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I have noticed in the last few years that when emergency events happen (Fires, vehicle/ plane crashes, armed sieges, rioting, natural disasters, terrorism et al) that the average joe seems to think that rather than move away from the incident ASAP and ensure their survival, that it's better to video it on their iPhone and stupidly put their life at risk?

Seriously are people deranged? Could you imagine how bad 9/11 would have been if iPhones had been around and people had become pseudo - Cameramen, "Wow, this is world changing I'm going to stand 3 blocks down and film this.....*Oh dear I'm too close*".

It seems absolute madness and a new form of rubber-necking but rather than just in cars it now happens everywhere!

Maybe it will reduce the stupid population in the long run, but I doubt it.

Maybe they're thinking more of the number of views they will get on youtube rather than the building falling on them. Like a good friend of a friend of mine, filmed an explosion while not taking cover, shrapnel cut off his left earlobe.

Survival of the fittest. The last culling was too long ago it seems.

So anyone who films anything interesting is an idiot?
Right.
This thread is spam.

It's not spam, I was watching BBC news and this supposed Armed siege (now over) and people were filming it on iPhones rather than getting out of there.

Also the Brevik bombing in Norway last year in the aftermath rather than help the injured some people thought it was a better idea to film the damage.

It seems to be a pandemic, and no I'm not saying anyone who films things is an idiot, professional Cameramen and newscasters, or freelancers are not idiots. People who think they have something to add by filming on their iPhones are generally idiots, everyone wants to have that "Fenton" moment on their phone and seems to ignore the ridiculous risks they take. It's the bad in the military as well, instead of paying attention, alot of the guys want to make their own Rambo video's in the middle of an engagement in afghanistan, it's nuts. It's exactly the same at gigs and concerts, and you cannot make out any detail or the sound, it's just silly.

Joey you always take things to extremes and polarise things.

people have been using camera phones to video tap things long before the iPhone...

Joey wrote:So anyone who films anything interesting is an idiot?
Right.
This thread is spam.

I don't think that's exactly what's actually being said here.

mwnciboo wrote:It's not spam, I was watching BBC news and this supposed Armed siege (now over) and people were filming it on iPhones rather than getting out of there.

Also the Brevik bombing in Norway last year in the aftermath rather than help the injured some people thought it was a better idea to film the damage.

It seems to be a pandemic, and no I'm not saying anyone who films things is an idiot, professional Cameramen and newscasters, or freelancers are not idiots. People who think they have something to add by filming on their iPhones are generally idiots, everyone wants to have that "Fenton" moment on their phone and seems to ignore the ridiculous risks they take. It's the bad in the military as well, instead of paying attention, alot of the guys want to make their own Rambo video's in the middle of an engagement in afghanistan, it's nuts. It's exactly the same at gigs and concerts, and you cannot make out any detail or the sound, it's just silly.

Joey you always take things to extremes and polarise things.

If I saw something interesting happen I'd get out my phone and video it. You are implying that makes me an inferior human being. Which is very strange.
Possibly because you don't actually understand Darwinian selection.
"It is not the fittest of the species that survives, but that which is most adaptive to change".
You are also over-estimating humans' capacity for self-survival. Historically only the most cowardly individuals think first and foremost of their own safety. Men in particular have evolved to risk their lives in war for the benefit of their tribe/family/country. No one wants to live forever dude.

I think he meant people video taping something while in incredible danger, putting the camera ahead of their wellbeing all for the sake of cool.

Private_Joker wrote:I think he meant people video taping something while in incredible danger, putting the camera ahead of their wellbeing all for the sake of cool.

Right. Looking cool gets you laid. Running away like a coward doesn't. So really what can we learn from that?

Its not really cowardice, smart if anything. Just means you get laid another day while the brave guy with the camera gets shot/ squashed/ crumped.

Private_Joker wrote:Its not really cowardice, smart if anything. Just means you get laid another day while the brave guy with the camera gets shot/ squashed/ crumped.

That guy was willing to lay down his life more readily than you were, therefore you're a coward (in this hypothetical situation).
I'll put it another way: the loved ones (and gene-sharers) of someone who is willing to put themselves in harms way are much more likely to survive than the gene-sharers of a coward.
It's quickly become apparent not many people in this thread know much, if anything, about natural selection.

So staying underneath a falling building while taping it is going to accelerate your genes survival rate?

Private_Joker wrote:So staying underneath a falling building while taping it is going to accelerate your genes survival rate?

Give me a single instance of someone who did that.
In fact, how could you. Surely the video would have been crushed?

Well that was probably a bad example. I was going to refer to 9/11 but that would be bad taste.

It's about people standing there wide eyed, with no concept or comprehension of the Danger they are in. There is no such thing as a Coward if you are moving away from danger, The military don't charge into dangerous situations. You use risk mitigation to minimise danger, you don't stand next to a burning building (which may collapse) thinking "This will make good footage".

