When referring to modern technology, specifically video recording, why do most people keep using archaic terms like “filming” and “videotaping”? I am constantly hearing people recording on YouTube making comments like “You’re being filmed” or this is on videotape”. We know that anyone under 30 on a smartphone has probably never used videotape, and surely has never used an actual film motion picture camera. Where are they using these out of date terms?
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The terms were codified when the activity was invented. Before film there was no commonplace way to capture motion pictures (serial photography for zoetropes notwithstanding), so that activity became known as “filming”. Likewise, when handheld magnetic tape recorders came to the audio and then video market, it was the first time a lot of people had access to affordable recordings that could be easily replayed, so recordings were referred to as “on videotape”. When digital recording came along, there was already a word meaning “to make a motion picture record of something”, so there was no great need to popularise a new word.
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