Ive always felt slightly nauseated by pictures of food thatve been filtered more than San Diego tap water. People sort of nod obligingly when I object to taking a photo because it ruins the moment. They think Im joking when I say: If I forget this moment then it isnt worth remembering. I know this video is mainly focused on the role of social networks in taking our humanity, but it sparked a thought: Everyone knows about the great oral traditions of the past, from Gilgamesh to The Iliad. Scholars have theorized that the creation and later widespread use of written language has greatly diminished our capacity for remembering/memorizing words. I wonder if our relatively newfound obsession with photographically documenting everything we do and see has had a similar impact on our capacity for remembering our own lives. We take photos of everything as if we think we will develop Alzheimer’s tomorrow. I think that this obsession was originally born of the desire to generate a story of ourselves that we could show our #friends. But, as with any fabrication, we ourselves start believing our made up story from telling it so often. Eventually, we come to believe that this story we are telling is more #nofilter than real life. We can no longer experience something without feeling the need to make it real by photographing (or videographing) it. It’s like we’re afraid that if we don’t have something we can post on facebook or Instagram then that experience never happened. First, we told stories. Then we wrote them. Now we show them. I love a good story—books, movies, campfire wanderings… I love them more than most. But this new breed of story usually lacks the kind of creativity and insight that made the old ones worthwhile. It seems that with every selfie, with every like, we not only lose the wonder of stories, but the wonder of real life as well. P.S. Yes, I know this is four paragraphs. No, I have nothing better to do with my time. Actually thats not true. There are about a billion real life things to do out there that would be more fulfilling than facebooking. So yes, Im a hypocrite. You can rest assured Ill hit the like button on your next party/dinner/boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend/nature/sport/dance/performance profile pic.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 04:34:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015