
“SKAM,” the Radical Teen Drama That Unfolds One Post at a Time - wallflower
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/skam-the-radical-teen-drama-that-unfolds-one-post-at-a-time
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dsfyu404ed
>If a couple got into a fight in school at 12:40 P.M. on a Monday, the clip
showed up on the platform at exactly that time, creating the uncanny
impression that you were watching something that was actually happening. If
the producers posted a clip showing a student getting dressed for a party on a
Saturday night, many young viewers would be doing the same thing.

>“SKAM Austin” had many hidden layers, and the producers wanted viewers to
uncover them all. The characters, some of them played by local teen-agers, all
had Instagram accounts, and, like real people’s, the posts offered insights
into the characters’ pasts and their hopes for the future. Collectively, the
video clips, photographs, and comments imbued the characters with a depth that
not even flashbacks provide in conventional TV.

Nobody will accuse me of being cultured let alone cultured in teen drama
TV/Netflix series but I know attention to detail when I see it.

~~~
josteink
Sure. That’s impressive work.

The cynic in me though worries that if a _TV show_ can afford to execute like
this, what should we expect/fear from state-run psy-ops?

~~~
qw
The original Norwegian version of SKAM cost less than a million (USD) to
produce an entire season.

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GuiA
This is an interesting new medium, built on the foundations laid by a number
of media that came before it - social networking, reality tv, soap operas,
etc.

As always, McLuhan’s 4 questions are helpful in thinking about it:

 _\- What does the medium enhance?

\- What does the medium make obsolete?

\- What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?

\- What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?_

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects)

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citizenkeen
As a parent of a toddler, the future of keeping up with what they're paying
attention to seems _exhausting_.

~~~
moab
You won't have to worry about it if you get them addicted to books from a
young age!

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trophycase
Wow. This was essential reading for me. I wasn't aware that Facebook Watch
even existed nor that SKAM did and reading this really highlighted how out of
touch I am with what kids and teenagers are doing.

This sort of media feels like a true paradigm shift and is both extremely
interesting and terrifying. Terrifying because the boundary between real and
manufactured seems to be rapidly dissapearing, and interesting because it
truly is a new form of created media.

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empath75
Seems like an updated ARG

~~~
mintplant
Yeah. It's not nearly as without-precedent as the author claims. Though its
predecessors generally offered two-way interaction with their characters as
well.

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wodenokoto
"Skam" is also the name of a extraordinarily popular throughout Scandinavia,
Norwegian teen show on regular TV.

Across the Scandinavian languages, "skam" mean shame.

The connection to the Norwegian show, seems to be through the director, but
what I'm really wondering is, how does the word "Skam" sound to american
audiences?

Like scam?

~~~
PMunch
AFAIK the original Skam also featured social media uploads along with the
linear TV content. During the week (it was on once a week, and uploaded online
at the same time), you were able to follow the characters from the show on
Facebook (and probably other social media). While the show itself was quite
popular this new way of doing it seems to be what the networks are mostly
interested in. And with reason, it was a really popular show because of it.

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qop
I don't like social media being used this way.

I mean, I don't like social media at all, i only use irc and gnusocial these
days, but it seems dishonest and dangerous to use social media as a canvas for
fake interactions. Like reality tv in real life. That's not something kids
need to be interacting with on social media imo.

~~~
dragonwriter
Facebook Watch, the platform this is on, is a VOD platform. Serialized
entertainment video content on a video-on-demand platform is usually the
_raison d’etre_ of the platform.

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gowld
They also publish the fiction via Instagram.

