an excerpt from “Space, Time and DVR Mechanics” by Chuck Klosterman
A little more than five years ago, Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors. That game wasn’t on TV (it might have been on NBA TV, but I didn’t have that network at the time). I had no chance to watch or record it. Yet someone sent me a text around midnight informing me that Kobe had 53 points at the end of three quarters. If Bryant had eventually scored 101 points, I suspect I would have received 18 texts, three phone calls, and a fax. Seven years ago, the Pistons and Pacers were involved in a brawl that spilled into the stands, ultimately resulting in 146 game suspensions (86 for Ron Artest alone). When the fight happened, I was in a tiny bar in Brooklyn with no TV, listening to “Buffalo Stance” at a semi-intimate birthday party. Twitter did not yet exist, and — even if it did — my 2004 phone didn’t have Internet access. Yet I knew everything about this fight long before I got home; late-arriving party guests told us what had transpired the moment they walked into the bar. It was the first thing they said, even before “Happy birthday.” It was like they had to tell us, even if they themselves did not particularly care. What I’ve come to accept (and this is both good and bad, but mostly bad) is that — for the rest of my life — I will never not instantaneously know about any marginally insane event. There’s just no way to avoid the information. The world is too mediated and interpersonal relationships are too connected. Because most adult relationships are now predominantly based around new technologies, it’s almost as if there’s a built-in responsibility to immediately distribute whatever interesting information we acquire. People constantly complain about Facebook, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed them; they’re complaining because it has changed them. And they know it. They can feel it. There’s still a difference between somebody’s online profile and who they actually are, but that difference is decreasing and — in 10 years — will likely become negligible. Everyone has become a special-interest newspaper. Everyone wants to break news. If I record Thursday’s Mavs-Heat game and wait until Friday morning to watch it, will I be able to avoid discovering that Miami won in overtime? Probably. I could probably avoid hearing the score or knowing that it was an especially thrilling game. But could I avoid hearing that LeBron James scored 85 points? Could I avoid hearing that Dirk had 51 at halftime? Could I keep from learning that the roof of American Airlines Center tragically collapsed? What if Miami never missed a single field goal for the entire second half? What if Mark Cuban grabbed the PA microphone seconds before tip-off and publicly announced he was gay? What if a bear broke into the stadium and started attacking players on the court, forcing Shawn Marion to tackle the bear and break its neck? Is there any chance I could avoid hearing that news before pressing “play” on the DVR remote? No. No way. There’s no possible way I could avoid hearing about any of those situations. And — sure — those scenarios are preposterous and implausible. But so was the possibility of an earthquake happening during a World Series game. So was the likelihood of an NBA title game being interrupted by the LAPD slowly chasing a Hall of Fame tailback down the freeway to arrest him for double homicide. So was Monica Seles getting stabbed at the French Open in Germany, Reggie Miller scoring eight points in less than nine seconds, and the conclusion of the 1982 Cal-Stanford game. It’s difficult to project fictional scenarios that are more oblique and unexpected than the craziest moments from reality. We all understand this. And that understanding is at the core of the human attraction to liveness. We don’t crave live sporting events because we need immediacy; we crave them because they represent those (increasingly rare) circumstances in which the entire spectrum of possibility is in play. They’re the last scraps of mass society that are totally unfixed. When you watch an event in real time, anything is possible. Someone could die. Something that has never before happened could spontaneously happen twice. When there are three seconds on the clock, not one person in the world can precisely predict how those seconds will unspool. But if something happens within those three seconds that is authentically astonishing and truly transcendent — well, I’m sure I’ll find out about three minutes after it happens. I’m sure someone will tell me, possibly by accident. You can avoid the news, but you can’t avoid The News. Living in a cave isn’t enough. We’ve beaten the caves. The caves have Wi-Fi. And that, ultimately, is why a prerecorded game can never feel the same: If I don’t know anything about the event I’m about to watch, I can be certain that nothing except a good game is going to transpire. I know I’m merely going to see a slightly different version of something I’ve seen a thousand times before. And even though I think that’s all I want, it doesn’t come close to what I need.
(Source: grantland.com)
