“CATH! How do I log into Facebook on my phone?”
Like the fiercely loyal friend she is, Cath immediately dumps the beer on the bar and comes running.
“Are we having an ‘Oh Shucks, Here Comes Untag’ situation?” she pants as she grabs the phone out of my hand to delete the offending pic.
“How many people do you think saw that? And what was [Insert friend here] thinking when they tagged me?”
“Probably thought you looked pretty. For a drunken, aging heifer!” She collapses with mirth. Yes, that’s our Cath. Loyal, but a complete horse’s ass sometimes.
“I’m sorry,” she continues, “but the scariest sentence in the English language is: “Someone just tagged a picture of you on Facebook.”
And it’s true. It sounds very vain, but you can’t really blame us. The technology
and psychology of picture-taking has changed so much, not just over the
last 100 years, but over the last 10 years, that we’re all still
reeling from it.
Where my grandparents took their kids to a
special studio maybe 4 times during their childhood, today’s parents
have literally thousands of snaps and hours and hours of video of their
offspring. No one is going to miss baby’s first step, even if they
really try to.
My biggest problem with the fact that everyone
now has a camera on them 24/7 is that it’s so much harder to misbehave
these days.
Even 5 years ago, I could dance badly (obviously) on
a table after having too many tequilas, and the only evidence would lie
in the sodden brains of fellow partygoers who think back at good times
with rose tinted lenses.
These days there are bound to be at
least 30 pics of the evening, a few which clearly shows your cellulite,
and a small video clip where you can hear yourself singing completely
out of tune to Living on a Prayer.
So, imagine what it must be like to be a celebrity!
Photos of you are taken all the time and shared like crazy. You can’t
untag yourself. You can’t throw out the one where you’re pulling a face. You can’t choose your favourite and blow that one up.
Beyoncé’s publicist tried to get “unflattering” pics of the singer removed from the highly popular site, Buzzfeed. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t work that way.
Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. Not every picture taken of you will be a flattering one.
So try to keep it interesting at least.