Survivor: Ferguson

Ferguson

Face palm moment.

That’s because I just realized something that I already figured out last week but didn’t realize it well enough:

We’re living in the middle of damned TV show, an unscripted ratings-driven reality show.

Last night was the ninth night of either rioting, contained near-rioting or a block party.  As James Kirkpatrick noted, the 1965 Watts riots didn’t last this long, and those were real riots that were unusual for how long they lasted.  Most riots burn out after 72 hours.

And it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon.

What’s the extra added fuel source to this fire?

Someone jokingly tweeted last night that there were more old and new media people at Ground Zero than there were actual protesters and proto-rioters.

That’s it.  These are the first riots in the Web 2.0 social media era.  The last real riots were in Cincinnati in 2001, well before.

First off, there’s this tube and that tube, this stream and that stream, Instagram and Vine, Twitter and Facebook, World Star Hip Hop, and I could go on and on.   Second, I bet half the people congregated and Ground Zero have a smartphone, which means at a moment’s notice it’s a video camera with worldwide connectivity.

What’s fueling this hot ghetto mess lasting longer that it should have is the thousands of cameras around.  People want to be on TV, nothing more.

Which means this mess isn’t going to end until either very cool weather sets in, or the cops establish a civilian-free DMZ in the general area around Ground Zero and enforces it even to the point of shooting to kill.  It can’t be done just by keeping the “regular” media out anymore, because anyone with a smartphone has become a reporter.  It’s going to take keeping everyone out.