I understand that you may be particularly pleased to be experiencing melody, dance, and voice to your liking. \u00a0I understand that you may wish to preserve this moment so as to experience it later… but that is why we have cognition and memory. \u00a0Please use your own evolved human brain and remember the performance by simply paying attention to it and\u00a0enjoying it<\/em>. \u00a0You’d think this would be obvious, but that is not the tactic employed by so many people.<\/p>\n Nowadays, no matter the venue or the genre, it’s not uncommon to see one or more\u00a0jackasses holding up smartphones and attempting to record the event, ostensibly for later viewing…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Of course, there are a number of problems associated with this idiotic behavior. \u00a0Let’s make a short list of them here…<\/p>\n 1. Doing this bothers everyone else<\/p>\n 2. Doing this means you are not actually paying full attention to the performance you\u00a0are spending the time (and probably money) to attend<\/p>\n 3. Doing this yields invariably shitty results<\/p>\n 4. Doing this is often unnecessary<\/p>\n Please take these criticisms to heart and understand that everyone else in the theater (at least, everyone behind you) hates you when you are holding up your smartphone or other device.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. Doing this bothers everyone else\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m going to borrow a line from Maddox when it comes to the use of phones or pretty much any other kind of technology in a darkened theater…<\/p>\n No matter how much you think that you have turned down the brightness on your screen or how well you are attempting to hold the phone close to your body (which almost no one actually even makes the effort to do) it is painfully bright to everyone else behind you.<\/p>\n You think that your phone looks like this…<\/p>\n When in fact it looks like this…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Doing this means you are not actually paying full attention to the performance<\/strong><\/p>\n Many of the photos in this\u00a0blog post were taken by me (yes, I\u00a0realize the irony… but understand that I was actually in the back of the theater<\/em>) during a performance by the famed Irish musician\u00a0Danny O’Mahony who had traveled\u00a0all the way to Montana. \u00a0This was a rare and wonderful opportunity to hear a talented and worldly performer and storyteller.<\/p>\n Yet, during the evening, there was no shortage of jackwagons with their smartphones and cameras, attempting to record. \u00a0One woman was so painfully inept that she spent the better part of the evening scrolling through menus and configuration settings on her phone while almost never successfully recording anything that she wanted to…<\/p>\n … and another man in front of her was attempting to only record the song segments of the evening, but this meant that he had to hustle and shuffle around at the start of each piece, attempting to unlock his phone and start the video footage. \u00a0He was cutting off between 5 and 10 seconds at the start of every song.<\/p>\n And then, as if to put a cherry on top of this shit sundae, down in a front row we got to see… iPad man.<\/p>\n If you thought smartphone people were the worst in public, you were wrong. \u00a0That honor goes to the more elusive but also more idiotic creature known as iPad man. \u00a0Using your iPad as a camera (or a videocamera, no less) in public is just about the most inconsiderate thing you can do to others. \u00a0The massive screen is not only brighter, its sheer size makes for blocked views behind you, too, due to simple geometry.<\/p>\n iPads are our generation’s Fanny Pack… no one looks cool with one out in public, and the fact that they hold more than what you can put in your pocket means that the most gauche among us think they’re the greatest thing ever: capable of storing loads and loads of crap that no one needs or wants, and allowing you to collect more along the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Doing this yields invariably shitty results<\/strong><\/p>\n Travon Free<\/a> said it best during an old installment of The Gentlemen’s Rant<\/a>…<\/p>\n![\"Recording](\"http:\/\/words.deviating.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/011.jpg\")
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