Beer and the future of UG video content
Last night, I drank my first beer in a very long time. Granted, it was a gluten-free beer. But it was a beer nonetheless.
It reminded me about the first time that I ever had a beer. As you can see from my video, my first reaction was of Pavlovian-esque psychological refreshment, and my second reaction was to the bitter taste of the beer. It resulted in a face of disgust.
The first time I had beer or smoked anything was in High School because I was socially required by my peers to enjoy the different substances. I learned how to condition myself to savor the taste, and to want it again. The social reward of being part of the group greatly outweighed the temporary lack of pleasure.
Before my Bar Mitzvah, my parents brought me to one of the top speech therapists in NY in order to help give me tools and tips on how to speak in front of a large audience. (Remember that I was the kid who stuttered.) In our sessions, he used to video tape me talking about anything, and then together we would play back the video and analyze how I sounded.
The first time he did this, I freaked out and accused him of doctoring the video tape. "That can't be me," I protested, "I can't sound that bad!!" It was me, and I was not used to seeing me the way that everyone else saw me. I did not like it at all.
I felt the same feeling the first time that I recorded something to put online. "I can't sound or look that bad." I remember recording the clip about 30 times before feeling happy enough with the result to put it online.
In a project that I am currently working on, I have been asking friends for short clips with them saying something. The number one reason why people tell me that they won't do it is because they don't feel comfortable putting videos online of themselves.
But we condition ourselves to what society expects from us. We drink beer, and learn to love it. (Until a doctor tells you that it has gluten in it. Then you stop drinking it very quickly.)
GTalk, Skype, ooVoo and others offer us video calls. People call us, and we have to answer. It's part of our modern social contract.
I think that we will naturally warm to the sight of ourselves on a webcam video, and slowly move to creating more content, replies and using services like Seesmic.
(This is not even talking about people aged 20 and below who grew up in this environment.)
It's all simply conditioning. Nothing more.
