Watching You Watch
Let me describe my current situation: I have just moved from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee. To make the move as streamlined and economical as possible I opted to leave behind several things. One of those things was my trusty 20″ Panasonic tube standard-definition television. Televisions are (or rather, were) quite the bulky piece of equipment. Because of this decision I have been keeping myself up-to-date in the world of televised media by watching whatever I can on my computer. Because we now live in a world where there are myriad legal (and perhaps a few legally dubious) options for television content on computers I have to assume that this is not a method of consumption unique to me and my current situation. I have to assume many thousands (millions?) of viewers watch video on their computers or, frankly, it probably wouldn’t exist.
This leads me to a very interesting development that I believe to be unique to the process of watching video on a computer monitor. Tonight I was catching the most recent episode of FX’s stellar drama The Riches when the screen dipped to black where the commercial would have been had I been watching on legit cable (let’s just gloss over the fact that it wasn’t). Well, because one sits so much closer to the screen while watching video on a computer, when that video dips to black it is not unlikely for the viewer to catch a rather revealing glimpse of themselves in the reflection of the suddenly black monitor. It is one of those rare moments when one sees themselves as they actually are, completely unencumbered by pretense. For me, during this episode of The Riches I two-times caught myself grinning like an idiot as the drama of the episode escalated to the point of cliffhanger just before cutting away to commercial. It is rare in life to see oneself with this degree of utter realism. In the morning, while looking into the mirror while brushing our teeth we know what to expect. It’s an image we’ve seen millions of times before. In the presence of cameras we may believe the image being captured is reality, but more often than not what we see is the adoptive presence of someone who knows they are about to be seen and recorded.
But those unexpected flashes of black, where we suddenly see ourself as an active participant, that’s where the truth lies. Smiles, grins, looks of horror, boredom, curiosity, these are the most accurate reviews for any program on the air. Next time you start streaming something to your computer, don’t be surprised if what you see if yourself.
Tags: commercial breaks, computers, existentialism, monitors, reflection, streaming, Trends, web-video
