Stop living though your lens. The compulsion to document and share everything.
Remember the feeling and not what it looks like.
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Last Friday on the 47th–50th St. Rockefeller Center subway station as I was headed towards the turnstile, my right foot slid on something indistinguishably squishy. I fell hard. Right on my ass. It was like one of those cartoon falls when a character slips on a banana peel and falls backwards, complete with cheeky sound effects and a laugh track if you’re old enough to remember when cartoons had laugh tracks.
What I remember most, however, is that a woman watched me fall and walked right by me without even a glance my way as I struggled to pick myself up. As my kids would say, “RUDE!”
I made my way down to the platform right as a train was pulling in, took a seat, and posted about it on Threads on my ride home. I think I was still shaken by that woman practically stepping over my crumpled body, that I was seeking some sort of consolation from other strangers. Maybe I was also annoyed because I swear I will die on this hill when I say that New Yorkers are really friendly and helpful despite whatever dystopian image conservatives are trying to spin. NYC is a dangerous hellscape, if you weren’t aware, full of criminals and unsavory characters.
Hours later, still sore and tingly and recovering in bed with an ice pack, I kind of regretted posting about the fall on social media and berated myself for being so impulsively needy and attention-seeking. Not only was my fall very public in front of all of New York to see, but I was broadcasting it further to more people who wasn’t even there to witness it in the first place (yes, I realize the irony of writing about this here).
But this week’s newsletter isn’t about aging and falling, though I do have children who are traumatized by how their grandparents have suffered serious consequences from falls, that the first thing they ask is, “was it an old person fall or just a regular fall?” One day, a newsletter about falling may land in your inbox because this isn’t the first time I’ve body slammed the floor really hard in recent years. But not now, not yet.
This week’s newsletter, rather, is about this compulsion to document the minutiae of life and share it with others.
Currently, I have 8,452 photos on my phone’s camera roll because I can’t stop snapping photos of everything. Not even quitting Instagram has stopped this habit of documenting random stuff every day. I have photos of flowers, of trees, and a million photos of my cat. I have photos of meals from multiple angles and photos of my family taking photos of our meals because the ridiculousness of all of us around a table snapping away is comical. Thousands of useless collections of pixels that I most likely will never look at again, hogging up my phone storage. Why am I still taking so many photos when I’m not even posting most of them anywhere?
I’m trying to really scrutinize how social media has ingrained itself so deeply and changed the way we experience things that it now feels almost impossible to break the habit. There used to be a point years ago when real connections were made, but now it’s devolved into mindless entertainment optimized for quick consumption and even quicker replies and has little to do with friends and people you follow. And we’ve had to learn how to make stupid 15 second videos because we don’t want to get left behind in the dust as these platforms move on.
Even though I’m down to one social media platform, I still can’t break the habit of sharing random stuff to strangers that nobody will remember in an hour. Does anyone really care that I spotted the first ramps of the season at my local farmer’s market? What about my snarky two cents on politics? No! I guess Instagram wasn't the only problem because leaving IG didn’t solve my compulsion for snapping photos of everything.1
Turns out, after 16 years on social media, breaking this habit isn’t easy. It’s really pretty hard, actually, just like any other addiction that provides us with quick hits of validation and escapism.
What’s fascinating is that even though Gen Z are the digital natives, I don’t see this behavior in my own kids that I see with my fellow Gen Xers and Millennials who have migrated like a flock from platform to platform. I know Gen Z loves short-form videos and TikToks and my kids are on their phones as much as anyone, but I don’t see my kids posting daily on social media like I have for 16 years. They consume, but they barely post at all.
And when I think about that, it’s kind of embarrassing. It makes me believe that even though our generation weren’t the ones who grew up with social, we are the ones who grew into it and are hanging on for dear life to the glory days before it all went to algorithms, sponsored content, and lunatic tech billionaires.
Memories are not just photos
I still believe that documenting our lives is important, not just for creating legacy and preserving memories, but also because personal history is collective history. And I also still believe that there can be value in sharing an experience online, even with strangers on the internet because life can be really lonely—I’m lonely— and communities as we’ve defined them in the past are disappearing. Posting something that’s been on our minds can act like a release, and a spark of connection can make us feel like we’re a part of something. As humans, we need that.
But what I’m missing when I rely too much on a photograph to capture a moment to be shared later on, is the visceral feeling of that memory. This is what I cherish the most when I want to remember something. I used to feel regret because I have entire chapters of my life without any visual documentation. These were some of the most adventurous years of my youth. But then I remember that I can conjure up those memories through a song, a familiar place, a taste, the feeling of the sun or the rain on my skin and evoke all those feelings again. What’s delightful is that it isn’t alway predictable when it happens. It might happen randomly when I suddenly get a whiff of jasmine or hear a snippet of a song blasting from a passing car.
An image may be worth a thousand words, but 8,452 photos on my camera roll aren’t a substitute for a feeling. You have to be fully present in the moment for that.
Related reading
Links and things
Speaking of changing our behavior, “What Yelp has really augured is an entire review culture. Twenty years later, it is now nearly impossible to get through a day without being asked to rate something”
How Modern Culture Drowns Out Psychology’s Important Message Humans crave connection, but society tells us to prize self-sufficiency. (Psychology Today)
This was kind of a depressing read, like dramatically so. So of course I am sharing it with you.Bananas are at risk of extinction, but scientists have a plan: A fungus that can infect over 100 different plants is devastating the popular fruit. (Popular Science)
Could social media support healthy online conversations? New_ Public is working on it (Nieman Lab)
The freedom of not having to visually curate my life is huge, though. I love not having to pretend that I sit at cafes all day when the reality is that I’m married to my couch.
Sometimes photos can be a great stimulus of a memory... but memories as you say, are sensory experiences. For example the algo has recently served me old cartoons and commercials from when I was very young. Some I had completely forgotten about until I saw them, but what surprised me was that often it wasn't the visual but actually the songs that got me! One commercial I knew every single word and inflection that I hadn't thought about in maybe 38 years! It is crazy how these things are still somewhere in the deep recesses of our brains, awaiting a new neural connection to be conjured. Sure, pics are the easiest way to document things, but I have been thinking a LOT about sound lately. Why aren't we recording messages, sounds, thoughts? And I wish we could capture smells!
I have been thinking about this a lot since, um, 2018, when I finally learned how to use a proper DSLR camera and noticed how it changed my approach to walking or hiking. That led to me being a lot more deliberate about deciding "am I going for this hike to be in nature (or walk to explore the city), or to photograph it?" That started spilling over into being more conscious about noticing how using my phone to photograph stuff was actually changing the experience of walking/eating/visiting a museum/whatever. I still take photos for documentary purposes (and, ngl, for my newsletter), but it has become much more of a conscious choice, one made with the knowledge of what I am giving up by doing it.