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Festivities General Ubiquitous Facebook Photos

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Patrick Renfield

Ubiquitous Facebook Photos

Latest Post: August 30, 2010 at 2:31 PM

13 followers

I'm ranting. Beware. The very worst thing about facebook is the picture taking zombies it has spawned. Everyone has a camera now. They are on telephones, iPods, computers, cars. Digital cameras can be as small as a bumblebee and slipped easily away inside a front jean pocket. And where there are a lot of cameras there will also be a lot of pictures. But it's gone too far. People are abusing the priviledge. They whip their camera out for every nothing event that happens.

There is a certain kind of photographer that is the worst in this digital revolution: the party-documenter. Generally it is a girl or a group of girls, that think every second of a party is worth recording. From the first vodka shots to the passed out kid in his puke. "Let's never forget this evening! I need to remember always that we're playing card games with that one kid we randomly met on the bus that one day!" People click their cameras at parties to such an extent that it's like they are filming a documentary. They have a camera in their hands more often than they have a beer. How can you enjoy the present time when you're already thinking of it as a memory? Those kinds of photos make their way online before the hangovers are gone.

The ubiquity of cameras is making us overly-sentimental. Everything is worth recording! One of my favorite types of pictures is the one where the photographer reaches his/her hand in front of him to capture himself/herself in the photo. A myspace photo if you will. That type of photo says: I need to always have this moment. That type of photo guarantees the photographer will never have that moment. The moment is lost exactly when it is thought of as a moment, the photo cuts it out of time and space and the photographer will never get it back no matter how many views it gets on facebook.

The digital camera is making us nostalgic for two minutes ago. They create mountains of ego and take away the beauty of photography. Photographs shouldn't be clicked 100 at a time. They should be taken with thought and consideration and real reason because then they really can recreate the feeling of that moment. Facebook photos are nothing more than mirrors, ego boosters in a digital age.

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Mike Strong	in "Avatar / Avatar"	(Cinema Room)
Chris Utterman	in "Lost in improvisation"	(Music Room)
Hugh Dupin	in "On imagination / On imagination"	(The Living Room)
Roy Snider	in "On the death of things (for lack of a better title)"	(The Living Room)
George Browning	in "On the death of things (for lack of a better title)"	(The Living Room)
Arthur Mont	in "Preservation - Why? / Preservation - Why?"	(Politics Room)
Virginia Bird	in "Talk Deeply, Be Happy"	(The Newsroom)
Chris Utterman	in "The Hive Mind / Laugh Track"	(The Living Room)
Chris Utterman	in "The Social Network / The Social Network - A friendless community"	(Cinema Room)

Deborah Stone tagged this post as Couldn't have said it better myself.

Karoline Halstead tagged this post as Essential.

Reply to:

Gwyneth Whieldon

September 18, 2009 at 6:53 PM

3 followers

I hear that... I work in a bar a few nights a week as a bartender, and all of these little yuppy girls and their bestest-best-best friends are all happy and taking shot after shot and photographing themselves, but it's always the same. I can't even tell them apart anymore.

Reply to: or

Chris Utterman

September 24, 2009 at 6:06 PM

30 followers

People today need to take photos of themselves even to simply know they exist, the same as they tweet that they are in line for the bathroom. Without a recording they simply are not sure it actually happens.

As is mentioned in Hugh post and ensuing discussion on Inhibiting reflection, people don't think anymore. They don't reflect, and their only reflection is their facebook pictures and tweets. A real photograph means also really existing, and I think for many that sensation simply disappeared.

Talking to people, many don't understand that a thought could be more than a one liner. It's strange, and it wasn't created by facebook or twitter, they are simply the mirrors of a time and of a group (a large one at that) whose lives are a string of one liners, facebook photos, and 800 meaningless "friends." A meaningless string of nothingness.

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Edna Stern	in "I don't have facebook and NO I don't think I'm better than you. / I don't have facebook and NO I don't think I'm better than you."	(The Living Room)
Hugh Dupin	in "On imagination / On imagination"	(The Living Room)
Christina Stiles	in "On the death of things (for lack of a better title)"	(The Living Room)
Chris Utterman	in "The Social Network / The Social Network - A friendless community"	(Cinema Room)

nita gilson tagged this post as Insightful.

Karoline Halstead tagged this post as Essential.

Reply to: or

Steven Asher

In response to Chris Utterman

November 1, 2009 at 12:52 AM

0 followers

hahahaha that's quite an interesting perspective.
Perhaps they don't do so to prove their existence, though, so much as to convince others that they exist in an attempt to satisfy their ever-growing insecurities. They want to be seen and heard. It's a very interesting phenomenon, actually. Why do these people need such reassurance as to their own importance?

In our century, compared to very early humans, there is little to distinguish you from anyone else. You're just another yuppie. Or maybe just another scene kid, soccer mom, stoner, intellectual, runner, alcoholic, whatever. Such was not the case when humans were confined to small groups. In a village, everyone knows everyone else. Your importance is grounded in your relationships with the people around you. There isn't much of that anymore because those sorts of strong experiential relationships can be used as leverage against others due to the extreme connectedness of our time, and, thus, fewer strong relationships actually persist. When fewer stronger relationships persist, you have to make up for it with many more weak relationships. The best way to do this is to advertise the shit out of yourself. Everyone knows who Paris Hilton is (take that sentence with a grain of salt). This is because she has the resources to advertise herself. I'm sorry to bring up Paris Hilton, but she's just such a representative extreme.

I don't pretend to have a strong understanding of this sort of action. I haven't thought about it nearly enough to be able to articulate anything that I can really support, but these are views that I thought may be worth sharing. I'm just going to continue writing vaguely when I start to write vaguely. If that's not okay, let me know.