Because apparently that’s how many idiots have ADD now.
I was just reading this post from Mashable http://mashable.com/2009/12/11/online-video-buffering/
and apparently 80% of people will click away from a video that buffers JUST ONCE.
That’s how impatient and short attention spanned the world has become. People can’t wait an extra 3 seconds to see their video of some jackass falling off his roof to a Chris Brown song.
I think I’m going to start performing for gnats. “Hey, where’s my plant eaters at?” They may just pay attention longer than the average human being.
I understand that as technology advances things move faster. But if you can’t even wait for a video to buffer, what the heck are you going to do when you really need an attention span. Like during raising children?
I think I’m going to freeze for a few seconds during my next show and see if anyone walks out.
Are people losing the ability to contemplate something for more than a few seconds? Or enjoy the anticipation of something interesting?
I always think it’s interesting to look back at old movies, comedy bits, books, etc. There’s so much more space. Moms Mabley could talk to an audience and make a point instead of worrying about getting a laugh every seven seconds.
Check this video out… Plenty of laughs, but a much slower pace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLg1QzdAdLo
Older films breathe more because they leave space to wonder what’s coming up next. Now you don’t even have time to think about whatever inane line of dialogue was just said before something else is exploding.
If you look at writings from the 1700’s, there was no standardized spelling of many words. So we see, what now appear to be, extra letters.
This quote, from Captain James Cook’s diary of the first voyage of the Endeavor talks about the crew’s first view of Australian Aborigines in 1770. “They go quite naked both Men and women without any manner of Cloathing whatever, even the Women do not so much as Cover their privities.”
Yep, extra letters, weird capitalization. Why not? When you’re on a ship for two years in the middle of nowhere, you may as well kill an extra second by adding some letters you don’t need.
According to the English to text translator at www.lingo2word.com, the same statement would be texted as “dey go quite nked both men n women w/o ny manner of garb we evn d women dnt so mch as cova their fanny.”
I don’t know about you, to me the second one looks like it was done by a kid with a helmet and lunch box after a couple hours of sniffing glue.
Life moves so fast now we have to leave out letters? I’ve never been in THAT big a hurry.
The one place where we do seem to opt for “longer” is names. There’s a Togo’s sandwich shop by my house. And I have see every possible spelling of Britney working behind that counter. Brittany, Brittney, Britany, Britnee, Brihtny, Brightnqy. You think I’m kidding.
Let me put it this way. If you can’t wait 3 seconds for that video to load, maybe you shouldn’t have been watching it in the first place. But since this blog post is now over 500 words, you probably won’t see that bit of advice anyway.
Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com
PS.. You can get 8 of my songs for free. Don’t worry they’re short. Each no longer than 3.5 minutes. No buffering. http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com/8-free-songs