Friday, September 18, 2015

New Age Sports Highlights

How Vine, GIF's, Twitter and Facebook revolutionized sports highlights as we know it.

  With social media participation reaching new peaks, so have the amount of times people (like myself) have watched and re-watched delicious goals like the one below.



One might not think twice at the luxury we have to recount moments like these and I reiterate this from a millennial perspective. Not too long ago we had to settle for replays on the television and before the DVR that was agonizingly annoying.

What social media facets have provided is a proactive way for us to engage with sports highlights. Whether it be for comical reasons, downright hate, or exuberant glorification—it offers us something we've never had.

In my early teen years I used to struggle to find Youtube clips of Kobe's sick dunk or some unreal Randy Moss catch, solely because of Youtube infringement laws. Today with apps like Vine and formats like GIFs that can be accessed via Reddit, we are able to see these replays and share them easily onto bigger platforms like FacebookTwitter, InstagramBlogger etc. Not to mention, the quality of videos is much, much better—as opposed to looking like it was shot with a toaster.

Considering how convenient all this is to sports' purists across the globe, one must admit that these gadgets offer quite a sneaky way to evade copyright laws. Even if they do eventually get taken down, (which for the most part they don't) it usually takes ages. I genuinely believe this is one of the bigger up-sides we have today.

The personalization that is offered through these platforms is also another immense aspect of why this is all so remarkable. One can capture a thunderous kick to the face from Anderson Silva and synchronize it to a Diplo beat within a couple strokes of ones' mouse. With these tools; sports reels are no longer only appealing to visual pleasure but also an auditory aspect as well and one can captain that sensory delight.

I know for a fact if all these sports highlights were taken off the web tomorrow, a huge ache would tremble through todays trendy social media. Let's enjoy it while it is here.