An inevitable sign of the times or a disturbing drift? In the last few hours, the video, shot on New Year’s Eve on the Champs Elysées in Paris, where nearly a million people toasted 2024 with breathtaking lights and the inevitable fireworks, created great controversy on social media.
It’s a collective rite of passage that the crowd experiences mostly in virtual mode: in fact, it’s hard not to notice the impressive number of smartphones rising upwards to film the moment, and many on social media took issue with the spectacle. It has been described by some as a “depressing portrait of our society”. “It looks like an episode of Black Mirror,” one kid writes on Instagram. “Pathetic,” one user says, “You could only see the show from the screen of the person in front […] “We couldn’t see anything for half an hour.”
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There is no shortage of less pessimistic perspectives and positions that normalize the so-called social age by explaining the desire to make and share films as a normal desire to “follow” lived moments. But judging by the virality of the video and the thousands of angry comments, even in 2024, the still vast field of smartphones dominating the images where we expect hugs and “live” celebrations still leaves no one completely indifferent.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
