Nostalgia for Now
wilsonquarterly.com
wilsonquarterly.com
Someone born in 1940 didn't grow up watching their favorite children's movies over and over and over on VHS, you know? You missed something then, it was often just gone. Maybe there'd be a picture or two of the event (or stills from the film) in a book somewhere in the library. (granted, yes, now they can go back and see that stuff, probably, but they couldn't in, say, the 60s or 70s, for the most part)
It's been trending this way since the camera and phonograph were invented, but things really took off right around the 80s—walkman, home camcorders becoming more affordable and the media cheaper, VCR, cassette tape, and so on.
It's only going to get worse. Kids born today will very likely be able to walk around entire recorded 3D environments from their youth. Grandma's house at Christmastime when you were 9 years old? Done. Maybe we'll even be able to reconstruct semi-interactive versions of the people who were there. Your junior year high school dance? Don't see pictures and video of it, live it again. We'll see what effects that has on culture when it comes, I guess.
The Butlerian Jihad cannot come soon enough.
This line jumped out to me - because it is how my mother is. She wants a photo for the memory but never pauses for the memory itself. She was confused when I visited a foreign country for the first time and didn't take a single picture. Myself and the author seem to share the same feeling of wanting to experience something, not keep proof of it contained in a photo.
I still take photographs. But I do so to remember how things were. The photos I have of my family are mostly candid shots of them doing some mundane task and the idea of "3-2-1 cheese" is missing entirely. My grandmother bringing a birthday cake to my nephew, a smile on their faces. My sister investigating her sea monkeys with a look of curiosity. Things like that. Because they might not remember the experience - but I'm sure they'll remember being there. The experience, to me, is the important thing to photograph and not the fact they were there.
It's for that reason I find "selfie culture" to be somber. They aren't photographing the experience - they're documenting that "they were there" and they have proof they were because they have a selfie. But they know they were there so what is the selfie for?
But they did see it and then they had to run off to the next thing they needed to see. They just didn't have time to soak up the view and wait. There was something else waiting for them, a cab, a dinner, a flight, a job, a child, a pet or countless other distractions.
Every time I get to take even a minute to see something I cherish it. Then I have to run off to the next task to do.
I'm not sure I agree with the authors projection of possible motives of those they were observing. There is always danger in assuming you know what is going through someone else's mind.
Only people do the same on their spare time, for the whole duration of events, in the holidays, etc. Where there is no other pressing thing waiting for them like a flight, a job or a child. Besides all of those things could wait for 10 minutes.
As for non pressing things and "countless other distractions", that's the whole point of the author. They don't appreciate or cherish or stop to look at the things they visit, they just pass through to the next thing.
>I'm not sure I agree with the authors projection of possible motives of those they were observing. There is always danger in assuming you know what is going through someone else's mind.
Only we do know what's in most people's minds, it's mindless consumption of places and experiences, where they care more to post they've been there than of actually being there. Not to mention that the vast majority of those images (countless photos taken during a concert for example) nobody absolutely cares, not even the picture taking them will think about them twice.
It's funny how rarely I see people describing their own actions in these terms, though. I mean, I'm sure it happens, but the dominant mode seems more like "my behavior is authentic, those other people are being fake".
I get annoyed by phonecam-mediated behavior in its extremes, for sure, but I sometimes wonder if I'm not being perceived that way when I'm doing things (sharing a concert photo with a friend who couldn't make it; trying to get just the right angle and exposure on some striking scene) that feel "authentic" inside my own head.
I have been guilty of mindless consumption myself.
I any case, it's the mode of consumption that makes it mindless, not the persons intent (or lack thereof).
Apparently for many people -- perhaps even most -- showing off that they've had an experience to others is far more important than actually having had it.
I'll say, I have regretted this mindset in one instance. Christmas morning with our kids. I wish I had either more pictures or videos of my sons on Christmas morning when they were little. The zoo, museums, monuments, parks are more fun to experience in person. But sometimes you want to see your kids as their happy younger selves too.
Me and my girl picked one of these up for trips and the amounts of picture perfect shots/obsessive photographing has dropped dramatically. We can't really post the photos, but they decorate the bedroom nicely.
I’d waited 30 years to experience the wonder, and finally I was there, standing what seemed like mere yards away from one of the falls, vainly wearing a yellow poncho that was somehow supposed to keep me dry from the spray of water. The roar of the thing causing my insides to pound, the smell of wet rock, the mist almost too thick to see through — the moment was overwhelming.
Suddenly, a hand tapped me on the shoulder, and a young man about my age asked me in broken English if I would move away from where I was standing. He and his family wanted to take a picture in front of the falls, and I, rudely enough, was in their frame.
I wanted to deny his request, to tell their family, in my own broken French, that they would have to wait until I was finished experiencing the falls, or, better yet, that they should turn away from their cameras and have real-life experiences of their own. But I considered that noncompliance would seem rude, and so, taking one final look at the waterfall, nodded and left to find my partner. A few seconds later, I looked back at the family to see how their picture was turning out. They were gone. They didn’t want to see Niagara Falls. They wanted a picture so that they could be seen forever standing in front of Niagara Falls.
I've seen many instances of this revolting phenomenon at concerts. Illuminated audiences with arms raised, blocking the view of others and ruining their own experience, just to capture some blurry photo or shaky video with distorted audio.
As a millenial I grew up a diehard technophile, and even after becoming a software engineer and being fully immersed in technology daily, I've become wary and mistrusting of many "innovations". I don't know if this is a natural process of maturing (get off my lawn?) or if we are slowly realizing how damaging these new habits can be.
Hologram Plaza - https://disconscious.bandcamp.com/album/hologram-plaza
A Brief History of Vaporwave - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdpP0mXOlWM
I think status updates and other posts are actually motivated by reward seeking: the approval/admiration of others via likes etc. Therefore a photo in the moment is not a nostalgic attempt to capture the present but rather a judgment that the experience itself is less valuable than the social reward that can be gained by sharing it.
Selfies are interesting; I think they are slightly related to the mass availability of media. However I don't think it's exactly as the author suggests. Rather, the problem here is that everyone has seen a picture of Niagara. So a selfie is a way of personalizing (and thus making, in a way, exclusive) a well-documented experience.
Could there be special device-free venues -- bars, coffeshops, and so on where people go there to actually talk with people around them, where headphones and tiny screens are not allowed?
How do we fix this?