A hundred million bottles washed up on the shore
I ran across this article today about "mobile clubbing:" hundreds of people subscribed to a notification list converge on a public spot and dance in silence, each listening to his or her own private music on his or her own private iPod (or similar).My first thought was, "Man, how depressing is that?" The thought of all those people going to the trouble to come together like that, only to remain plugged into an isolated, personal universe that nobody else can share. Not to mention all the other people in the station who didn't get the message, don't have iPods, and don't know what's going on – until someone explains it to them, giving them the opportunity to feel even more excluded from the frenzy of excitement that is life in the twenty-first century than they already do ....
Or maybe it's actually not depressing at all. Maybe these folks really are blazing new trails in the definition of community – showing how you can be part of something larger than yourself while still asserting and celebrating your own uniquely exuberant and unassailable identity, or something like that. Maybe an event like that could be a springboard for community, if you meet new people there who then become part of your life. Maybe you could create playlists to distribute to others on the list, or share a set of earphones (if you don't mind dancing really, really close to the person you're sharing them with).
Whatever – it sounds lonely and depressing to me. The whole point of listening to music on earphones is that nobody else can hear what you're hearing – it instantly isolates you from everyone around you. That's maybe not such a problem if you're running or working out or sitting on the train or otherwise just wanting to be left alone, or listening to audiobooks in the car while your partner sleeps, or working at a desk where the incessant screaming of the idiots on your "comedy" channel might disturb the people next to you. But if I'm going to go dancing, I want to be able to dance with other people, not just next to them.
I guess it's a good thing I wasn't invited.
2 Comments:
I agree that it seems depressing and isolating. Not interested.
However. Recently in Portland there have been these massive public pillow fights in one of the squares downtown.
I guess people find out about them through some top-secret myspace site and then all converge at a designated time to wallop strangers with feather pillows.
Is that better than mobile clubbing? I sort of think it is, even though it could be argued that it fosters aggression.
I, of course, never found out about these things until after the fact, so I have no firsthand assessment, but I'm sure that, being PDX, it was mostly just good fun and silliness.
I just realized that people are listening to their own music that no one else can hear, and that the dancing appears to be in silence, which is kind of cool and beautiful, kind of an update on John Cage. I wonder how he would have programmed his Ipod.
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