I sure am. For a while now I’ve noticed the subtle creep of the camera man into the screens we’re all glued to. When you watch old news coverage and sports, you almost never see cameras. They are too important to let out from the other side of the fourth wall. Or at least they were. Some time in the early 2010’s this began to change. I suspect it was because of the iPhone Or Casey Neistat. But I'll never be able to prove that. What I will be able to do is show you that you are seeing more and more cameras and to ask you why you think that is.
First we’ll go to the Olympics where what used to be fixed cameras mounted up the super G course, have been supplemented with dynamic drone footage of the same super G skiers now followed from behind. And it’s not just the Super G which is fast and would warrant a nimble drone to capture the moment. The slower slalom had them too. A race filled with obstacles for the skier to avoid. This year featuring a man sized drone that fell from the sky and almost hit the skier. Before hand that camera angle, if used at all, would have had to have been captured by a cameraman on a helicopter. Because you can’t dynamically follow a skier down a hill from 30 ft above without one. But that would have been obstructively much. As no skier is spending the money necessary to have a helo follow them down the training slopes. So they learn to adjust for the noise, down draft, and possibility of a crash. But make that copter smaller and quad it, and you can interrupt the sports event with another display of the failure of tech being dismissed.
Or how about the world baseball championships. I caught a bit of the Italy Mexico game along with a 5 second crotch shot of some poor film student trying to capture the same kind of sports moments with his gimbal. Only to have none of his footage end up on the main feed of the broadcast, but plenty of footage of his unathletic stumble run end up there. I got so see him run onto the field between hits to dutifully do his job and add nothing to the spirit of baseball.
Don’t worry, we can bring this home before we mention porn. How many baptisms have your church’s creative art's director in them these days. Not in the tank, doing the baptising. But holding a camera to capture the moment and serve as the background for any give photo of your family members coming into the body of Christ. Or grazing your thigh as he crouches during worship. To make sure the bots that follow your church’s Instagram page know God is worshiped in this place.
The only place you won't see this creep of the cameras. These cracks in the fourth wall, is porn. That’s because those particular wizards and witches carefully curate the men behind the curtain. They can’t afford you to pay attention to them, Dorothy. Because their magic actually works. Everyone else is just chasing the awe and wonder of what that magic does when there’s no tits to cast that spell. The dynamic view of the helicopter was replaced by the drone, because of cost. The same way expensive DVD production and magazines became websites and streaming services. And once everyone was able to buy drones to do those dynamic shots, the alure of them lost it’s kick. The same way an actress can lose her youthful looks and get relegated to a different niche and category of the website. If barely legal sells, then the talent must be barely legal. If the shot requires a daring pilot, it will seem lame when a nerd does it with a drone. It’s still awesome and spectacular when that helicopter crashes. Because we all sinfully love destruction, but when a drone that is 100x smaller crashes we feel the same disgust as we would seeing an ugly person strip tease us online. The very same.
All these oopsies of cameras being where they shouldn’t betray the nature of the desire to play this particular game of bigger and better. There is no need for baptisms to be Instagram'd. Unless you have a desire to be on Instagram for Instagram's purposes. The same way men and women flaunt their body on Instagram for the same views and the same cultural validation.
The cameras you are noticing are the tail end of being too affected by a sinful culture, to know better. Normalized voyeurism that stared when sports were merely not shown in the best angle to see all their players. The closeups are there for a reason. So is the BTS stuff. It’s all because that feeling of doing the thing while not, was orgasmically programed into a culture that never does things IRL anymore.
The best hockey you ever watch will be in a rink with no cameras. The best skiing you’ll ever see will be when you are also wearing skis. The best sex you will ever have is with the wife of your youth.
All else is just bell curve production value.