Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

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> social media ensures we're constantly exposed to the highlight reel of people's lives

Perhaps because I don't use FB, IG, YouTube, Twitter, etc... I only see the real-world reflection of social media and it looks miserable.

For example, when I visit Key West people can stand in line for upwards of an hour to take a photo in front of the "Southern Most Point". I mean these people are in paradise and have the look of misery on their face, all just so they can put on a fake smile for a selfie, presumably just so they can post this "highlight" to social media. Instantly when the photo is done the smile disappears and they start swiping thru the results of their photos just hoping they got at least one that conveys whatever image they are hoping to convey (I am good looking, I am happy, I am in front of this famous landmark). This is not to say there are not life experiences worth a wait in line, and may be the juice is worth the squeeze with social media, but the real world counter-part just looks sad.

It's really not all as bad as you perceive. This is more a problem with the mental state of the people in that line. The misery (if you see it as such) of vacation photos predates social media. You can go through some old family photo albums and see that. All social media does is broaden the audience. The pathology of misery might seek out social media, but that doesn't make social media the genesis of all that misery.

Without these photos, whether posted to Facebook, Instagram, or a family photo album, we tend to forget about wonderful experiences over time. A little work in the moment isn't such a high price pay as long as it doesn't consume you.

From the other end it's not all bad either. When I see my friends and family sharing pictures of their vacations, kids, and successes, it makes me genuinely happy for them. That's the only reason that I still check Facebook every few days. We don't all need to make life a contest.

> When I see my friends and family sharing pictures of their vacations, kids, and successes, it makes me genuinely happy for them.

Kids pictures? Jesus, it makes me want to stab myself to death with overcooked frankfurters.

(In case there is any doubt, this is not my definition of happyness.)

I don't know that all of that is due to social media. It just used to be that people took their photos with Kodaks and forced their friends to watch slideshows of them standing in front of things for which they waited in line.

Indeed. I find that the new annoying thing that people do is usually just a variation of the old annoying thing that people used to do. Social media is an enabler perhaps, but annoying people will always find other ways to be just as annoying. It's the people that are fundamentally annoying, the technology is just their weapon of choice in this case.

10000 people did that -- for a few weeks on their vacations.

Now 1000000000 do that. Every fucking moment (e.g. Instagraming your food).

> Every fucking moment (e.g. Instagraming your food).

For what it's worth, I love food and cooking and I'm delighted when my friends post food pictures on Instagram and Facebook. It inspires my hobby.

It has been calculated that it delights about ten of all those picture recipients worldwide.

Just to add to this, I saw a picture of the parking lot on Clingman's Dome in the Smoky mountains the other day, and thought "Holy shit, that is a lot of people, it wasn't like that when I was frequenting the park". Back then (not even that long ago) I remember the goal was to be on top when no one else was, and I succeed frequently, and have the pictures to show for it.

http://hikinginthesmokys.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-smoky-mo...

The population is doubling every 33 years, and that means everything is getting a lot more congested, because new landmarks aren't being created at anything like those rates.

No, people did not take that many photos, and they especially did not take that many pictures of their own beloved selves. If only because it was much more complicated to frame their own self with a camera than it is now with smartphones. Yes there were family pictures, yes there were friends/party pictures, but that was mostly separated from travel/tourism photos, and if consider the albums browsing and slideshow evenings at relatives and friends, pictures containing their travel partner(s) represented under 5% of the total (and were quickly skipped during browsing because they were generally uninteresting, so people were not wasting film for uninteresting views, a few partner pictures were enough to serve as a testimony purpose).

Today, I was watching a cycling race, and there was a couple, who had been waiting for the racers to arrive for several hours. Did they watch them when they came? Did they encourage them? No, nothing like that. They turned their back on the racers and made a selfie (with a tablet...) with themselves in the foreground and the racers in the background. And they almost caused an accident, as often. And it is like this all the time now.

There was a period when people would not live the event or experience the landscape/architecture and witness it through their own eye because they were too busy photographing or filming it. But now, it has been taken one step further: the event/landscape is only a background decoration for the real important subject: their high self.

And the easiness of taking photos, multiplied by the easiness of taking self pictures is also multiplied by the easiness of spreading them, which means the change in nature is also increased by the change in volume; the result is a fair amount of orders of magnitude higher than in film (or Kodak) time.

I wouldn't wait in line for that sort of thing, but how unhappy are they, really? Waiting in line isn't that big a deal these days, since you bring entertainment with you. "Miserable" seems like a stretch.

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