It’s trendy to appear stupid
Posted on Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 at 10:22pm. #
John Naughton comments on Jeremy Paxman’s grumpy technophobic outbursts. Of course, Paxman’s pretty famous for doing this - and he’s not alone.
Tonight, John Pienaar notes that a recent song about him being a porn star in the 1970s (he wasn’t, it’s a joke) is now on YouTube - but then adds “I don’t really know how you dial things up on YouTube”. Staggering - if true. (Incidentally, either Pienaar has a head twice as large as his co-presenter’s, or someone needs to understand how to use PhotoShop a little better).
Christian O’Connell frequently talks about his web-team being net-nerds, is disparaging towards them, and pretends he doesn’t know what podcasts are; yet in ‘real life’, he owns a BlackBerry and is as in-touch and net-savvy as most people. Elsewhere, older speakers at media conferences joke about not being able to send texts or even set the video - leaving that for “the younger generation”.
Somehow, it’s seen as trendy to be ignorant about technology. Perhaps there’s a feeling that it somehow means you’re closer to your (similarly ignorant) listeners. It’s clearly dangerous to assume that your listeners or viewers are tech-savvy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the cleverest thing to pretend that technology is too complicated or, worse, that new stuff just doesn’t matter: you stand just as much chance of alienating your audience.
If Terry Wogan can get to grips with emails and text messages, then so can everyone: Paxman included. But I doubt Paxman doesn’t understand it; just that he sees it as useful to his on-screen persona to pretend.
(I did wonder why the BBC is filming its top talent using mobile phones - then realised that the only people allowed to touch cameras are in the cameraman union, I suppose…)
