Wednesday, June 13, 2007

SMS addiction at the Download Festival

SMS text messaging is so addictive that a community will use it even when it is directly face to face with the people it is sharing messages with. We see this in examples of flirting, private conversations in groups etc.
Another great example cropped up last weekend. At the Download Festival at Donington Park in the UK My Chemical Romance got bottled off the stage.
Throughout their performance in front of a very live audience, members of the crowd could send, and have displayed on a large screen, their messages to each other, to the band etc.
So even though the audience could communicate so directly and overtly with the band through voice (and even through physical acts) the urge, the compulsion to text, continued.
The best example I heard of was one text to a particular member of the band which read: "That bottle that just hit you right on the head - that was from me!"
Talk about keeping all your channels of communication open...
It's essentially a text-as-broadcast model of the kind you see on TV. The difference here is that the audience being broadcast at is also physically connected by context (ie in the same space).

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