Teenagers of the world, I owe you a big apology.
For years, I have been ruthlessly mocking you and your strange cyber-social ways. I get it now. I'm impressed.
Hate-watching TikTok videos is my not-so-secret shame, and I reckon the only thing worse than watching these stupid videos is being one of the people who makes them. Every time I feel like my life is unraveling, I can feel better about myself by watching idiots make fools of themselves online. But then I realize these idiots have millions of followers and probably make more money doing lame hip-hop dances than I'll bring in all year.
"Social media influencer" is now considered respectable work experience on a resume. Kids who started out filming themselves playing video games now have production empires, movie deals, and reality film crews documenting their every move, because apparently the world also needs to know HOW you make your lame lip-sync videos.
The thing is: I kinda need to know how they make their lame lip-sync videos.
There's a new trend online I can finally get behind: live-streaming DJs. Every night, if you go on platforms like Twitch and TikTok, you can find hundreds of DJs mixing live over the internet from basements across the globe, playing whatever they fancy, mixing it up until the wee hours. And when they go to bed, DJs on the other side of the planet are just firing up. As you're reading this right now, there's dozens of basement DJs live-streaming for fun this very minute.
Some people could stumble onto a fad like this and just enjoy it. When I stumble onto something like this, I watch for 4 minutes before declaring, "I WANT TO DO THIS."
It seems like great fun, and any excuse to mix records is awesome in my book. Best of all, I've been seeing other DJs my age on there. I've found a couple of grey-haired streamers who play nothing but the old club music I grew up on. I hardly ever get the chance to bust out some of those dusty basement jams that've been patiently waiting for their moment to shine again. I need in on this streaming thing.
BUT I have no earthly idea how one live-streams. I'm a music geek, not a tech geek. There was a time when people would turn to me for help with their computers, but that time was 1986. These days, my technical expertise consists of knowing where the power button is, how to reboot if things get squirrely, and how to curse loudly if things get SUPER squirrely. I've been doing a lot of cursing this week.
I guess I thought live-streaming would be as easy as pointing a phone at yourself and pressing a button. Trust me, it's not.
Not knowing what to do, I turned to my buddy Cooper, whose trade-off for being my friend is that he gets weird late-night calls from me saying I want to be the world's next streaming sensation. I couldn't tell if he rolled his eyes or not, but I can probably guess.
"What kind of gear do I need?" I asked him.
All I heard in reply were some furious mouseclicks. "There," he said after 30 seconds, "I just ordered everything you need. It'll be here tomorrow. You owe me fifty bucks."
My basement now looks like the world's lamest movie set. I have webcams on tripods. I have one of those ridiculous ring lights that's supposed to somehow make me look less hideous. Cords and cables are running everywhere. I don't even know yet if my home internet will be fast enough for such an endeavor. My cats are horribly confused.
Worst of all, you can't even livestream on TikTok until you get a minimum of 1000 followers, and I currently have 52. I've got a ways to go and a steep learning curve to get there.
So I'm no longer mocking kids who spend their days lip-syncing for followers online. Those videos might look silly, but they're hard work. I've spent two weeks buried in equipment and tutorials and have to date filmed 0:00 seconds of my awesome DJ skills. Whitney was right: the children ARE our future. But if they could scoot over JUST enough to let in a fat old guy with some records, that'd be swell.
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