Cavemen who took to carving or painting their cave walls with images of alien attacks were early forms of news broadcaster. Denied the possibility to pop out to the nearest B&Q, their efforts would have taken a fair old time, at the end of which the aliens had built their landing-strips, constructed the odd pyramid and then cleared off again.
Hierarchies being what they were and still are, it is quite possible that the carving and painting reporters acquired a degree of social status. They were the first social networkers in an epoch when news travelled slowly and when the bearer of the news could legitimately claim to have broken the news and so could rightly be honoured as its originator.
News continued to travel slowly until relatively recently. Though news agencies obscured the precise source of news, their pooling of information was a system of facilitation with only so much claim being made on origination. It was to news broadcasters and other media to make the greater claims through scoops, exclusives and so on.
The day of the scoop has not passed, but the day of news has. There is now no news because there is now no ownership. It exists in a constantly swirling vortex that grows ever larger, a vast, parameter-less black hole of increasing irrelevance that is moulded, reframed and regurgitated. News is disappearing because nothing much any longer is news; it is already known.
The best recent news that wasn't in fact news came from "WeeklyWorldNews". On 11 January, it reported that Facebook would shut down on 15 March. WWN has also reported that, following the landing in China and the Indonesia Sea of three alien craft from the Planet Gootan, there will be a full-scale alien attack this November.
Unfortunately, WWN is a spoof. There is rather more chance of an alien attack than Facebook being shut down, though if it were to be, how on earth would anyone be able to tell anyone else about the alien attack? They would have to go back to carving and painting.
The first person to do the carving would immediately receive the accolade of social networker of the millennium. He or she would stand out as a genuine passer-on of information, because at present, thanks to Facebook, all other social media, smartphones and indeed the entire internet, such an accolade cannot legitimately be claimed. Every one, every mad, last social media obsessive is at it.
News has ended, as it has been superseded by a global competition and seeking of affirmation through spreading what is already known or what is of little or absolutely no consequence. The competition is fuelled by the very nature of social networks. Sociability comes with a psychological need for affirmation, for peer-group reinforcement, recognition and identity, even if many of the peer group are unknown. The ease of the transmission of non-news or of the already known news is what keeps the finger constantly hovering over the post button on Facebook or the Twitter account.
How on earth has it come to this? To give just one example. It snowed for a brief time around Alcúdia and Pollensa yesterday. It has been snowing on Mallorca for a week or so. Snow is not actually that unusual, even at sea level. The snow didn't even settle. But this brief flurry caused Facebook to go into virtual meltdown.
The end of news, i.e. the fact that it is already known or is of minimal or no significance, has not though deterred the impulse to attempt to be cast as a driver of non-news. Quite the contrary. It is what makes that black hole so very voracious.
Media psychology has, in response to the explosion of social media, acquired a whole niche for itself in the study of human behaviour. Narcissism, group identity, establishment of positions in hierarchies, the need for affirmation; it is old psychology for a new age. And grabbing hold of news, whatever it might be, from wherever it might come, in however many forms it might already exist is an alliance between this established psychology and the maxim of information being power, the latter which is translated not so much into power as such but into an hierarchical status that the identity of the group feels compelled to affirm.
News may have ended, but there is no shortage of cavemen. If they got hold of an imminent alien attack in Alcúdia, now this would be something worth communicating.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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