CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Aliens to Earth: Heads Talking into Cameras, Please Stop!

Image by Amanna Avena.

Years ago, I made it to the big time and was interviewed for a segment on one of the primetime television “news magazines.“ I spruced myself up, put on a suit coat, combed my hair and beard, all that nonsense – trying not to look like the backcountry slob that I am.

My father saw the segment and called me up. In his old age – this wasn’t long before he died, in his 80s – he had become gruff and rude, oblivious to people’s feelings, saying whatever he liked when he liked (which I admired).

“You looked and sounded like a big fuckin phony,” he said. “That wasn’t you up there.”

He was right, of course. There is a fundamental law of human behavior at play here, and it has to do with pointing cameras at people. Just as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle shows that observed particles will be altered by the act of observation, so it goes with Homo sapiens when you stick a camera in their face. Actively observed, your gestalt changes. You become, instantaneously, a big fuckin phony. I don’t know why this is so – some system dynamic in human psychology – but it is so; I’ve observed it hundreds of times in others, and so have........

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