While I was pumping iron at the gym this
morning (not really, I was on the treadmill, but ‘I was running on a
hamster-wheel this morning’ doesn’t quite
denote swag as much), a friend who's planning to go to Europe for a shoot next
month, mentioned stumbling upon a woman (online, in the name of research) she
knew who’d been there recently.
Hoping to find sweeping landcapes turned
into cutesy Polaroid-style photographs with captions like ‘Majestic Gstaad’ and
‘Breathtaking Berlin’, she found only pictures of said globe-trotter pouting amidst various locations. While
the clear labelling was indeed, handy (Me in Prague! #duckface. Me in
Barcelona! #duckface) the futility of the exercise soon dawned on my friend,
who realised that, to this woman, the big sell of every gorgeous European
hotspot was that her pout had now been Instagrammed there.
I couldn’t help but wonder how deeply
social media has affected our life goals (another friend of mine would have
been likely to interject at this juncture and say #lifegoals—case in point). This woman had just traversed the
borders into what was once, deliciously foreign land (and is now simply status
quo for anyone whose been anywhere), and through all her
experiences in Europe, hadn’t been able to spare a photograph for the place
itself.
Going back to the old-school era (in my
mind, tucked fondly into a happy crevice) when we took our little Nikons to
Adlabs after our limited reel of 36 snaps was full up, and waited days while spools of negative turned
into the contents of albums titled ‘Goa Holiday’ and ‘Nani’s Visit 1997’—I
remember how, even then, when we lost a couple of soldiers to over-exposure, or
having left the shutter down, we’d still have two or three pictures entirely
sans people,…just to capture the space in which all those memories took place.
Having that space arrested as a whole, on
it’s own piece of glossy photo-paper meant that we could insert all the
memories we hadn’t finalised on film, instead of filling the frame with one
specific smile, or one specific awkward group hug.
Now, however, the capacity of the average
iPhone or Android phone or whatever your techno-poison of choice, is unlimited.
Fill it brimful with unending bathroom selfies, and dump onto desktop when the
phone sends it’s disciplinary ‘memory-full’ warning. Using a camera is a
photographer’s game—whip one out in a crowded bar full of lycra-and-laced up
ladies, and those click-ready smiles turned to confused ‘excuse-MEH?’ faces.
But even then, in daily flurries of
picture-taking, no one really stops to photograph a space. Not on their travels, not on their everyday tos-and-fros
from office-to-filler-time-entertainment to-home. People can only claim a space
if they push themselves into the frame, and it’s not worth claiming if it can’t
be advertised.
Enter Instagram.
I’ve already garnered a plethora of hatred
for my refusal to partake of this over-indulgent fad. ‘Why aren’t you on Insta?!’
many whinge, encouraging me to join it by telling they will be able to tag me in
drunken photos of myself that illustrate particularly how unattractive I am,
and how incapable my face is of a proper smile (if you’re thinking of Chandler
from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. that would be
accurate, yes). I realise that in this day-and-age (forgive me for that awful
phrase. It’s been used more times than that F.R.I.E.N.D.S
reference, I know) not being on Instagram is a veritable sin. It makes me stuck
in the past, detestable especially being a weed of the current crop (basically,
25 years old).
But my issue with this desultory portal is
really quite simple—it takes away from experience. It changes every event,
gathering, coffee break, drunken night, moribund weekend of viral fever, and 3
a.m. work session into a ‘photographable moment’. One might argue, ‘So what?
It’s nice to remember the little things!’ However, I have had conversations
with friends where pieces of a night together have dropped away from memory, or
little experiences have been missed because they were too busy taking red-lipstick
selfies with the bartender. Between the incessant phone-flashes and the inebriation
of too many gin-and-tonics, they barely remember being there.
But hey, there’s a picture that proves it
on Instagram.
I come across as full of loathing, too
irate to move forward with the times. I’m not, not really. I’d be a hypocrite
if I was, because I, too, have taken selfies with some bartenders in my time
(okay, regular photographs. I can’t be sold on the selfie thing still). But
this obsession to show the world you’re having a good time often precedes actually having a good time. Flipping
through my best friend’s Insta account, I found happy pictures of her on nights
where I know she’d been crying her face off not 20 minutes before that picture
was taken. The façade of a good time supercedes everything—‘If it’s not on Insta,
it doesn’t count,’ says a popular meme.
I suppose that must mean I don’t count. Oh well. I’ll just have
to work with anecdotes about a girl’s night in instead, and hope that people
don’t ask for documentation to prove the 12 stages of relaxation I went through
that evening.
