Snap Happy – LIFE AS A HUMAN

There is a photograph of my great grandmother at the top of the staircase in my parents’ house. It is a small, grainy black and white image of a softly beautiful young lady sitting on the beach; she smiles shyly at me as if unsure whether the act of being photographed isn’t too bold an act of vanity.

Of my grandmother there are numerous photographs: surrounded by four heavily wrapped up children standing in the snow outside their house, her face flushed, proud and radiant; on the back of a bicycle at the end of a race, the wind blowing her hair away from her jubilant face. My mother has an album of photographs from her childhood, which transform from black and white into faded colours around her teens, gradually increasing in brightness as she herself becomes a woman. Each photograph tells a story: joy-filled summer holidays in Wales; birthdays; Christmases; weekends spent in the garden and first days of school; favourite party frocks; cherished toys; and unforgettable friendships.

There are currently 1,789 photograph of me on Facebook alone. They capture almost every moment of the last seven years of my life. Some, admittedly, are important achievements: my first car, after completing a 10k run, my graduation, my adventures whilst living in Australia. But most of them are simply snapshots of my everyday life: eating out, asleep on a train, dancing exuberantly in nightclubs; every ex boyfriend, holiday, festival I have been on; every stupid face I have pulled or funny hat I have worn. Every time I do anything remotely amusing it is now documented and slapped all over the Internet for the world to see.

Much is the same for every individual of my generation. Now that every mobile phone comes with an inbuilt camera and Internet access it is an unwritten rule to have a Facebook, Instagram, Shapchat, Viber, Whatsapp and Pinterest account; every miniscule event in people’s lives must be caught on camera in order to back up our online alter-egos. The constant access to snapshots of our friends’ lives may in fact be altering the way we see ourselves. There is a growing fear that unless there is documented evidence of you going for coffee with a friend, people might think you don’t have any friends. Unless you get a picture of that delicious burger you ate for lunch, you didn’t have lunch. Ego-boosting inanities have become commonplace. Essentially, people are becoming their own personal paparazzi. At every notable event I have been to recently a lot of people are more intent on getting a good photograph than they are on enjoying themselves. I rang in the New Year by Sydney Harbour Bridge, and could barely see the fireworks for all the iPads, smartphones and cameras being thrust into the air.

Where will it leave us in ten years time? There will be millions upon millions of forgotten, pointless, boring photographs swirling around the ether that is the Internet with no purpose other than to reassure the insecure that they do, in fact, have a life. But by taking a photograph of something rather than simply experiencing it aren’t we in some way sacrificing the act of living in an attempt to eternalise our existence? And besides that, I shudder to think of my grandchildren, who may one day scroll through photos of me at eighteen years of age, sitting cross-legged in the mud at Leeds festival eating spam out of the tin with my fingers. At least if my grandmother did anything that disgusting I will never have to see the evidence.

Photo Credit

Autographic Kodak Jr. – by Richard F. Lyon – Wikipedia Creative Commons

Thumbnail – Microsoft Office Clipart Collection

Guest Author Bio

Olivia Lazenby
Olivia is an English Literature graduate who spent a year living and traveling around Australia. Her travel stories have recently been published in an Ebook “Postcards from Around the World volume 1” which can be purchased for kindle on Amazon. She currently lives in Manchester and is planning more adventures to New Zealand, Asia and South America.