Introduction: “When I was your age, I had to walk 10 miles in the snow just to watch YO! MTV RAPS”
I’m almost 24 years old.
Fish dicks.
Even though I haven’t had many (if any) of those feared, “What the fuck are these kids doing?!,” type of moments when I feel a complete lack of understanding about the generation below me, this makes sense.
Obviously, I’m not that far removed from teenage-dom and I am a genuine product of the “MTV boom” generation, the internet, and commercialized hip hop, so I love to hate Spencer and Heidi Pratt along with every other 16 year old in America, I tweet, and despite my personal love-hate relationship with the guy, I understand why millions of kids fuck with Soulja Boy.
Regardless of my age, the rise of social networking platforms has destroyed conventional mentalities on the old generation vs. new generation dichotomy thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Before these sites exploded in popularity, parents, teachers, grand-parents, name your “adult”— a majority of members from older generations openly mocked, criticized, and refused to embrace countless forms of communication taking place on the internet, dismissing most of them as social tools that only a younger generation could use to deploy various schemes of tomfoolery.
Flash forward to 2009.
Today, it seems like every news anchor, celebrity, or random conversation taking place on the street ONLY discusses the most banal aspects of these once feared and unappreciated trends.
Say hello to the NOW network, 3G technologies, Twitterverses and Facebook status updates from the whole world and their mothers.
Say goodbye to reliable news coverage of critical debates: Economic recession, Health Care Reform, Tension in the Middle East, Educational decline in America—all taking a back seat to the latest twitter updates from A-List celebrities.
Oh, how the world has changed.
All hyperbole aside, while this change in reporting style hasn’t killed off important news coverage as a whole, some disturbing trends have developed: the only thing worse than mass media outlets reporting unimportant tweets by celebrities are mass media outlets reporting unimportant tweets by celebrities tweeting about important things.
Despite this revision of mass media and its effect on the traditional age-based “clash of the generations”, I am not unaware of the massive differences between MTV kids in the mid to late 90’s and MTV kids now approaching the end of the first decade in the 21st century.
The following anecdotes should be read as my personal, “grandfather like” rants about the MTV of yore:
When I was still considered part of MTV’s key demographics, Kurt Loder and John Norris, routinely provided insightful updates about meaningful shit going on in the music industry in a non-tweet format that strangely, actually resembled the most respected news programs from major media sources like NBC or CBS.
I was only 9 years old in 1994, but Kurt Cobain’s suicide and the coverage that followed on MTV drastically changed my perceptions of the world, and ironically, has fueled my life-long obsession with the pursuit of the same exact lifestyles that not only drove Kurt Cobain over the edge, but also had a hand in the tragic culmination of the 1990’s Biggie East Coast VS. Tu-Pac West Coast rivalry (which has since allowed the mainstream commercialization of hip-hop to flourish; The “Ringtone Rap” era.)
MTV actually played music videos.
The “Real” World, was by all observations, actually real.
Hopefully, you understand where I am going with this:
A New Paperless World with the Same Old Yellow Journalism: The Beat Tweet
The crucial difference between MTV and the much larger institution of mass media, from then to now, (besides its shift in aesthetics, which can be attributed to a simultaneous evolution of culture) is due to the aforementioned advances in paperless, immediate, and wireless based technologies that have both enhanced AND popularized the most horrifying trend in American mass media since yellow journalism: the “beat tweet.” (Yes, I am coining this term RIGHT NOW….via Twitter)
In case you’re wondering, what are “beat tweets?”
Beat Tweets are the often ridiculous, most always unimportant, irrelevant and sometimes maliciously used twitter updates by [insert @ person here] that are determined to be news worthy by mass media outlets, then reported as news on any topic covered by the outlet—as a viable source.
MTV reports tweets by musicians. ESPN reports tweets by athletes. E! reports tweets by celebrities. Currently, the media operates under the following standard: If you tweet it, then we can and we will report it. While the constitution protects the freedom of press, the obvious removal of any sort of context from these tweets frequently puts the media at the risk of infringing upon their ethical responsibility to remain unbiased, a la, the “Beat Tweet.”
Beat Tweets serve absolutely no justifiable purpose for many media outlets.
Beat Tweets routinely infringe on privacy.
Beat Tweets spread unreliable rumors.
Most importantly, Beat Tweets influence public opinion.
My point is that the inherently flawed characteristics of “Beat Tweets” raise far too many ethical dilemmas. Twitter is essentially a brand new form of communication that no one has questioned. So I will play devil’s advocate here.
How should it be used? What kind of responsibility do media outlets have when pulling information from a source as subjective as twitter?
The debate is nearing a mainstream conversation based on a shocking escalation in the number of case studies which have highlighted exactly how malicious the powers of the Beat Tweet can be. These cases prevent any logical rationalization of why Beat Tweets should be reported in the first place.
News is supposed to be balanced, fair, unbiased, objective. Right? (and left)
Case Study: The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
And then, there was Kanye.
Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I simply still don’t understand why seemingly most of the entire nation responded to Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s award acceptance as harshly as they did.
Summary of FOX NEWS coverage after the show:
[some douchebag in a bowtie] “It’s just an absolute shame what has happened to American principles! What happened to respect! What happened to being polite! Here’s a tweet from @billoreilly on the subject
Is it me, or did the entire institution of American mass media somehow forget they were watching the VMA’s?
This is an “award” show that has featured (and PLANNED no less) a laundry list of events that have hit levels of “rudeness” way higher then Kanye Wests outburst of emotion:
A cocaine/alcohol influence Courtney Love interrupting Madonna’s interview (okay, this wasn’t planned either)
Reacting strongly to this event ignores the notion that in reality, Kanye West probably shouldn’t have been invited to the VMAs if this was how the public was going to respond in the event of another “What did Kanye West do NOW?” moment–As if his calling out of George Bush on TV counts as an outrage based on Bush’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster.
Even after considering Kanye’s history with outrageously rude public actions, the guy was openly chugging cognac before the show:
While I can relate to acting outrageous/rude/and ill-advised when under the influence of too much alcohol, I am not condoning his behavior–Obviously, Kayne didn’t make a wise or carefully planned decision by stealing the microphone during Taylor Swift’s speech, but, really? This event necesitated a previously unscheduled apology on the prime-time debut of Jay Leno’s new show? Was this rant worthy of a prime-time morality check complete with an ill-advised reference to his mother?
Correct me if im wrong here. But I’m sorry, that was quite possibly the most polite interruption I have ever seen in my entire life.
Your (our) personal stance(s) on the matter is irrelevant now, in fact, it never really was in the first place. Kanye West was thrown into the fire for his actions—and the media didn’t even flinch a muscle: using biased, disrespectful, and sensational tweets in order to somehow enhance the idea that what Kanye did was wrong, as if the world/american public didn’t get the memo.
Summary of MTV “NEWS” coverage after the show:
[Carson Daly Clone #56]
“Millions of tweets! A new VMA tweet record!!!!! Let’s see what @pink has to say: OMG KANYE WEST IS SUCH A FUCKING DICK!!!!! OMG I WILL NEVER BUY HIS CDS AGAIN!!!! HOW RUDDDDEEEEE!!!!
Hold on here. Pink? You were really that pissed off?
Are you the same musician who was also nominated for a VMA thanks to your epically boring single, “So What?,” Don’t you profess in the song:
I wanna get in trouble, I wanna start a fight
So What? I’m just a rock star!
Of all the people that reacted via twitter that night, you would think that Pink might have sympathized with Kanye’s “rock star” move.
But once again, that’s not the issue here.
I mean isn’t this precisely what twitter was designed for?
The problem is the perpetual emphasis that media outlets like MTV, E!, FOX NEWS, etc have placed on celebrities, which has reached new levels of danger with the development of the BEAT TWEETS, which are in Kanye West’s case slanderous.
Millions of Pink fans had their opinions swayed against Kanyes rude, but human reaction.
Kanye is one of the most respected artists in the music industry and despite his celebrity status, I won’’t support the idea that, “just because he’s Kanye,” he felt comfortable enough to walk onto the VMA main stage during its live broadcast and make semi rude and semi confusing confessions about his inner most feelings.
Here are a few theories that no one (to my knowledge) has explored yet:
Maybe Kanye west was so gone, that he accidentally forgot he was on Live TV.
Maybe he lost his blackberry and instead of projecting his angst onto his twitter account, like everyone else was doing, he mistakenly decided to tweet via microphone.
I think his outburst would have fit into 140 Characters
The most disturbing thing that no one has seemed to mention (or tweet about) at this point, is that there is a strong, realistic possibility that even if Kanye never got on stage, but had made a similar opinion accessible on twitter or his blog, people still would have been upset about it….
and it would have ended up on the MTV post show coverage in some sort of expose on what Kanye West tweeted about and how his opinion was outrageous.
The Bottom Line: This kind of reporting needs to end.
Conclusion: Why Do You Got to be so Heartless?
Dave Chappelle is a fucking prophet.
I don’t know if he will ever grace America with a full length, publicly broadcasted stand-up special ever again, but he really is a genius. Chappelle’s views/discussion on mass media its emphasis and borderline dangerous obsession on celebrity statuses is now remarkably apparent more than ever.
Nothing has changed.
Dave Chapelle’s brilliant mind and amazingly short career as a celebrity icon was tragically ended by the unchecked practices of American Mass Media. With constantly evolving communicative technologies and the recent mainstream emergence of the once misunderstood web-based social networks, Beat Tweets, as defined, must remain the opinions within there peer-to-peer based frameworks.
Here’s my nightmare:
Taking the prophetic advice from Dave Chapelle, Kanye West, a gifted but flawed musician, willfully ends his career early based on his fall from public grace, which was influenced by mass medias reports on how musicians like Pink felt about his actions.
Now that’s a truly frightening scenario.
–Hypothesis
