There was an issue last week that illustrates the impact technologies have on how we communicate and how we perceive the world we are living in. I fear we are amusing ourselves to death.
Professor Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business pointed out that visual communications, inspired by television, has made our world more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – a population too amused by distractions like entertainment, leisure, and laughter to realize they have been made powerless – rather than George Orwell’s 1984 – a tyrannical state that bans information to keep the public powerless.
The larger point that Postman made was that societies are molded by technologies atop which they communicate. :
- Oral cultures teach us to be conversational.
- Typographic cultures teach us to be logical. Fire departments operate as a typographical culture – paper empires of logic and procedures.
- Televised cultures teach us that everything is entertainment and emotional.
I wonder how Postman would evaluate FaceBook memes, YouTube, and social media algorithms that are built to maximize the time users spend within the application. (Derakhshan 2016)
Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, argues that the rise of the Intenet intensifies the move away from print culture. This move away from print even affected Carr as he confesses his own inability to concentrate after switching from physical books to online reading:
I’d sit down with a book, or a long article, and after a couple of pages my brain wanted to do what it does when I’m online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page…the more time we spending surging, and skimming, and scanning…the more adept we become at that mode of thinking. (NPR interview of Carr on 2010 June 2)
Conflict Drives Eyeballs
When I am “curating” items to post on the Company Commander Facebook feed in the early morning I am looking for items that evoke the type of reaction Chicago columnist Mike Royko went for – his daily columns took about two sips of coffee to read, sometimes ending with the reader exclaiming “!#%$!! Chicago.”
I was late getting on-board about Atlanta Captain Danny Dwyer. On Thursday I linked a post to the Wednesday editorial from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The post quickly reached 1,309 people, getting 405 Facebook “engagements,” 117 emoticons, 16 comments, and 15 shares.
This is a “!#%$!! Fire Service” article. High outrage, anger at the fire chief and some over-the-top responses. The Fire Atlanta Fire Chief Slaughter Facebook page was already up and this issue is “viral.”
Headline Readers
Most readers will not click to read the article attached to a Facebook post. They react to the headline and the picture. I try to put enough information in the FaceBook comment to describe the story, but that is not always done.
For example, it is clear that many of the 107 commenters responding to “Catastrophic Fires in Mid-Rise Multifamily Dwellings Under Construction – 5 Considerations” that was posted last Monday were only reacting to the dramatic picture and headline without the benefit of reading the article.
That commenter behavior may be a function of boosting the Catastrophic Fires item as a week-long Facebook Ad to a group of Facebook members that identify as fire or ems. Reached 14,000 additional people beyond the usual group of Company Commander readers, so … eyeballs.
Monetizing Content
Controversy, over-the-top activities, and conflict increase online views. I like YouTube videos from automotive-themed personalities and wonder how much money they are making. (… and if Company Commander can do the same.)
In 2015 Garrett Mitchell was working for 1320Video. He created a character “Cleetus McFarland” in a motel parking lot late one night. He got over 100,000 views.
Cleetus McFarland became its own youtube site, with 1.87 Million subscribers as of this week. Revenue must be great, as the 24-year-old Garrett just purchased an abandoned racing track on 63 acres in Manatee County, Florida. The “Freedom Factory” will be used to create additional content and sponsored events.
Tyler Hoover, with 904K subscribers, pointed out that his routine of buying “the cheapest version of a luxury or exotic car” for Hoovie’s Garage and then trying to fix them get many more views than the videos of fixing up a car without much drama or problems. In fact, the videos without drama do not bring in enough revenue to justify Hoover making any more of them.
What to do when you get outraged?
Being in a constant state of outrage over real or imagined issues that are well beyond your sphere of responsibility is as unhealthy on your emotional condition as a steady diet of caffeinated drinks have on your cardiac physiology (Bodin FDSOA).
When we add energy drinks on board we have increased our risk of a cardiovascular event to happen even sooner. Over 38 countries around the world have either banned these drinks due to the detrimental side effects or placed age limitations on them according to Quartz Media. Studies world-wide have proven the dangers of regular intake of these drinks. (IAFC Cardiac Awareness Toolkit)
I like what Bill Carey posted in “I Don’t Think It’s What You Think It Is” on Backstep Firefighter.
So instead of memes and live Facebook rants, review your department’s disciplinary procedures, appeals, grievances and the like.
Be prepared for when a bit of bullying – which is what is happening in Atlanta – happens to you. Be better than a chief with nothing more than an ax to grind.
A fire in June 2019 suddenly gets a disciplinary review? No, it’s not about the fire.
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Parts of this column were originally published in the August 5, 2019, Company Commander column: “Fire Officer Supervising In The Age of Show Business – 3 activities to stay on top”
Neil Postman (1931–2003) was chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University and founder of its Media Ecology program. He wrote more than twenty books.
Postman, Neil (1985/2005) Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business. 20th-anniversary edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Silvestre, Dan (2018 Sept 11) Lessons from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Medium.com. Accessed August 3, 2019. https://medium.com/@dsilvestre/lessons-from-amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman-962221ee622tk
Derakhshan, Hossein (2016 Nov 29) Social Media is Killing Discourse Because It’s Too Much Like TV: We need more text and fewer videos and memes in the age of Trump. MIT Technology Review.
Carr, Nicholas (2011) The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Athitakis, Mark (2015 February 26) Reading the Midwest: Mike Royko. Belt Magazine. Cleveland, OH: Belt Publishing. Accessed February 15, 2020. https://beltmag.com/reading-the-midwest-mike-royko/
Adams, Rick (2020 January 31) YouTube star Cleetus McFarland buys Desoto Speedway in Manatee County. WWSB. Sarasota, FL: Gray Television. Accessed February 15, 2020. https://www.mysuncoast.com/2020/02/01/youtube-star-cleetus-mcfarland-buys-desoto-speedway-manatee-county/
Riedl, Matt (2018 July 05) Wichitan becoming an online celebrity thanks to his crazy car collection. The Wichita Eagle. Wichita, KS: Kansas.com Accessed February 15, 2020. https://www-1.kansas.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/keeper-of-the-plans/article213617609.html#
Bodin, Dan (2018 August) The Effects of Energy Drinks in the Fire Service. Ann Arbor, MI: Fire Department Safety Officers Association. Accessed February 16, 2020. https://www.fdsoa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/The-Effects-of-Energy-Drinks-1.pdf
Carey, Bill (2020 February 14) I Don’t Think It’s What You Think It Is. Backstep Firefighter. Trumbull, CT: Clarion UX. Accessed February 15, 2020. http://www.backstepfirefighter.com/2020/02/14/i-dont-think-its-what-you-think-it-is/
Feature photo: Page from a 1962 Fire Education book that has appeared on threads discussing Captain Dwyer’s discipline.