當年，“侯總”透過電視購物成為直播帶貨界的上古傳奇，每日痛心疾首一小時推銷 “八心八箭”，讓“998”先於“996”家喻戶曉。但不知道帶貨效果好不好。
影片主要以電視節目的形態存在時，隨著載體偏安你我家中一隅。人不在家，就看不著，所以有“黃金時段”一說。現在，手機讓影片如影隨形。從公共交通到公共廁所，無處不可見縫插針地看一條短影片。據說，功放的手機已加入韭菜餡兒包子和鹹豬手成為地鐵公害。
從突發到帶貨，崇尚極簡主義的短影片都有用武之地，徹底填補了碎片化時間的消費空白。抖音快手上的作品，十幾秒鐘的篇幅足以支撐敘事的起承轉合，從看完影片到寫下彈幕，地鐵還沒過一站地呢。前些日子《哈利·波特》重映時看到“巫師卡”的第一反應：“這不就是Gif嘛”——莫非微信表情包就是短影片的登峰造極？
隨著手機越來越潮，拍攝門檻越來越低，記錄和消費的群體界限也越來越模糊。使用者自產自銷的影片背後是龐大的流量，更不用說行為資料的潛在價值：我們用短影片記錄生活，生活則反過來把這些短影片變成了關於我們的“表情包”。那麼多美國公司會對TikTok垂涎三尺，應該不只是想了解我們如何擼貓或者去哪裡完成說走就走的旅行，它們還想知道為什麼使用者會在某刻某地做某事。
作為溝通方式的短影片已經跨出了娛樂範疇。直播和不斷拓展的移動網際網路頻寬，讓影片帶貨，影片問診，影片教學越發稀鬆平常。或長或短，或直播或錄播，越來越多的生活元素都有了影片化的可能。如果真的普及了谷歌眼鏡之類的可穿戴拍攝產品，我們可能會進入一種沒日沒夜“不下線”的影片化生活狀態——想想你為家中的“貓主子”裝的攝像頭。
影片化全天候線上的時代如果真的來了，還在碼字兒的我是不是再也沒有機會加雞腿了…
Sidelines | Life-streaming
In restaurants, on the subway, at home, it's hard to escape the sound of short clips playing on smartphones. There is little doubt that this video genre has become ubiquitous and unavoidable.
Those working in broadcasting might have once questioned the raison d'etre of the new darling of the social media world. After all, the clips don't follow the linear logic of news reports and scenes are sliced and diced to create a narrative that doesn't surrender to chronological order. And then there's the fear that the rapid expansion of social media's arsenal could come at the expense of TV viewership.
It's undeniable that people everywhere are increasingly drawn to this format. And as the fandom for short videos grows, so do their detractors. Viewers have no qualms about watching these videos out loud, without any earphones on – and that's causing nuisance and trouble. Authorities in Shanghai imposed last week a ban on subway sodcasting, the practice of playing music through phone speakers in public.
From sponsoring Japanese TV drama to partnering with British show Strictly Come Dancing, the global success of TikTok, which pioneered short-form videos, attests to the power of this format. While it takes a feature film 80 minutes to reach its climax, a TikTok clip can tell a complete story in 15 seconds.
Short videos have crossed the boundary of entertainment into the wider territory of everyday life. Thanks to the ever-present and ever-evolving smartphones, these seconds-long clips are now a staple of our digital conversations. They are also an upgraded version of the traditional photo albums, where our memories, more vivid now than ever before, are stored in the cloud, shaping our present and creating our past, and along the way informing our identities.
The crusade that U.S. President Donald Trump has waged against TikTok is further evidence of the social network's significance. Its vast reach and influence is one thing, what it can harness is another. Users see the clips on their phones as "snapshots of life," but IT conglomerates such as Microsoft and Oracle that are drooling over the acquisition of TikTok call them "behavioral data." Now that the roles of consumers and providers of the same product are blurred, the data being produced and consumed is multiplying, forming a virtual goldmine.
The popularity of short videos is just one of the success stories of technology mediating the action of seeing. Another telling tale is Zoom. The rise of the American online teleconferencing firm has proven that virtual communication is an acceptable, sometimes even preferable, alternative to meeting face-to-face – the default option for human interactions since times immemorial. This consensus has started to take root before the coronavirus pandemic, which probably explains why the firm has been faring well in the stock market since 2019.
It's not difficult to imagine that the human mind will grow more accustomed to various forms of reality as the technological tools at hand become an extension of the body. True as this argument may sound, there is another side to it. We are also being reprogrammed by the instruments we've invented, socially, if not biologically as well. "Flashbacks," for example, is one term that the invention of cinema has brought into our vocabulary.
Via omnipresent videos – short, long, live, recorded – produced and stored in our smart devices about our lives, parts of our daily existence could be turned into raw materials before being repackaged as goods and placed on different platforms for visual consumption, for which our attention and time are the new currencies. The internet's fast expanding bandwidth renders the logistics of this kind of products seamless. Production and consumption could be done in the blink of an eye.
If wearable products with built-in cameras such as Google Glass become as popular as smartphones, we may never lead an offline life again. Reality and virtual reality as we know them today could be merged into one, turned into a succession of scenes available for streaming to anyone who wants to watch.
The benefits of new technologies are easier to notice than problems. The latter often takes longer time to manifest, and the best time to start considering the side effects is probably when something new is causing a hype.
What is a telltale sign that something is creating a buzz? For one, your phone will keep beeping.