At the club, my friend points out (with just his eyebrows) a group of girls dressed up as construction workers getting drunk. An obvious bachelorette party, I reckon. These girls are binge drinking and getting their pictures taken by passers-by, each time maintaining the woo-hoo/wild-times poses, and getting real up-close and raising their martini glasses to accentuate the girl-power phenomenon. Tomorrow, I imagine, some time around noon, the owner of the camera will wake up all groggy and dehydrated, plug her camera to her laptop, create a new Facebook album called “GiRlS gOnE FrIkKiN’ WiLd” and post it to their profile. All the other girls will tag themselves, they’ll all look perfect and everyone will know they had a wild time at Sophia’s bachelorette party, and life will go on.
Digital photography arrived with it’s own baggage. I used to enjoy clicking pictures of people caught in the moment. You know, like when they’re talking. Or when they are about to smile, but haven’t gotten to the smile’s full potential yet. Or like in the middle of a blink. Or a combo – that always gets more points. With cameras going digital, people’s vanities went into overdrive, as everyone knew immediately, within seconds, what the photo looked like. If they didn’t like it, trashing the photo was literally a click away. Shoot it again. A whole bunch of classic ugly shots were being banished into the domain of the deletion, to never return and haunt them, to easily be forgotten. And then came Facebook.
Facebook took digital photography and online albums to a whole new level altogether. Giving web spaces like Picasa and MyPhotoAlbum a run for their money, Facebook allowed users to upload unlimited albums of everything they do for free. One didn’t need to search for anyone’s photos. They were right there, highlighted on their profiles. And, vain as we are, we knew our photos were being checked out, screened, scrutinized for goof ups, so we made sure that every photo was the best it could be, and everything was perfect. And that’s where we fucked up. Because sometimes, it takes 5 shots to get the perfect group photo, by which time the posers’ smiles have relaxed. All traces of acne, cellulite, festival weight and mint fragment on the tooth are then eradicated, and the viewer/stalker is placed under the perception that all was perfect at the party. Drunk chicks who let out burps while the camera flashed are nowhere to be seen. Accidental nipple peaks are covered up. Nose hair is trimmed, food-in-open-mouth photos are removed. And people like me, the evil ones, are left with nothing to make fun of, nothing to post on our blogs, because these fiendish posers make the world look perfect.
I call upon all readers today. I know you have a stash (however small) of photos that someone asked you to delete, but you secretly didn’t, because you were waiting for this day. Well, it’s here. Start posting them on your Facebook albums, and share them for the world to see, because we all need to live in the comfort of knowing that people, no matter how beautiful they are, can sometimes look like this.
[...] How Facebook put our vanities into overdrive « confinedwisdom.com/2009/10/08/how-facebook-put-our-vanities-into-overdrive – view page – cached At the club, my friend points out (with just his eyebrows) a group of girls dressed up as construction workers getting drunk. An obvious bachelorette party, I reckon. These girls are binge drinking… (Read more)At the club, my friend points out (with just his eyebrows) a group of girls dressed up as construction workers getting drunk. An obvious bachelorette party, I reckon. These girls are binge drinking and getting their pictures taken by passers-by, each time maintaining the woo-hoo/wild-times poses, and getting real up-close and raising their martini glasses to accentuate the girl-power phenomenon. Tomorrow, I imagine, some time around noon, the owner of the camera will wake up all groggy and dehydrated, plug her camera to her laptop, create a new Facebook album called “GiRlS gOnE FrIkKiN’ WiLd” and post it to their profile. All the other girls will tag themselves, they’ll all look perfect and everyone will know they had a wild time at Sophia’s bachelorette party, and life will go on. (Read less) — From the page [...]