I crashed a wedding last weekend. Well, sort of.
It certainly wasn’t intentional. In fact, if you really want to get technical, I was invited. And so were 650 other people.
Again, sort of.
That is, if by invitation, you count that little red circle on my Facebook feed, notifying me that something in some way related to me was happening.
On Sunday, I got a notification that one of my Facebook friends was “live now.”
I’d seen celebrities go live with discussions on various topics, or live streaming feeds by animal rescue groups, where you can watch a kitten have its first checkup at the vet, for example.
But up to that point, it was never just a friend live broadcasting something.
So, I was curious.
It’s an odd feeling to click a button and suddenly find yourself — mid ceremony — in the virtual audience at the wedding of someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in more than a decade.
In this case, it was a former co-worker who left the Times years ago to pursue a career in Toronto, who was getting married, as somebody in the church held up a phone and live-streamed the event.
Viewers can’t be heard, but they can type a comment to let the person know they’re there, watching, or offer congratulations, as many did, both during and after the fact.
For the couple, this was no doubt a wonderful way to allow family and friends who live far away and couldn’t make it in person, to, in a sense, be at the wedding.
Whether it was the fact that it was so unexpected or that I “arrived” in the middle of the vows, for me, it all felt strangely voyeuristic, so I only watched for a minute or two before clicking away.
Since it became available to anyone with a smartphone, Facebook Live has transformed the devices into a picture window into otherwise private worlds, with thousands of broadcasts every day, ranging from mundane to historic.
Take for example, the woman in Minneapolis, who documented her boyfriend’s death after he’d been shot by a police officer during a traffic stop for a broken tail light.
Nothing like having a few hundred witnesses live at the scene. That’s evidence that can’t be seized.
On a far lighter (and quite inexplicable) note, it was famously used by another woman, who somehow made history as the app’s most-watched live feed — at the time, anyway — by laughing hysterically while wearing a Chewbacca mask. Though her antics became less cute when she was later reported to be selling her autograph.
The fact that people will apparently pay for the signature of a person whose only claim to fame is giggling into a camera while dressed as a wookie? Well, that’s a topic for another day.
Andy Warhol’s observation about everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame has been oft and widely repeated since the advent of reality TV.
But in those cases, contestants have to make it past a whole host of filters before the cameras roll. Not everyone makes the cut. And, as we know, even the least salacious of these programs is highly scripted and choreographed.
With Facebook Live, comes an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to publicly say and do things that they can never take back, no matter how ill-considered.
For every beautiful wedding (and it really did look lovely) that draws together friends and family, and for every video that helps ensure justice for victims of crime, there will be 100 more that make you weep for the state of humanity.
(I made that number up, but I stand by it. If anything, it’s probably low).
Of course, just because the red notification button appears and says, ‘click here,’ there’s no rule that says you have to part with 15 of your minutes.
