They should have called it the wild wild web. I love watching “behind the scenes” in fact, my favourite movies, if any, are the kind that allow me to see how particular scenes came about.Because the real story is always behind the scenes.
In 1984, an unfortunate thing happened to an amazing musician. You’ve probably heard the story.
Michael Jackson, on set for a Pepsi advertisement, was involved in a freak accident on set that fatally burnt his scalp as he narrowly survived death, the story goes.
Thanks to the internet, we can now go to YouTube and recollect interesting, yet pitiful stories like these.
But here is the gist, I bet this MJ incident made it to the final commercial – finally delivered to the Pepsi audience.
Definitely not.
Because 1980’s advertising, just like digital life today, didn’t and doesn’t work like that, the real story is always behind the scenes.
The uploaded video always features no retakes, Instagram comes with filters, articles like these tell you nothing about their first, second, or sixth edits.
Yet life, oh life, by design is full of retakes, the missing lipstick, wallets, torn dress tops, lab results, and hubby home late (once again) – most contrary to the edited life we upload.
During University, I had a chance to work in an advertising industry, an industry renown for – lights, camera, action. These days, you don’t have to work in the advertising industry to experience the attraction of colour, camera angles and action.
You just have to log in.
There, you will find or even create, a filtered life, filtered sentences, filtered captions, filtered pics. No burning hair, no awkward dates, no typos, hey! Only aerial views- literally.
Anyway, back to behind the scenes, that’s why the burning hair MJ thing interested me in the first place.
Unlike Michael Jackson’s burning hair video, however, (I doubt he too approved it online) Not many of us share the awkwardness of daily life.
We have two lives, online, when filters are working and after we’ve logged out, when our hair is on fire, when hubby walks in late, when we can’t find the charger.
Believers in a sights and sights world must realize the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 were commended for their faith, even when they never saw what they hoped for.
These heroes of faith were commended for believing without seeing, we are almost commended for endeavouring to be seen, online.
And because seeing is believing in a digital world, a lot of life’s ‘missing socks’ episodes rarely make it to the newsfeed.
And if they do, Instagram does what life cannot, offer filters.
