I was getting in my car outside the Post Office, getting ready to head back home, while watching a lady across the street walk her two little fuzzy white dogs.
One of them was acting up a bit; laying down in the dandelions and rolling around and generally refusing to walk. So she did what any good dog mom in 2023 would do: she pulled out her phone and started snapping pictures.
Sure, that's a pretty common sight in this day and age... but it made me pause and consider how pretty much everything has become a photo op, these days.
I'll show my age here, but when I was a kid there were just fewer pictures overall because (a) there was the cost of film to consider as well as (b) the cost of developing that film. Not to mention that there was no Instagram or Facebook to share those pictures to... you pretty much were dependent on your family and maybe a few close friends to "like" your pictures.
People talk a lot about their loss of privacy these days but it seems to me that we are choosing to relinquish our privacy through our pervasive need to share everything with everyone, all the time. You can't have it both ways, folks!
And let's be honest here... it's called social media for a reason... because you're expected to be social.
Things really have changed a lot, just in the few decades I have been walking around on this planet!
Heck, even our CAT has a blog although he's by no means some kind of major Internet Celebrity! But it does give us a "reason" for taking so many cat pictures!
Don't get me wrong, in many ways I am actually grateful for the proliferation of photo opportunities... because I have seen myself as an enthusiast with a camera since my teens. And I really dig the fact that I can use a venue like Hive and illustrate my writing with my own photos.
Although I do use my own photography, I am yet to get in much of a habit of creating a story around the photos... unless it's for some kind of contest or challenge!
The lady with the little white dogs, however, reminded me how much the whole idea of what was once upon a time loosely called "citizen reporting" has changed — now we're pretty much all our own news channels.
Has it made people more "narcissistic," in a sense?
Well, I'm not going to address that directly, as I see a significant difference between the obsession with "selfie culture," and something like people's vacation photos becoming for public consumption, rather than something we pull out once in a blue moon to look at during the dark winter months when the reminder that we once spent two weeks in a tropical paradise helps us get past our creeping winter depression.
On the whole, though, I think it is a positive... at least in the sense that many who might have felt "voiceless" now at least have potential outlets for their thoughts.
And with as many ready cameras as there are, we are also getting to see events and things we might never have seen in the past; whether it's falling meteors captured on dashcams or extraordinary human acts, caught in the moment.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2023-04-19 23:33 PST
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