I’d like to begin this blog entry by stating that I’m about a year and three months shy of my 30th birthday. As such, I gradually began reducing my MTV intake about five or so years ago, and as a result, I proudly told my husband yesterday morning that I would not be watching the Video Music Awards at all. What a colossal mistake that was!
As a mature almost-30-year-old, I lay in bed last night with my Carl Hiaasen book, feeling very sophisticated, making a point not to turn on the television. At approximately 9:30 p.m. EST, I decided to check my Facebook page from my phone, and noticed that 10 of the 13 posts in my friends’ news feeds had something to do with Kanye West, Taylor Swift or both. “Kanye West is such a jerk!” “Poor Taylor Swift!” “I cannot believe what Kanye West just said!”
I clicked on the comments to see what all of the fuss was about, but to my disappointment (and surprise), I was apparently the only person out of my 400+ friends who wasn’t watching the VMAs. No one indicated what Kanye did or said that was so offensive to Taylor Swift, and it was incredibly frustrating! I immediately turned to Twitter for it’s well, immediacy. Surely that social media outlet had the scoop on what I’d missed on television. But nooo… just the same type of nondescript comments about Team Kanye versus Team Taylor.
After literally three minutes of frantic searching, I finally found the answer that I was searching for in one of the aforementioned Facebook updates (that had been updated with three more comments by the time I left Twitter and checked back in with Facebook). Apparently, during her acceptance speech for best female video of the year, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift to express that he thought Beyonce Knowles would have been a better choice for the award. I later learned through these same social media outlets that Knowles responded to Kanye’s rude comments with class and grace. Good for her.
The point here is not that Kanye West was mean to poor little Taylor Swift. What he did was uncalled for, yes, but I think my reaction was even more surprising to me. Not more than five years ago, I probably would not have even heard about the incident until I read about it the next morning in the newspaper. However, I was literally frantic for those three minutes between seeing news of the incident and learning the facts about that same incident. I hated being left in the dark, and I fear that many more of these moments will occur in my near future as I depend more and more on social media outlets for my breaking news updates.