Did You Get My Reaction?
Updated: Oct 6
Hyperreality at Waimea Bay
There’s a surf event called “The Eddie” on the North Shore of Oahu that happens only if nature cooperates. The waves need to be at least 40 feet high and consistent. It’s the premier big surfing event in the world and has only been held 11 times.
A few years ago, I found myself in the lucky position to witness the event. I got there early and staked out my spot, and as the competition began, I noticed something I hadn’t expected. Most of the people around me were live streaming the event through their phones (and some with drones, although they are illegal). Not only that, many were barely paying attention to the surfing, too busy interviewing each other for various feeds.
Here I was, sitting on the peninsula overlooking Waimea Bay watching nature at its most sublime. The best surfers in the world were putting their lives on the line. And yet it seemed like people around me were experiencing a different event entirely. The attention wasn’t on the surfing event at all, but rather in how it could be presented to the world.
I was once a photographer and this reminded me of how I would experience events, even family events. Thinking about angles, light, reactions, etc—there was always this emotional buffer between me and the actual event.
So sitting there at Waimea Bay, it got me thinking. Something is definitely going on. Everyone is a photographer. But even beyond that, it seems like everyone is increasingly interacting with representations of reality instead of reality itself.
Renée DiResta recently made a comparison between social media and murmurations that makes a lot of sense...
A murmuration is a flock of starlings that looks like a single organism. Everyone has seen them. And what’s interesting is how they work – every bird is responding to the birds around it. No one is in charge, it’s just countless tiny interactions. Anyone who has ridden in a peloton (large group of cyclists) knows exactly the dynamic.
Diresta:
"The behavior is determined by the structure of the network, which shapes the behavior of the network, which shapes the structure, and so on."
And this is how social media works. But unlike the birds who are shaped by instinct, these networks are shaped by algorithms, which have a singular goal: your attention.
The result:
"We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us." (John Culkin)
It’s a feedback loop. The social media platforms shape what we see. What we see shapes what we think about. What we think about shapes how we act. So eventually the line between reality and “representation of reality” blurs.
“Hyperreality”
"It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality."
(Jean Baudrillard)
The image or footage becomes more important than the thing itself.
I remember hearing one influencer ask frantically
“Did you get it? Do you get my reaction?”
When his cameraman said “No,” he was so disappointed.
”Oh well, it’s like it never happened.”
Strava and the KOM
An anecdote: When Strava first came out (the app that measures and ranks running and bike times) I would use it to time myself over this one particular route where the best time (KOM) seemed unassailable. Over months I worked my way up until I was closer and closer to the top ranking.
Then, one day, I had the perfect ride and I reached the end of the segment exhausted. I went to hit “Finish” on Strava and I saw that I hadn’t actually started the clock. That effort, which may well have put me at the top of the list for the world to see, would now be lost in the ether. It was as if it never happened. And who knows if I would ever have another perfect ride like that (I didn’t). To echo the influencer at the Eddie – “It’s like it never happened.”
The feed (or the Strava result) had become more important than the event.
That’s what struck me while watching The Eddie. A lot of the people weren't really watching the waves.
They were watching themselves watching the waves.
