Videotape by Don DeLillo, the fiction short story, is written in a way to make us, as readers, feel guilty and to give us a sense of eeriness. Not only reading this story, but also experiencing the situations in the second person point-of-view that it's written, has shown me that this story needs to be interpreted based off of modern society and how advances in our society have affected our thinking and our reaction to situations. We need to stop allowing advances in social media, such as the abilities to easily and quickly share our experiences with the world, get in the way of how we react and what we feel we need to do. People think too hard nowadays about how we can share pictures, recordings, and video footage with other people over the Internet, that we don't allow ourselves to emotionally experience what's happening around us in the very moment it happens. While technological advances do have many advantages, they have caused everyone to view the world through a camera lense rather than our own eyes, and Videotape is a perfect example of this. 

DeLillo wants us as readers to experience this story as we would have, had we been the little girl video taping the man as he was murdered. That is why he uses second person perspective; he is putting us in the situation, and as a part of the younger crowd reading this story, the diction that DeLillo uses really helps him accomplish this goal. His sentences are casual and relatable to the young crowd. It's easy to feel as though DeLillo is speaking directly to us as individuals when reading Videotape. Within the first three paragraphs, DeLillo introduces us to the little girl who is using her family's video camera in the car. He states, "You know about families and their video cameras." Although this statement doesn't foreshadow much, it creates a tone that is comfortable and easily understandable, one that makes us want to keep reading as he's creating a common ground between himself and us readers. He's putting us in a situation of something we're comfortable with nowadays- technology. Later on, DeLillo states, "He sees the girl and waves briefly, wagging a hand without taking it off the wheel- an underplayed reaction the makes you like him." Again, DeLillo is making the story very relatable. Although this line is unconcernedly describing a situation, it's describing a situation that we're all familiar with. The tone that DeLillo uses, a very casual one, reminds us of the causalities in today's life, social media being part of that. In other words, if this story was written any other way, in Shakespearian language for example, it wouldn't be as easy for us to relate it to our lives today. DeLillo is using this simple diction to make us put ourselves, and the way we view things, in the shoes of the little girl with the video camera. 

There isn't very much descriptive detail in this story; DeLillo doesn't heavily describe the sounds or smells or even sights that take place; however, he still creates images that allow us to relate to the theme he is portraying. For example, he explains how if we were to be showing the video captured of the murder to someone, we would "rub it in their face." We would be creating a situation in which we act as though there is an element of suspense; we have watched the video over and over again, almost having it memorized, but as we show it to somebody for the first time, it suddenly becomes suspenseful. How often does this happen today thanks to social media? We watch viral videos multiple times on all different sites just because we enjoy them, but when we're watching this video of which we are incredibly familiar with someone who has no idea what is going to happen, the rush hits us with them as though we've never seen it before. Even though we can experience this feeling multiple times as we see these videos, our reaction is never too extreme. Although DeLillo told us that we could see the shock in the little girl by the way the camera jolted as the man was shot, that's the only emotion we pick up from the girl. Yes, she saw this happen right in front of her, which is a very scary situation, but she was watching it through the lense of a camera. We see tragedy on video every single day, and what's sad is that we have allowed ourselves to become so used to seeing such tragic footage, but we don't allow ourselves to consider the emotion as if we were there experiencing it live. This doesn't have to just be tragedy. Is it not obvious enough by now that everyone would rather watch a live concert through the screen of their phones? Of course the abilities these technological advances give us can be rather helpful, they're also taking away from genuine experience. 

There is a sense of repetition throughout this story. The line, "The car approaches briefly, then falls back," is used multiple times. There is a symbolic interpretation behind this line other than the literal meaning. The line represents chances. At multiple points during the story, the little girl had the opportunity to examine and notice the man with her, as DeLillo put it, "unaided eye," but even though she was given the chances, she continued to observe only through the camera lense. We think in today's society that this is a better way to observe what we are experiencing, but why would we rather do this when our experiences could be raw and primary. We're given all of these chances and opportunities today, but as they approach, we turn to our lenses to capture the moment, all for the purpose of later sharing it with the world for likes and comments, meanwhile we miss the actual importance of the opportunities, and they suddenly fall back. 

Sure some could argue that the technological advances are not getting in the way of how we experience and handle situations, rather they are helping us and others around us, providing evidence and clear footage, but we can't go through life expecting that to be the case in every situation we face. There is much more importance behind physically experiencing situations for our own good and not just for the showing and sharing with others. Perhaps the little girl didn't realize this as she was filming. Perhaps she thought she was helping the situation, but would she have witnessed more than the just the man dying if she was watching through her unaided eye? Maybe she would have seen who actually committed the murder. 