To say to move from Danger is cowardice, is the same as saying "If you look before you cross the road you are a coward". Which is obviously stupid, there is nothing wrong or cowardly in taking pre-cautions, neither is it "brave to walk out into the Road without looking," it is simply foolhardy.

This is my main point, now that good quality camera's with a decent amount of memory in most peoples pockets, people seem more inclined to use them at innappropriate times. Even to the point of putting themselves, knowlingly or unknowingly in danger, and that is a really disturbing thing.

EDIT - refering to 9/11 is not bad taste, anymore than referring to any other event where people have lost life e.g battles, accidents or incidents. It's just considered sacrosanct because it was so recent and appalling, although this will fade with time.

Personally I don't regard the compulsive recording of information as a bad thing.
I can see what you mean about self-preservation - but how often do people actually die because they were filming something?
When actual danger does crop up they just leg it. I remember seeing some tsunami footage from a couple of years ago where the guy was filming cars and buildings being swept away, then realised if he didn't move he would be too.

Joey wrote:
If I saw something interesting

He means if people see something they instinctively try to record it regardless of the danger.

Would you pull out your camera phone if armed gunmen were storming your location?

In any given situation you can only have so many heroes/idiots/whatever actually doing stuff and there's usually allot more people there than the few.

Rather than scratching their arses and gawping they are now filming it as well. Nosey buggers would always have wandering into crime scenes to see whats what.

Now they are just filming it? So what, more evidence for trials and footage for You've been Framed/Animals do the funniest Things. Win-Win.

Actually people did record the 9/11 attacks (on their phones, IIRC) as it was unfolding in NY. There is definitely footage floating around which was taken at street-level as the buildings collapsed, though perhaps some of it was taken on a camcorder.

In any case, the ability to record video on your phone is a vital component of citizen journalism, one of the most important democratic advances in the last few decades. It allows us to tell OUR story, as opposed to one mediated by huge broadcasting corporations. Just try to imagine the Arab Spring without cameraphones. Would we even have any evidence of the brutal crackdowns taking place without the actions of 'stupid' individuals filming people being murdered by their own governments?


- Edited for loads of fething typos.

Old news is old:



Besides, we all know that cool guys don't look at explosions.

Joey wrote:
Possibly because you don't actually understand Darwinian selection.
"It is not the fittest of the species that survives, but that which is most adaptive to change".
No one wants to live forever dude.

This guy would like to argue with you on both accounts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_%28comics%29

It just seems so dangerous, it can be defended by the idea of Citizen Journalism but the average joe has no concept of what this actually is. Today on the BBC, they interviewed 100 people and less than 20% of them knew the year that WWII ended, the average joe is not that well educated or self aware. How often do the police ask for iPhone evidence to be submitted, some incidents have been shown or brought to light in the last few years and thats great, but that is 1 in a 1000 cases. The herding instinct is actually a good one when you look at books like the "The Selfish Gene", but people are now re-programming their survival instincts or even their Altruistic instincts (such as rendering 1st aid or helping people who are injured) in order to play to their Social Network Addiction or to Phone addiction, "Look what I saw and filmed today".

About 10 years ago when I went to a Restaurant with my wife, people and Couples would be chatting, and I have always had a policy of turning my phone to silent in social occasions (e.g in the Pub, or with friends at a cafe) as it is anti-social. It was not part of life back then, everyone had a nokia, and some idiots used to play with them all the time and you would take the piss out them. But generally it was an unobtrusive tool in life, now the all singing all dancing SMART PHONE has given almost too many distractions from everyday life in all it's positive and negative aspects

Last week we went to a Restaurant and a couple opposite us were both playing on their iPhones throughout their meal. They barely talked, browsing on line, messaging, playing angry birds, if only to exchange phones one every 10 mins say "Hey, Look at this". It's almost accepted now to do social things whilst playing with your tech and only half-listening, or half paying attention. It's a really strange thing to quantify, but as the Smart phone age is relatively young. Given 10 years, i believe we will see behaviourial disorders,

http://www.cracked.com/article_17522_6-new-personality-disorders-caused-by-internet.html

all becoming far more common because people are not linked physically to the internet (like a laptop or PC) but able to carry it with them 24/7 (on a wireless Data link Smart Phone) and once this achieves 80% saturation of the population weird and disturbing trends will become apparent, that at the moment are attributed to other causes.

mwnciboo wrote:It just seems so dangerous, it can be defended by the idea of Citizen Journalism but the average joe has no concept of what this actually is.

Actually, that doesn't matter. In fact it's probably better, if anything. Citizen Journalism hinges on the expression of the unvarnished 'truth' of the lives of individuals. The idea that we can capture footage and images, and instantly publish them around the world, is an incredibly empowering thing for the average person to do, in terms of articulating their experience of life.

But it's not truth it's subjective truth or what you have observed. I agree it is their experience of life (makes me wonder what happens when our generation dies, will all our collective digital experience live on on YouTube etc? how long will we keep data?)

