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Culture

GoPro mocks phone addicts in new ad

Technically Incorrect: GoPro suggests you can't be in the moment if you're filming things with a phone.
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

gopro4.jpgEnlarge Image

Oh, look at all these silly humans.

 GoPro/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

We all have to photograph and film our lives.

It's a given.

What else are we going to watch when we're 124 years old, part human and part robot?

The only question now seems to be: how should we record and film our lives? GoPro insists too many people are doing it all wrong, because in the words of the great Steve Jobs, they're holding it all wrong.

In a new TV ad, GoPro sniffs at everyone who spends their lives holding a phone and filming, well, everything.

As we see scenes of humans in groups, all holding phones and filming what they're seeing, the voice-over asks: "Is this being in the moment?"

Not at all. It's being in the 21st century.

Then we see younger people near a beautiful waterfall all staring at the their phones. "Is this hanging out?" asks the voice. Well, yes it is. Where have you been the last five years?

More Technically Incorrect

You can't play with your kids, says the ad, if all you're doing is holding up a cellphone and filming them while they're playing.

"Don't stop what you're doing to capture what you're doing," says the voice-over. Instead, strap a camera to your head and look very silly.

In something of a bow rather than a nod to Apple, the tagline to all this is: "Capture Different."

This ad feels like something of a prayer. Its last quarterly report saw GoPro shares dive 20 percent. The company didn't suggest an immediate upturn was imminent.

To suddenly suggest that everyone should leave their phones in their pockets and venture out with a GoPro strapped to their person is asking for a radical change of behavior.

It's one thing to appeal to extreme sports types. It's quite another to expect normal humans to ignore a piece of technology that hasn't merely become essential, but has become part of so many people's beings.

Truly capturing different would be to just observe, remember, share and not film or photograph at all.

But if humans are going to insist on filming, the phone is just too easy.