How Tech Killed the Cocktail Party

Years ago, when I first got into the writing business, whenever I went to a cocktail party, a BBQ, or other social function, people would always ask me to write their stories.

During the initial small talk, when we’d go through the routine “so what do you do for a living?” after I said my bit, inevitably someone would always start telling me their whole life story.

No kidding – we’d go from “hi, nice to meet you,” to suddenly the person telling me about their childhood, secret unfulfilled high school crush, to how they just killed their boss and were wondering where to hide the body.

Well, maybe not the last one – but looking back on those days, I’m amazed at how open and frank people were, revealing their inner-most personal experiences with me, seeing as we’d only just met.

I heard some interesting stuff --I think. 

My mind usually wandered during those experiences, half-listening to what this complete stranger was confessing to me, half-listening to the others around me, as I desperately looked for a way of escape.

At the time, I didn’t like being cornered by someone I’d just met, having their whole life story forced upon me. I’m not anti-social, just as with most of us, it takes time to get to know someone.

But back then, tell someone you’re a writer, and they’d assume their story had the next New York Time’s Bestseller prize written all over it, and they’d want you to write it.

Times have certainly changed – thanks a lot technology.

Now when I tell people I write, they tell me they do too. They write blogs, podcasts, have their own YouTube channel, or post to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any of the other social networks.

They brag about the number of friends, fans and followers they have reading their posts. They tell me about the process of writing, asking if it is the same thing I go through in creating my work too?

They don’t need me to tell their stories anymore, because they get to tell them in their own words and way.

Thanks to technology, everyone is their own publisher and producer. All you need these days to tell your story is a computer, an Internet connection and the time it takes to hammer it out on the keyboard.

No longer do I get pulled into a dark corner at a cocktail party by a complete stranger, and force fed his or her stories about their misunderstood youth, the prom date that never showed up, or their lost lucky sock that they finally found and have never taken off to this day – ew – and other whacky things that happen to us all.

Well, except the last one -- I don’t have a lucky sock.

The Best Thing About Blogging – Originality

Tonight in Canada, a television show from the 1980’s returns with much the same cast, only older. Dallas, one of the biggest night-time dramas in the era of big hair, neon colors, and parachute pants has been re-done, in a “new” series which premiers tonight on BRAVO.

Hollywood – and most of the mainstream media – seems to be chock out of ideas, because they keep re-hashing the same old ones in an attempt to draw us into their movies and television shows.

Classic television hits Hawaii Five-Oh, Charles Angels, The Smurfs, The Dukes of Hazard, The A-Team, Starsky and Hutch, even MacGyver were all re-made – the latter in the form of a comedy spoof McGruber. 

Aren’t there any original ideas anymore? 

Yes there are – and you don’t have to pay outrageously high prices for a movie and an oversized bag of stale popcorn to enjoy them.

Thankfully bloggers are coming up with really original content, or else we’d really have nothing interesting to pass the time.

The blogosphere is full of well written, interesting, and original content on everything from current affairs, space, science, technology, fashion and more.

Granted, you probably won’t see big blockbuster movie action on a blog, but at least you’ll be entertained and informed about something that really is new – not labeled as new, but just recycled by lazy writers that don’t want to take risks.

And that’s what it all comes down too. Risk. It costs millions to create a television show, and even more to create a movie, so many writers opt for the easy way out, and instead of trying something new, they fall back on past hits.

That’s why a TV show from the 1980’s is being revised over 20 years later yet being sold as “new.”

Television viewership is down, so too are movie attendance figures. Many blame the Internet, podcasts, television on-demand and other digital media.

I beg to differ – although the Internet and digital media do have a role in taking us away from TV and the movies, that’s not the primary reason.

Nope.

It’s lazy writers afraid to take risks.

Although I enjoyed watching television shows in the 1980’s, I’ve been there and done that. I don’t need or want to watch the same characters living out the same old plot lines, as they get old and grey. 

Are we going to have a geriatric version of Dallas, as the cast continues to age?

I can see the plot thicken, as JR desperately tries to find out who stole his dentures. They can make it a two-part season finally, much as they did in the 1980’s original version of the show, when they ran the “Who Shot JR” episode. Only in the “new” revised series, JR mumbles something incomprehensible, as he points to the jar that usually stores his dentures. Oh my god! It’s empty!

Who stole JR’s dentures?

Tune in next season to find out.

Coke Is It, Dive Into the Nestle Plunge & Elvis May be Dead, Or Is He? Who Controls What You Think?

We wordsmiths are in your head.

 

Your thoughts came from my brain.

Us writer-types working for big-name advertising agencies, newspapers, television stations and other media control your thoughts. We invent your way of interpreting the way you think the world really is.

Coke is it, dive into the Nestle plunge, Elvis is dead.

Elvis isn’t dead, he’s hammering out a new ad campaign for Burger King on the second floor. You just think Elvis is dead because we told you he was.

You can control your thoughts. However, we’ve made it too easy for you to just flip into “autopilot” and let us and our cookie-cutter creative copy invade your mind, and tell you how the world is.

In our invented world, weekends are like beer commercials – complete with bodacious babes in skimpy outfits, and buff boys in boxers partying like there is no tomorrow. Mornings are always easy, thanks to breakfast in a can, Pop-Tarts, or can’t get enough of my Sugar Crisps. Work is always fun, thanks to the funky delivery guy from Brown’s because when it absolutely positively has to get there on time, we deliver the world on time.

 

Yep, our invented world is what you want. Because we tell you what you want. Do you really need a Schticky? When you open your Molson Canadian, do the babes just start breaking down your door as the party begins?

Do you really need a mountainous burger of beef patties in your Whopper?!?!

Here’s the rub – you don’t need any of that crap.

The world we invent for you is crap, served with a smile. But you let us feed you this diet of crappy ideas, because you think things like Built Ford Tough actually means something. There’s something special in the air, and it isn’t American Airlines . . .

 

It is the stink of complacency. The putrid smell of conformity.

In order to fit into the world of ideas, you never think.

That’s my job.

Maybe you should start thinking. Wake up and smell the fucking Folgers Crystals for yourself. Create your own world, one where you belong. A world based on your ideas, your beliefs, your values.

Buy into the commercial corporate ideas of YOU.

That’s how you start to really live.