envy their money, regardless of who they actually are. If this sounds bad, that’s because it is bad.
Or we cheer their downfall because we believe that they’re acting immorally—without knowing anything about their situation. Condemning someone for their alleged immorality makes us feel morally superior. Ruining the life of perfect strangers seems like a very small price to pay for something so satisfying, doesn’t it?
Or maybe we pay attention because we realize that these people, wisely or not, risked everything for love or passion. We all yearn to feel that much passion, and we all imagine the exhilaration of taking just such a risk. We don’t want to get caught, of course, we just want the exhilaration.
So we vicariously enjoy the risk-taking of these strangers—without having to pay for it, as they have. Free romantic entertainment for us, ruined lives for them. An excellent deal for almost everyone involved.
YOUNG PEOPLE
Putting ourselves aside for a moment, imagine what it’s like to grow up in such a world. Adults take chances regularly, theoretically after thinking over probabilities and consequences (some of us, of course, are better at that than others). But kids, teens, and young adults—they’re still learning how to make decisions, and they inevitably make lots of mistakes as they learn how to navigate the world.
But if a mistake—a single mistake—can get your life ruined, who in their right mind would take a chance? Who would experiment, who would be creative, who would be their genuine self? And while the answer to that is “nobody,” remember that young people are not in their right mind, because they don’t have one yet.
So we can expect smart or sensitive young people to be scared to death—and make mistakes anyway, simply because they’re young. And we should expect the rest of young people to not be scared—and to make mistakes anyway, simply because they’re young.
And in today’s world, some of them will have their lives ruined.
Because now, everyone is growing up in public. The pimple you thought was hideous, the beloved sweater that turned out to be uncool, the banana peel (real, imagined, or metaphorical) you slipped on—it’s now very possibly magnified and public.
Remember when you were young, how you imagined everyone could see all of your flaws and worst moments? And aren’t you glad now, that your every moment wasn’t scrutinized and eligible for international virality?
For today’s young people, the worst fears of our youth are their daily reality.
AMBIENT SURVEILLANCE
So every one of us is now only one photo, screenshot, or video away from becoming a worldwide phenomenon—the object of derision or hatred.
Surveillance is no longer limited to the government—like under Communism, or as described in “1984”. Now we surveil each other. And not just people we know–strangers. And a mob–including us–decides whose life to ruin next.
Simply for our entertainment.
My friend Jim Herriot calls this the proletarianization of violence—violence that’s no longer monopolized by the government. The most proletarian among us can, and does, commit that viral violence at will.
If privacy is part of being human, if we all deserve the chance to make a mistake or two without fearing the retaliation of strangers, we’ve lost some part of our humanity.
Today’s young people won’t even remember what that part of being human was like. And their descendants actually won’t know what they’ve lost.
You want privacy? Sorry, it doesn’t exist anymore. We’ve traded it away for a mere source of mass entertainment.
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