A close friend of mine introduced me to something called "YouTube" back in 2007. This was also a time when we had moved from a dialup connection to high speed Internet. Watching video clips I choose, as an when I please, and with the freedom to skip certain sections was a paradigm shift for me. Of course, at that time, streaming with high speed Internet came at a huge price, and I went so excitedly overboard with the new toy I found that my Internet bill for that month came to be around Rs. 4000.
Watching TV over the Internet was a more obvious paradigm shift. However, there was another deeper, more obscure but more powerful paradigm shift that occurred with the advent of streaming TV. It was that of anyone - I mean anyone who can post their videos that have a chance to go viral. In fact, even I posted my own standup comedy video on YouTube back in 2009, and it got hundreds of views. I was not aware of Internet trolling at that time, so after reading some really mean comments I took it down. Anyway, this post is not about that video, it is about authenticity.
So many of these home-made videos went viral at that time. The one that comes to mind is this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPDYj3IMkRI) which my sister showed me in 2009. Also, YouTube has given so many people the opportunity to have their own online shows which do not require much investment. Comedy groups in India such as AIB and EIC who would have had no chance 15 years back because of packaged and censored mainstream television are great YouTube stars now. Cenk Uygur, a journalist who was fired from mainstream TV channel MSNBC for asking politicians too many honest questions created his own show The Young Turks on YouTube and now has over a million subscribers. And he kicks ass with honest, straightforward news and analysis. There are thousands of other examples of YouTube stars, but I guess you get my drift.
So when everyone has a chance to express their views which can be seen by everyone else, the paradigm of quality videos shifts from professionalism to authenticity. CNN anchors like Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer look very professional and have a great television presence, but after you have watched YouTube news anchors like Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski, the professional look of Cooper and Blitzer means shit! Kulinski, Uygur, Dore, and others bring out a certain authenticity which matters so much more than professional robots. If I want news and an informed opinion, why would I watched packaged CNN and MSNBC shows when YouTube gives me something so much more raw and honest? Also, YouTube shows are not time-bound. So YouTube presenters have the flexibility of time which 24 hour TV channels don't.
I was introduced to YouTube when I was 25. So I had a sufficient exposure to packaged television where everything is pre-planned and scripted. However, think about the millenials who were born post 1990. For them, the Internet and YouTube is all too familiar over traditional television. As soon as they would have got some intellectual maturity, they would have been exposed to more authentic stuff over the Internet than pre-planned, time-bound television shows.
And THAT is why, as they say in Hindi - ज़माना बदल रहा है (things are changing). And things are changing for the better. People younger to me are more receptive to authenticity than pandering rhetoric. That is why they are attuned to Bernie Sanders and not to pre-packaged, scripted Hillary Clinton who seems to know exactly when to talk what and with what tone. Youngsters can totally see through her!
Unfortunately, the population of baby boomers born from the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s is huge! Therefore mainstream television still has an audience and will not die soon. Many baby boomers are still averse to the Internet. They have grown up in an era where presentation mattered more than substance.
The medium of television is not as flexible as the Internet, so we cannot hope to see more authentic stuff in it to change with the times. It will slowly die and wither away as the millenials make their presence felt! Till then, inauthentic, pre-packaged news anchors like Anderson Cooper, and loud, shitty comedians like Kapil Sharma will continue to thrive to entertain the blockheaded baby boomers, and certain idiots even from my generation.
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