. It records whatever happens on the screen of your phone into a video, with the audio. Well, those videos are popping up more and more as recorded content, and similar screen shares are broadcast live.I am convinced that phone screen recordings and livestreams straight-from-phone will eventually be a popular medium for storytelling, entertainment and connection. Watching video captures of the screens of especially phone-savvy creative people while they chat and create content from their phones will not only be normal but also fun. It's already established that watching other people's physical phone screens in real life (think, over their shoulder on the subway or in an elevator) is almost impossible to resist. A sharp piece in the Times by the brilliant John Herrman last year described "a world in which other people’s screens are virtually impossible to ignore."Why is looking at someone's screen so irresistible? Because it's like peering into their very soul. "Other people’s screens are windows into their lives, and brains, and relationships and work — into their politics, anxieties, failures and addictions," Herrman writes.
The reason content from phone screen recordings could one day be a commonplace and innovative video storytelling format is the combination of that intimacy with the usefulness of the mobile screen shot in video form. Mobile screen shots are like the new photo. In a prescient piece from Wired four years ago, Clive Thompson claimed phone screenshots would be the most important thing on the internet: "Today some of our most intense experiences are online, so screenshots serve the same function. It's photography for life on the screen—'how you share point-of-view,' says Joanne McNeil, a resident at the art-and-technology center Eyebeam."And whose point-of-view is more compelling and watchable than the most creative among us? Since our most interesting creativity occurs on the screen now, too, it's only matter of time until we eavesdrop on our creators creating art on their phones. Think watching a comedian workshop a joke in a group chat with her comedian friends. Or watching a meme maker craft a new piece of content. Or watching a a popular Story creator scribble on their screen in real time. Or watching an influencer edit and share a photo from their phone.
Content creator/meme maker Renee Worley a.k.a. vaporcult has recently been posting fascinating screen recording videos of her process, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek way. She's posted two videos in this style recently. Both are intended to show how easy it is to make a viral meme for Instagram but they also serve as tutorials for the craft itself. Worley is a mobile phone artist. Her phone is palette, paint brush and canvas, plus DJ booth and editing suite. It's only natural that her phone will now also be live stage. Of course, we already watch other people's computer screens as they use their computers - it's called Twitch. Some streams are done from phones, a style that hasn't taken off yet. But we worship the people who make content from their phones - whether that content is Stories, photos, memes, Tweets or chats - and we worship that content itself. That content is already our lens through which we view the world. The process of making it is creative. And in some cases it's even an art. Watching the art of making content on a phone is one of the next logical steps for content.
It will be recorded content and it will be live content; both will have social elements attached allowing us to watch together.
According to Brooks Barnes, when Disney announced fans could ride the Millennium Falcon at the new Star Wars theme park, "two men sitting near me started to weep with joy." Come on! (NYT)
Chances the team behind the new Shaft movie is intentionally not getting how memes work to drive virality? High. (Twitter)
Is it just me or does Teen Vogue look a lot like Fader now? (Twitter)
The Vengaboys played a show to celebrate the Austrian far-right party’s removal from government. (Reuters Video)
From @sizpatel: "I asked a digital video company to describe their business and how they’re trying to make money, and this is how they broke it down (in short: it’s, uh, complicated)." (Twitter)
A YouTuber famous for being on a reality show on YouTube called Ultra Rich Asians is wrapped up in a murder saga in Vancouver. (NYT)
My most-anticipated media product
Spotify is testing a feature that lets friends control music together and listen to the same songs together at the same time. I cannot wait until this is publicly available. According to the Twitter sleuth who discovered the feature, Jane Manchun Wong, the feature is only available to Spotify employees at the moment. But if and when it's released to the public it will fill a gigantic gap in my life. For years, the group chat is where I've been sharing countless music discoveries - songs, albums, artists, mixes, playlists. My group chats are made up of friends with good music taste and insatiable appetites for new music to listen to. But the impulse to share a new sound you're loving with a friend - an impulse for connection, to experience something with someone that you know they'll love - quickly gives way to distraction and disappointment. There's no way to know if they really clicked the link and heard the music. Often they do, but hours or days later. By then, my enthusiasm for that song or mix or album has dissipated and I'm obsessed with something else. Then I share that. The cycle continues, bogging us all down in too much music.
Not to mention the lack of true communal, shared listening in the group chat. Even if a friend clicks and presses play immediately on whatever it is I sent, and I'm listening at the exact same time, it doesn't feel simultaneous or shared. This piece on the new Spotify feature cleverly compares it to the late, beloved turntable.fm. That was a very fun web site while it lasted, and I vividly remember DJ'ing for my friends and co-workers scattered about the office in front of their computers with their headphones on. Hopefully this new Spotify Social Listening feature brings back the feeling of playing something for a friend, since our friendships now are increasingly virtual and geographically dispersed. That used to be one of my favorite things in the world to do. For my Spotify employee readers, can I get a sneak peek at the feature?
Further reading: — The Tamagotchi Effect
How digital pets shaped the tech habits of a generation
An Interview with Tim Heidecker
The funniest person on the planet
The Sweetgreen-ification of Society
Segmentation, Signaling and Stratification
Rhyme and punishment
Inside the NYPD’s secret, sprawling ‘Rap Unit’
Roky Erickson, Legendary Psychedelic Musician, Dies at 71
Lead vocalist and principal songwriter for the psychedelic band the 13th Floor Elevators and one of the leading lights of Texas rock
The Last Of The Great American Hobos
Hop a train to Iowa, where proud vagabonds gather every summer to crown the new king and queen of the rails