Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

watching hypnotised on 12seconds.tv

In days of yore, people wrote letters to one another to communicate. If you read Jane Austen novels, you'll know that it was all very proper and romantic. Then we got phones so we started talking instead. Bye bye letters.

Not long after, we discovered email. Although we still use phones, email has become the primary mode of communication for many. It's efficient, you can talk to more people faster, and the give and take generally involved in an actual conversation is somewhat limited. It's a great tool for introverts, since they can avoid the face to face; and it's a great tool for extroverts, since they can "talk" to a ton of different people at once. It works for pretty much everyone who is not a technophobe.

Enter Facebook ... where we can carry on multiple conversations simultaneously. While IM'ing. In real time or delayed. We have substituted quality for quantity.

Then came Twitter, where conversations are limited to 140 characters, and you can amass thousands of "friends" whom you have neither met nor spoken with. On Twitter, you can talk at people for the most part rather than to them. You can do this on Facebook, too. In these tools, conversations become more akin to a spectator sport.

Fast forward to late 2009, where evolution has given us 12 Seconds TV. An invention where, if you are too lazy, busy, illiterate or narcissistic to even bother to pen 140 characters on your keyboard, you can just videotape yourself talking (uh, or whatever, have to wonder about that) for, you guessed it, 12 seconds.

I was tempted to do it but you know, I am wearing my glasses, it's late, makeup is gone, etc., but you get the idea. I'll link to some random person's 12 second spot instead. Maybe it won't catch on after all, if more people are like me than not!

Is the pendulum going to swing back? Will people begin to find value again in personal interaction? Or are we going to continue to talk at each other, failing to truly connect, and just watch each other with limited attention spans going off for 12 seconds at a time, or talking in 140 characters or less? What then? Who will bring you soup when you're sick? Give you a hug when you're sad? Talk with you in depth about anything? Smack you upside the head when you're being a jerk? Tell you they appreciate you and love you when you need to hear it? Next up, marriage proposals via Twitter and 12 Second TV.

To hell with it, I am going to go read Pride and Prejudice. Again. Nah, on second thought, I'll watch it. LMK when someone comes out with the 12 second version.

Tracy Cote