The Rise of First-Person Media

Or, Can You Please Stop Watching This Movie While I'm Talking?

A few weeks back my wife and I took a trip through the American southwest. Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks; Page, AZ; and fabulous Las Vegas (not so fabulous; Nicole threw up after eleven hours in town. Her body rejecting the experience, she says). While in Arizona we saw the Red Heritage Navajo show. It featured dance, chants, history, and education. We had a great time. But not everyone did. As descendants of a proud people showcased their culture, I caught two bored American kids scrolling their TikTok feeds. Different families. One showed their mother their phone before swiping to the next vid, so it’s not like the parents didn’t know. I guess this kind of self-absorbed disrespect is cool now?

Actual image of me writing this essay.

I know what this looks like, but I don’t care. What I saw in Arizona is emblematic of a larger cultural breakdown. We have made culture relate to us, instead of other way around. I’m not the first to spot it, but I am the first to write about it on this particular Substack. So. Yeah. Trailblazer.

During that trip we also caught the Cirque du Soleil show O at the Bellagio. For the first half, a young couple behind us discussed what they were seeing at a normal conversational volume. Twice I asked (told) them to shut up. I mean, these tickets cost nearly $500, and the show was good. Twice they stared at me, this dull, uncomprehending shock on their faces. Like how could anyone tell them—THEM!!!—to consider others. Eventually the music drowned out their chatter and the acrobats silenced them fully. I survived. But this behavior’s popped up before.

My wife and I saw Joker: Folie a Deux (don’t ask me why). There were seven people in an IMAX-sized room. Two kids—seventeen, eighteen, tops—again talked through the opening scene. Outdoor voices. I glared at them. The girl tapped her date’s arm, pointed at me. That same quizzical, “What’s his problem?” reaction. My wife suggested we move, and we did. Problem solved, yeah?

No. Not a fucking chance.

I was listening to Matt Belloni’s excellent podcast, The Town, the other day. It’s a Hollywood-insider series featuring interviews with studio chiefs, industry analysts, writers, journalists. Jon Landgraf was featured. If you don’t know, Landgraf has run the FX channel/streaming hub for two decades. Has brought to market some of the finest shows to come out of Peak TV (a phrase he coined): Atlanta, Louie, Fargo, Shogun, The Bear, The Americans, and my all-time fave, The Shield. Landgraf was lamenting the influence of Silicon Valley into traditional media. How Netflix’s “Gourmet Cheeseburger” approach ultimately stifles creativity. Because making good art takes time. And tech’s intrusion into our lives can’t afford to wait; it is a now, now, now proposition. Here’s this, now on to the next. Repeat.

During the interview Landgraf termed movies and TV and books “third-person media”. These are platforms that open us up to worlds with which we are not familiar. Such exposure demands empathy. This is why novels are important; I love reading history but Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels makes me feel what it might have been like to defend Little Round Top against wave after wave of onrushing Confederates. It’s the same with movies and shows. Over the course of hours—or years—we end up relating to Jersey mob bosses, corrupt LAPD cops, a dingy Chicago sandwich shop, what it’s like to be Black in modern America or Russian spies in Reagan’s. Through narrative story and compelling characters we can—in theory—become a little less jaded, a little more open.

In a word, human.

On the flip side is what Landgraf calls “first-person media”. This is your phone and the algorithm. Here, consumers of culture are fed what they want, exclusively. There are no surprises, because, to make money, platforms need your eyes as long as possible. YouTube watchers get more of the same (this matters because YouTube is the most-watched platform in visual media, and it’s not even close). The thrill of discovering something outside one’s entertainment lane has been eliminated. I remember channel surfing shortly after getting cable TV in 1993 (for years companies refused to wire the Bronx, claiming we animals would destroy the gear). Late one night I stumbled across three silhouettes making fun of a bad 1950s movie. My love of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was born. I’d never heard of the show, hadn’t seen a minute. I discovered it organically. And I’m still grateful.

That still exists, of course. The act just takes different forms. Earlier this year I couldn’t avoid seeing Netflix’s Baby Reindeer on my socials. Its cultural omnipresence compelled me to dive in, and I’m glad I did. There have always been “water cooler shows”, a phrase no one under thirty understands. These are the monocultural events that we, collectively, all experienced at more or less the same time. They generated conversation and debate, countless “Did you see that???” moments. Game of Thrones being the last example (RIP). Again, this still exists online. But with the internet comes the ability for everyone to voice their hot takes. I’m guilty of this myself, having written about Baby Reindeer back in April.

But these kids, talking as if they were the only ones in the room…those moments make me worry for the future. Because processing what they were seeing—insane high dives or poorly-sung faux-musical numbers—came second to voicing how they felt about what they were seeing. And their opinions needed to be heard, right then, the hell with whoever else’s in the room. Not even in a thoughtful, critical way. Witness the rise of reaction videos. First-person media has taught them that they—possessors of eyes, processors of ads, owners of credit cards—are the most important element in our late-stage capitalist entertainment dystopia. And they, above all, must be serviced. You can see how this might make someone unaware that not everyone needs to know what they think of Gaga’s Lee Quinzel performance (personally, I thought she was the best thing in an otherwise bleak slog of a movie).

Take publishing, an industry with which I’m currently (still?) flirting. For years taste-making editors sifted through slop to find novels that spoke to the human experience or current moment. They elevated writers who helped shape the national conversation. Both Steve Jobs and Henry Ford are credited with saying something along the lines of, “Don’t give the customer what they want. Give them what they don’t even know they need.” The quotes are jumbled and the internet’s confusing. But you get the picture. Publishing—and Hollywood—should expose us to new ideas, or at least new ways of relating to what it means to be human. Instead editors are forced by economics to follow #BookTok tropes, as readers chase that same, repetitive experience and authors pound out novel and novel meant to service them.

What happened to creatives processing how they view the world, and presenting their interpretation of it? The tail is wagging the dog.

Maybe this is reflective of how youth see the state of our world. They’re almost certainly not to blame, having lived with screens aimed their way since toddlerhood. But it does sadden me. Dancers, writers, directors, acrobats, actors, musicians create because they are compelled. Nobody’s drafted into the industry. Still, I can’t help but think we owe them—and one another—a bit of respect while experiencing their work.