Old Age Draws Near! Command?

I’ve long awaited the day where I would have that ‘you kids reduce your decibels!’ moment – when some technological breakthrough would lead the the youth down a path I would view with despair. Well, my friends, that day has come. And the offending device is the humble camera.

Not that cameras are new; they’ve just passed a critical threshold from the price-to-features standpoint. Everyone can afford a tiny, pocket-sized digital camera with an LCD on the back for framing pictures, and a movie capture mode. Being that photography is one of my primary interests lately, you’d think this would make me very happy. And although there are a few arguments I could make against rampant camera use, it’s actually the attitude with which people approach their camera’s purpose that pits me against them.

Recently I’ve been floored by everyone’s obsession to capture, to record, to possess every experience in their life in some form. People don’t seem to be able to enjoy an experience anymore. They must focus on getting dozens of photos or as much video as their memory stick will hold. Where is this most frustrating to the rest of us? Concerts. I’ve been to a half-dozen concerts in the last year where my primary experience wasn’t watching the band perform live. My experience was limited to seeing the band perform via the LCD screens of the four cameras being held over the heads of concert-goers, directly in my line-of-view. And there seems to be no stopping it; last weekend I went to see Japanese rock giants GLAY in a small venue in Hollywood. The ticket purchase website, the confirmation email, the venue doors, and even the tickets themselves all said ‘NO CAMERAS’ prominently. And surprisingly, this seemed to help: only about one in every three fans was obsessively snapping photos. Last night’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs show in Pomona featured a much younger crowd and no such prohibition. And over half of the fans I could see from where I was standing in the general admission section of the floor were recording, capturing, preserving. Instead of living, experiencing, and enjoying. It makes me want to shake my cane and issue an edict about how ‘we would never have done that back in my day… why, you went to a concert to enjoy the show and the only things you took away were your memories and, if you were lucky, a cool t-shirt.’