Watch this

in general draws a crowd – just visit a site, especially in a smaller town – at some point during the day, there will be a few folks who just pop by to watch.

I love to watch people cook (live, right there in front of me), I love to watch people at fabric stores count out yardage or metres of cloth, the bolts thumping against the counter and the fabric slipping through the person’s fingers as they measure off on the metre stick measuring tool that is worn and taped to the counter.

What is it that we enjoy, what do we glean from this activity (watching folks do stuff)?

It seems that reality tv and other shows about people doing stuff just tapped into what we’ve always been doing as a species – watching.

What could some of the watcher categories be?

1) Those who watch because they want to learn how to do the thing the person is doing.

2) Those who watch because they don’t have the means to create, but find something fascinating, intriguing or inspiring.

3) Those who watch because they don’t have anything else to do.

4) Those who watch because they are pretty much mad at everything, so they’d might as well find something someone is doing wrong and be mad at that.

5) Those who watch because they are procrastinating doing the thing that the person is doing.

6) Those who watch because they are procrastinating in general.

7) Those who watch because they are fans and watch everything that person does.

8) Those who watch because they want to learn how to be like the person who is doing the thing.

9) Those who watch because it seems like the thing to do (trend), and they want to fit in.

10) Those who watch because they just stumbled on a thing.

11) Those who watch because onceupon-a-time they did that thing, and they love watching others doing that thing.

12) Those who watch because they can’t sleep (it had to be said – I can’t decide if the Internet has been helpful or not regarding insomnia. It sure has been more entertaining than a test pattern.

13) Those who watch because they’re perhaps somewhat (or a lot) immobile, and it is interesting to watch someone else get up and about.

14) Those who watch because they’re under the weather.

Let’s call it a day on that note. There are so many reasons, and every watcher, in most given watching moments, have a reason that they are watching at that time. You could call it the circumstances of watching.

The topic of internet and television shows (or just plain content) being strange (for example, folks who make money being videotaped taking things out of boxes –usually an advertising technique for products that companies would like to sell), it’s really not new. Folks used to set up in marketplaces to demonstrate things (and still do), and would even come right to the door. I think we’re all over that one, the salespeople included. How many four-hour vacuum demos do people really need to witness just to get the free knives that are promised...that they don’t even receive?

I’d rather see the vacuum demo’d on the ‘Net. There’s something you couldn’t have said twenty years ago without assuming it was related to fishing or basketball.

Somewhere in our minds, some of what we see is stored, and some time when someone else brings up the topic of that random video that you happened to take in, you will have some tidbit of knowledge spark up from your grey matter and will march straight out of your face, a little know-how that is shared.

While there is definitely a limit with regards to how much we should be taking in, and how much we should be balancing that with ‘doing’ and ‘being’, watching is not all bad. I haven’t had to shave my face yet, but I watched Bamps and Dad do so so many times, somewhere within, I would know how to go about it...and probably, there are other things I’ve seen that could actually be useful to me.

Watch on, internet foodies and co., watch on!