I went to the Zoo recently and I couldn’t believe how many people immediately whip out their phones to film the animals in the exhibit.
Like, if looking at images of animals on your phone was anywhere near as enjoyable as seeing them in person, why even pay to come to the fucking zoo!?
The animal you are looking at is already existing within a dead facsimile of its actual environment! It’s already like looking at an image!
Do people really go back and look at these images and videos and feel the same feeling as when they’re looking a marmoset of exotic bird right in the eyes a few feet away from them?
It feels like we’ve all become trained to whip out our phones and start filming the moment anything interesting starts happening. The way everyone prefers this mediated experience to just being in reality experiencing art or living things or a concert or whatever just makes me feel kind of bleak. To me this is a great example of what is meant when we talk about Alienation.
Anyone else agree or am I being a grumpy geriatric shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn?
Not to belabor the point, I just wanted to post something tangential I think about: I believe a few candids of interesting-but-not-that-interesting moments can score a critical hit in 20-30 years. One of them will hit like the food inspector in Ratatouille. The voice of a friend who’s not around for one reason or another, a place that used to be common, some hobby you’ve dropped, or a moment when you were giggling can flip your life upside down for a second. I took excruciating notes every night while I was abroad just in case one day I want to relive it.
Yeah, I often get into depressive moods and will go through a journal or photos of me and my family as a kid. Makes things feel better sometimes.
Yeah this is a great point well said
I hate weddings because they lack this. Everything is so fucking sterile and artificial and perfectly posed. I get it for the major wedding photos, but why aren’t there photos of the kids doing dumb shit, the couple sharing an intimate moment away from the crowds, or some other goofy thing happening? I find almost no value in the photos they give me where I’m standing in some crowd for 20 minutes while the photographer finds the perfect angle and lighting lol. It’s usually the photos where I’m making some goofy face chowing down food or some other shit, but people rarely document that unless they’re young, and even then they’ll only share it with you if you’re close lol
Very weird, all my favorite wedding pics are candid shots from the reception.
I never see them whenever the couple sends me the album. It’s usually all the professionally staged shots, or maybe when people are dancing and whatnot, but I don’t know, it still seems very sterile and usually includes the ‘important’ people and not randoms