The power of being first
Further to Bill’s post about the viral spread of information…
Way back when I surfed a lot more my mate and I would meet very early every Saturday for the drive to the southern end of the Gold Coast with the aim of being in the water by 5.30. (The surf is always cleanest before the wind gets up.) Naturally by the time we’d arrive the locals were already out there. When you’d mention how good the surf was they’d always tell you how much better the waves were earlier on. “The tides too full now”, “it was way hollower before”, “the northerly’s into it already”, etc. One day a local actually told us “You should have been here 12 minutes ago, it was awesome”.
That saying became a catch-phrase for us.
It seems to me that the same obsession with being first applies more than ever to news and technology. In both cases we’re now led to believe that if it’s not bleeding edge it has less value. Speed is the new currency.
To some extent we’re all guilty of embracing this thinking. No-one wants to be the one passing on a site or a nifty piece of technology that you’ve found only to be met with the response “That old thing. Yeah I‘ve seen that”.
It’s the same with sharing news and last Friday was a classic example.
The big celebrity news story at 7.30am was that Farrah Fawcett had lost her battle with cancer. Then, like many of us, I heard the Michael Jackson news breaking on the radio not long before 8.00. And with that Farrah’s passing was passe. As radio jocks and TV reporters clamoured for more juicy tidbits on Michael’s demise for a brief moment there was real power in being able to inform those who hadn’t heard the latest. But that was a fleeting chance to wield the power that comes with knowing something others don’t.
Within around half an hour you were a social loser if you didn’t already know all the details. Hence the email that circulated at 8.34 entitled ‘In case you’ve been living under a rock Michael Jackson died this morning’.
By that stage Twitter and Facebook were crashing under the weight of a world sharing their thoughts and feelings more rapidly than ever before. Dicky Wilkins was already in a lather telling us all about his memories of Michael. But wait, there’s breaking news that Jeff Goldblum has fallen from a cliff in New Zealand and died. Did Channel 9 check the validity of the story? Did anyone question whether it had come from a dubious source? Of course not. The power of being first was far too enticing and so the hoax gathered momentum until the world realised that Jeff Goldblum actually wasn’t in New Zealand and he seemed quite alive after all.
By 9.00am Jacko’s passing was old news and the off-colour jokes had already started circulating.
People used to say that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. Now even the email news alerts are ‘so 15 minutes ago’.
You can argue that life speeds up and that technology has made older sources of news redundant. Then again maybe it’s just human nature to crave the power that comes from being first. As the Greenmount locals told me all those years ago “You should have been here 12 minutes ago, it was awesome”.
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2 comments
Totally agree Al. Poor old journos (I can’t believe I just wrote that) used to have until tomorrow’s edition press deadline – say 10.30pm the night before – to check their stories. Now, as you say, they have 12 minutes, tops.
BTW is Michael Jackson’s death confirmed?
A major fire in my parent’s apartment building in Manly at around 7.30pm Wednesday didn’t make next day’s local Manly Daily which normally reports on a crab coming out of its shell. The deadlines are as they were in many places.
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