Thursday 26 February 2015

I saw the BRITs...without needing to bother watching

I didn't watch this year's BRIT Awards, yet I feel as though I saw it.
I tend to find all awards ceremonies are back-slappy bores that take themselves far too seriously, especially the BBC's annual Sports Personality of the Year smug-fest.

But as I parked myself down for a night following my beloved Nottingham Forest from afar (Twitter refresh takes a bit of a hammering on such occasions) news of a 2-1 win was interspersed with the latest from the O2.
It's a strange modern phenomena that, through Twitter, we often become accidentally familiar with the minute-by-minute details of a host of things we wouldn't chose to follow.

Without flicking over for a single moment I could tell you that Taylor Swift's UK charm offensive continued to pay dividends with a performance that went down well, Sam Smith teetered on the brink of becoming the male Emeli Sandé but won yet another award and Take That seemed to underwhelm.
In fact, judging by my timeline, the allure of the second coming of the Take That lads has worn off - seemingly due to a combination of dubious tax arrangements and middle of the road material.
I even tweeted a lame 'Tax That' pun at this point. Yep, that's right, tweeting along to something I'm not watching or bothered about. Odd.
Still, at least the vitriol wasn't as universal as it was against Kanye. By general consensus most people would've preferred the whole of his performance to be muted, not just the rude-worded bits.

And then The Fall.
Within seconds, probably before most of the live audience had had chance to take in quite what had happened, I'd seen Madonna's moment.
It was an event made for social media - perfectly fitting into a Vine and ripe for countless parodies, hashtags and one liners.

I'd be tempted to feel sorry for Madge - the backwards tumble must've hurt - but you feel the whole incident probably did more to promote her album than any performance could've done.

The tabloids lapped it up with hastily rearranged pages. Sorry Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran, you boys are bumped off by a bump, upstaged by a stage malfunction and overtaken by material on the Material Girl.
The Sun, sharp as ever, won by plumping for 'The Fallen Madonna (with the big boob)' as its headline - again seen on Twitter later that night.

So there you go - Swift, Smith, Take That, Kayne and Madonna. All gleaned without even looking for it - all while my attention was primarily on events at the City Ground.
I'm sure some academic has a term for this somewhere - unintended consumption or passive audience engagement probably.
It's not the first time either. The Eastenders killer, Bake Off results, X Factor...there's a plethora of things I don't watch and have little or no interest in that I'm exposed to on Twitter.

Still, Forest won. And the goals were on Twitter, even if not quite as quickly as Madonna's mishap. And maybe anyone silly enough to follow me feels the same when I 'inflict' Question Time on them each week?

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