Damescotravel

We live in the age of instant. Instant coffee, instant information, instant communication, and, alarmingly so, instant fame. The celebrity status, the fame that America�s grope so fervently for, is closer than ever; anyone with a Digital camcorder and an idea has a shot for their fifteen minutes on Youtube.
Everyday, there�s another wannabe Justin Bieber, or another David After Dentist. Youtube is filled to the rafters with insane amounts of these videos, of normal people in ordinary situations hoping to be seen as extraordinary. What�s incredible about these videos is that there isn�t really anything incredible about them.

Take the famous �Charlie bit my finger� video, the only video in the top six most watched Youtube entries that isn�t a music video. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about this. A toddler bites his older brother�s finger, and the older brother, rather poshly, points out that it hurts, while the parents sit behind their camcorders and laugh. It is less than a minute long, featuring nothing more than two young boys sitting with each other. Yet inexplicably the video has nearly four hundred million views.
This simple formula has invaded our national consciousness. The generation raised on Youtube honestly believe that they can attain that ever tempting fame by a short jaunt on Youtube. Record a minute or two of oneself and a sibling behaving in a pseudo quirky way, and boom, instant celebrity. This leads to every family holiday turning into open auditions for the family�s ticket to fame.

People are never far from their camcorders, hoping one of the drunker members of the family will take one for the team and perpetrate some absurd example of human folly, thus bringing possible fame and glory to the family.
But this isn�t a phenomenon brought on solely by the creation and availability of the digital camcorder. Since we�ve been able, people have been recording �hilarious� mishaps or mad schemes and stunts, originating in simply preserving family memories. Then the TV show America�s Funniest Home Videos came about and gave families the opportunity to turn precious family moments into a cash pinata.

They brought the coveted fifteen minutes of fame closer to the masses than ever before, and after twenty two years, it has become second nature to us now. Before we embark on any sort of activity that could end disastrously, or in show biz terms, hilariously, we make sure that someone has their camera phone or camcorder going.
What does this give to our society? Is the age of the instant just allowing families to share precious memories with the world, or are camcorders cheapening the memories we create with our families? As always, we must choose whether the technology we own owns us or if we can harness its uses without shallowing the human experience.