digital campfire
I was at a party a few months ago. There was a charismatic, well-dressed guy telling everyone about his trip to an amazing festival on some private island. He seemed cool, popular, and wealthy.
10 minutes later, he was still talking about it. Everyone’s eyes were starting to glaze over. A few people even walked away, and this guy just kept talking.
In the moment, I was mystified by how quickly my perception of him changed. One minute, I was in rapt attention with both FOMO and wanderlust. The next minute, I saw him as trying to be cool, popular, and wealthy. He seemed insecure, almost desperate.
All because his story went a bit long.
The medium is indeed the message, and when it comes to human beings, the medium is story. Stories captivate us, yet they also reveal a lot about who we are. Paying attention to the ‘why’ of story can give you superpower insight.
All of a sudden, it’s hard to ignore the ideology implicit in TV shows and movies. Most ads become unbearable in their blatant emotional manipulation. You start to see art and music not as frivolous, but as vital ingredients to healthy culture.
And then there’s journalism: stories that supposedly depict the real world but often feel like fiction. Meanwhile, actual fiction offers surprising glimmers of truth. Don’t Look Up and Ministry of the Future made climate change more real for me than any stat. Reading about people crowding into a lake to escape a horrific heatwave led me to revise our team’s contracts to require carbon offsets for air travel.
Just as our ancestors sat around the campfire and listened to stories of gods, demons, heroes and villains, we sit around our screens: an interconnected digital campfire whose warm glow creates global cultural context.
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A cousin of mine grew up nowhere close to me. I was in Canada, he in India. Yet, we exchange references to The Simpsons without missing a beat. In fact, I can quote Homer to almost anyone I know and get back a knowing smile. For us, the act of ‘quoting Homer’ is a lot different than it was for previous generations. The show basically defined our postmodern sense of humour.
Stories change minds. At scale, stories change culture. Yet not all stories are created equal. Sometimes I find myself deep in rapture with the latest epic, only to find it doesn’t change me at all. Shows that everyone talks about can vanish as quickly as a whitewalker stabbed by dragonglass.
Equally surprising are the trivial reality shows that transform me. Never in my life did I think I’d watch so much Great British Bake Off. As a result, my wife and I got into baking, and now our son loves baking too. That show had no dragons, war or romance, yet it gifted us with hours of flour-covered family fun in the kitchen.
Some stories inspire us. Others divide and distract us. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. A hateful opinion can go viral and build a community around shared outrage. A message of love and unity can trigger anger in people who aren’t ready for it. The stories that keep us warm at night certainly shape who we become in the day, but it’s hard to predict exactly how.
Like any fire, our global digital campfire can help or hinder. How we interact with it determines whether it burns us or cooks our food. This is why it’s so important to examine the stories we share and consume. It’s becoming more and more essential to bring intention to culture, and the best way to do that might be through story.