What you see is not what you believe, neither is it truth. This is why polygraphs fall over, it doesn't tell the truth it tell's you what the individual believes. So if you ask someone who believes they are a Car on a polygraph "Are you Human?" "No i'm a car" will get a none response, because they actually believe they are a Car, therefore to them it is truth.

The truth is neither here nor there, it's merely what you observed and that is not always truth.

A good example is in a Physics lesson ask children "What happens when you open a Parachute?" most answer you go upwards. This is obviously wrong, it's merely they fall more slowly but due to their perspective from watching camera men filming Parachutists. Like so...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHbk0qNyk8Q&feature=related

Watch form 0:42

Smoke and mirrors, nothing to do with truth. It's hard to verify and substantiate stories and footage, and I don't like Murdoch etc controlling the media, it's a hard thing to reconcile when you think about it.

I take your point on Oppression and Tyrannical regimes, however I'm talking more about developed societies with democracy where disasters etc happen and people are not oppressed, that the average joe see something dangeous or unusual and thinks *this is Dangerous, right where is my camera?*

Albatross wrote:

mwnciboo wrote:It just seems so dangerous, it can be defended by the idea of Citizen Journalism but the average joe has no concept of what this actually is.

Actually, that doesn't matter. In fact it's probably better, if anything. Citizen Journalism hinges on the expression of the unvarnished 'truth' of the lives of individuals. The idea that we can capture footage and images, and instantly publish them around the world, is an incredibly empowering thing for the average person to do, in terms of articulating their experience of life.

Citizen journalism is kind of a misnomer as citizens have no oversight or training to cause them to be objective. Populist journalism is a more accurate and terrifying title for the phenom.

I agree with mwnciboo, I mean seriously. People have no survival instinct, even if as Joey claims they are filming to look cool and get laid. Tell me, what use is looking cool if you're dead?

I mean, that is seriously one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. And saying that they are brave by standing and filming while others are cowards for preferring their lives over camera footage is stupid in itself. You can only be brave if you are aware of the danger and understand what it can do to you. Someone who doesn't understand the danger cannot be brave because bravery by definition is overcoming a fear.

mwnciboo wrote:I have noticed in the last few years that when emergency events happen (Fires, vehicle/ plane crashes, armed sieges, rioting, natural disasters, terrorism et al) that the average joe seems to think that rather than move away from the incident ASAP and ensure their survival, that it's better to video it on their iPhone and stupidly put their life at risk?

Seriously are people deranged? Could you imagine how bad 9/11 would have been if iPhones had been around and people had become pseudo - Cameramen, "Wow, this is world changing I'm going to stand 3 blocks down and film this.....*Oh dear I'm too close*".

It seems absolute madness and a new form of rubber-necking but rather than just in cars it now happens everywhere!

Maybe it will reduce the stupid population in the long run, but I doubt it.

And I would argue that the flip side is lots of horrid, hateful people committing crimes and acting like asses are now more easily identified and cases proven against them based upon video evidence.

People used to far more easily be able to act like complete j-holes in public, but now being filmed often deters people and they stop/walk away...

Not to mention abuse of power can be more easily documented and shown to others. Cops used to act like Gestapo in some places, but the rady availabiity of camera phones has helped with this...

The truly smart ones would be picking the pockets of those running.

Joey wrote:"It is not the fittest of the species that survives, but that which is most adaptive to change".

I always preferred thinking of it as "Those who out-feth the rest of society before dying in one of those trailer park tornados I'm always hearing about."

I'm still hoping the midwest is atypical for society however.

mwnciboo wrote:
Last week we went to a Restaurant and a couple opposite us were both playing on their iPhones throughout their meal. They barely talked, browsing on line, messaging, playing angry birds, if only to exchange phones one every 10 mins say "Hey, Look at this". It's almost accepted now to do social things whilst playing with your tech and only half-listening, or half paying attention. It's a really strange thing to quantify, but as the Smart phone age is relatively young. Given 10 years, i believe we will see behaviourial disorders,

I know what you're talking about. I reach for my phone a little too reflexively when I feel it go off, and it bothers me that I do it, but I have a lot of friends who I can't see often due to distance, and it's nice to be able to communicate with them still. I do this often in the local pub I frequent here, but I go up there for me, not other people. I totally don't see the point in playing games on my phone while out doing things though.

To be fair, I've been on dates before where I'll be in the restaurant and be trying to decide which would be more interesting, my phone or the girl I'm talking to. I'm not sure if that says more about me, them, or the internet.

all becoming far more common because people are not linked physically to the internet (like a laptop or PC) but able to carry it with them 24/7 (on a wireless Data link Smart Phone) and once this achieves 80% saturation of the population weird and disturbing trends will become apparent, that at the moment are attributed to other causes.

I dunno, between people thinking they're animals and grown men playing with little plastic army figures, I'm not sure how much more disturbing things can get. For some reason, I think of the Panther Moderns from Neuromancer, but that could be cool.