Earlier today, I was watching a Youtube video that a friend of mine posted. It's short, cute, sweet - definitely an entertaining 2 minutes and 30 seconds. In addition to knowing the people in it, I also know the back story (because I was there when it happened!). This made it a little more interesting when I scrolled down and read the comments.
The few comments posted came from random people who happened to stumble across this clip online - no one who actually knows the people in it. Nobody wrote anything rude or crude, but the simple observations that were posted bothered me a bit. I caught myself thinking, "what do they know? They weren't there." Until I realized that, had I not known the full story, I would have been thinking the same things. Maybe not posting them, but thinking them nonetheless.
The digital era has given us the opportunity to create biases without even intending to do so. Snapchats, Vines, Youtube videos, music videos, movies. Everything the director/producer/whoever wants to keep stays in. Everything the d/p/w doesn't want gets cut. Whether the clip is capturing real life or staged, the fact remains that the "production team," if you will, ultimately controls how it turns out. This can mean a couple of things:
1. We (the viewers) fail to understand the amount of work and time represented in what we watch, and
B. We (the viewers) form opinions when facts are still missing.
Let's expand.
1. I'd be interested to know what percentage of filmed material actually makes it into a 2.5 hour movie. How many times did the actors run that fourth scene? How many different times did the director call "cut" when that guy missed his entrance? When that girl forgot her line? How long did it take to re-film the final scene because one of the actors wore the wrong costume piece (Sean Astin, the Grey Havens scene at the end of the LOTR trilogy)? Because so many errors in the digital world may be removed or resolved with a simple cut, delete, or copy/paste, we have very little understanding of everything that goes into the project.
B. Due to the above, we also form opinions based upon a fraction of the information. Since the final product appears complete when we view it, we are generally unaware of other potentially important information which is lacking. We decide that we feel some way about the character or actor due to what we are shown, which is only a fragment of the story.
Regarding the video I mentioned in the opening: I can recall the surrounding circumstances - everything leading up to and following the bits shown in the clip. Therefore, I have my own, fully-informed opinion about it. It required me reading the comments to realize that other people who have watched this video - the general public - seem to pick up on very different points than I do, and therefore form different opinions regarding the people featured. I wanted to comment and tell them the details which got left out, thinking that surely they would change their opinion if they knew the full story... I didn't though, because A) I'm not trying to start a Youtube comments fight, and 2) it really doesn't matter enough. I know what happened and anyone else who was there knows what happened. The whole purpose of posting it was so that we could watch it. It's just by chance that others have seen it now.
So as much as those comments may irk me, it's not my job to set those people straight. Do I wish that a little more had been included in the video? That maybe we could make a montage of other photos and clips so that the full story is better represented? So that the other viewers don't assume an accidental bias? Perhaps. But then again, personally, I know this will serve to remind me to be conscious of what I watch in the future. Viewing a clip myself doesn't make it true, and it definitely doesn't make me an expert.
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