The production has generated intense commentary, sharing, parodies (as if Sharknado could be parodied even further), and how the shark tornado can teach us a thing or two.

There are also some priceless Tweets out there, and this one in particular caught my attention:

Patton Oswalt:

No way is SHARKNADO as entertaining as the Tweets about it. Congrats, @SyfyTV. You've created a new way to watch movies.

I don’t know Mr. Oswalt and what he does, or how seriously he was about SyFy TV prompting a new way to watch movies, but for me I am positive that thumbing through my Twitter stream was far more enjoyable than any viewing of the actual item itself. Certainly I wouldn’t have known about its airing run at all had it not been for the prolific number of Tweets all citing the hashtag, and coming from the majority of Twitter accounts I follow — which are mostly political scientists like Dan Drezner (@dandrezner) and Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer) — I knew this was a viral hit that needed to be investigated. Reading the Twitter feed allowed me to figure out what type of movie we were dealing with, what to expect, what the characters were like, and its memorable moments (read: very many).

So without consuming the visual media itself, I managed to vicariously experience the essentials through the digital social stream. Which got me thinking more about live-Tweeting and update-exhibitions all featuring on-the-go commentary and photos about a diverse range of events, from the release of an Apple product to conferences and panel discussions on foreign policy (have three guesses as to which attracts a larger audience). This makes sense because many viewers who cannot be present are real appreciative of finding alternative sites to experience these events; if one doesn’t have access to Apple’s webpage when the event airs, then they can at least get some sense of the release’s feel, direction, and atmosphere from a blogger or tech-site like The Verge providing textual and photographic coverage and context.

Enter Mr. Oswalt again with his comment about Sharknado and the new means of watching movies. Can this be applied to not just complete failures — which, by the way, the majority of viewers know in advance and willingly plan to experience the predictably poor release — but all new visual products? Let’s remain in cinema for now (and add that in the near future, using your smartphone in the darkness of a theater isn’t going to get you dirty looks). Say a moderately well-marketed domestic film with a famous director but entirely unknown cast is in town. Would audiences unable to get away for a cinema viewing be able to rely on following the hashtags to get a feel for what they would have otherwise missed?

Certainly the logic tells us that it really depends on the size of the audience expecting the movie. It would be reasonable to expect a bigger-budget and/or franchise-starter/-sequel to garner enough attention that maybe more people would be Tweeting about it. If the momentum is big enough, one could vicariously ‘watch’ the movie through the Twitter community. Check out those swooping opening shots — motion sickness already. Hey look here the central conflict of the film is introduced, accompanied by seventy seconds of explosions. Oh, enter the protagonist’s primary love interest — she looks and talks as though she’ll remain a minor character for the rest of the film. The comments would continue.

But it would be hard — and frankly, quite impossible — to filter out the bias and any ideological leanings of the actual viewers themselves. In my comments generalized example comments above, there was barely-concealed contempt for the typical Michael Bay-esque quality in films. One could imagine the same happening in Tweeting an entire cinematic experience; fans of the director may be inclined to describe and comment with exuberance, while detractors would poke fun and criticize the plot holes and poor puns and plausibility errors.

The second micro-community of watchers would probably produce more amusing Twitter-coverage of the event and enable the absent web-browsing audience to have a more enjoyable vicarious experience, as did many who read Sharknado Tweets. It would be unsurprising to hear the first micro-community — viewers truly enjoying the event — to be much quieter and comment a lot less, given their immersion in the film.

So maybe it’s just a matter of case by case basis, with too many variables of film quality, length, subject, director, cast, and too many inconsistencies within consumers to answer to Mr. Oswalt? Syfy TV might have created a new way of viewing poorly-disguised garbage, just because it might be more enjoyable — and less damaging to one’s IQ — to choose vicarious over actual experience. Maybe we can identify trends between the volume of Tweets and the quality of the visual experience, for fully devoting ourselves to one particular source of stimuli can be read as enjoyment and absorption into the process, something generally positive. Where are potential caveats though?

For even high-profile and important events like the a President’s State of the Union address or presidential debates get fervent Twitter coverage, though not many would think to slide them into the same category as Sharknado. So can the number of Tweets itself really signify the quality and/or viewer’s attitudes?

At this point it may just have to do with the environment in which the audience is situated. No audience member would feel uncomfortable if someone used a smartphone in the middle of a basketball game, but obviously the same cannot be said for viewers of an orchestral concert or movie screening. Television provides ripe ground for commentary like that on Sharknado to flourish; if Sharknado were released in theaters (god forbid), then the setting of complete darkness may have deterred all live-Tweeting activity.

Then those who weren’t directly experiencing the event could not have turned to Twitter to a slightly different, modified, yet still- retaining-the-essentials edition of the experience.

​What would the situation or social mindset have to be in order for audiences to someday find the vicarious experience more enjoyable, compelling, or just less bad than the actual event? Would you turn your eyes to #Spielberg for one film but not another? Would you want your impression of a certain experiential product to be mediated through others’ comments, or totally fine with hearing about most of it through hundreds of Tweets, many of which are from complete strangers?

Maybe it’s about product quality — viewers are more compelled to experience the real thing on their own and get the entire unmediated package through their personal senses first, if they know it’s good. Less than average, and then it’s time to get more of a kick out of the Twitter stream.

Finally, at the end of the day, it may just be about what’s more fun. Enjoyment is hard to measure, but Sharknado commentary is a good place to start when thinking of examples where the evaluations were undoubtedly more worthwhile than the show/movie itself. Maybe the consumer calculus in the future will be whether to spend a couple hours fully-engaged in experiencing a visual product, or skimming the textual highlights vicariously while waiting for the subway?

I’d be curious to see what other visual media experiences Mr. Oswalt’s valid comment applies to. In the meantime, hopefully the rerun on Thursday was worthwhile. Though for many, it may have been more fun to forgo cable for the Twitter feed.