“Listening is hard.” This statement, which can be found in the Center for Digital Storytelling’s credo, points to the obstacles that the pace of life and chattering of social spaces present to the listening process. On further reflection, however, it seems like a bit of a misdiagnosis. The existence of sites like CDS, Mapping Memories, and The Interview Project, as well as the popularity of programs like The Moth and Snap Judgment, illustrate that just as people want to tell stories, others are aching to listen.
What makes that statement even more noticeable is that the rest of CDS’ pronunciations are so spot on. They nail it when they say that everyone has stories to tell, and that people need to be heard. More importantly, by combining these two activities, by sharing stories, we can “inspire individual and community transformation.” CDS, along with Mapping Memories and the others, embodies these last three aspects. They extend and expand our notion of community by connecting us with these people and the stories they have to tell. They also allow for personal growth for the storyteller or, at the very least, a mild catharsis that the sharing of their story might provide.
The one thing these stories do not do, however, is burden the listener. It is not difficult to listen to “Baby Bigfoot on Ice”, a story by Jim Walsh about “searching the stars for UFOs,” and finding his father. Nor is it taxing to watch the story about No Bad Sound, four youths from Thailand, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic who maintain their cultural ties through their rap music. And it certainly is not a bother to follow any of the stories from the Interview Project, whether it is Tommie Holliday’s tale about reconnecting with his girlfriend or Kee’s story about his struggles with his sexuality.
The real challenge, I would argue, is not listening, but filtering out the noise. When you stop to consider the amount of pure dreck that gets thrown our way every day, it’s no wonder that we default to ignoring or paying mere lip-service to what we hear. Hearing or watching good stories is easy; finding them, that’s the rub.
I really like your last paragraph Steven, and I think it sums up what I constantly feel to be the biggest problem with the current state of digital media. There’s just soooo much out there that it makes you ponder whether it’s almost too much. In a way it reminds me of how cable television works these days. Many people have 800 channels but only ever find themselves watching 10 different stations – it’s the definitive example of quality over quantity. It almost makes me feel like some of these sites would benefit from some sort of ranking system, even though the notion of comparing and evaluating stories of social uprising makes me feel fairly dirty inside. But as we live in this age now where “likes” and “tweets” are in many ways the goal of good story, in other words mass appeal, then maybe it’s not the dirtiest notion.
I for one feel like I’d be far more drawn to interact with the CDS website if they could show me what stories on there other people have interacted with the most. Perhaps you could have viewers rank stories by two categories – social relevance and overall spark on interest. That way, poorly produced pieces that have powerful messages would not get lost in the mix. The more I vocalize this, the more absurd of a notion it seems, but I still feel that CDS, Mapping Memories and some other websites I’ve visited are all lacking in their organizational methods. For instance, having a category as broad as “activism” does nothing for me to understand how far I should dig to find a message that truly strikes a chord with me. It seems that many of these sites are presuming their audience is all pro-human activists looking for a new cause to involve themselves with. They should be viewing their audience as regular folks who need to be drawn into the act of empathetic listening.