Great article. I laughed. I wonder if this is mostly a matter of indiscriminate visibility and a lack of friction?

In the old days, there was that moment when visiting someone's house (friend, relative maybe) and the topic of family vacations came up. Then someone suggests the slide projector. You could almost feel the silent "uggh" from the people who were not on the vacation. The worst part would be the unknown length of the slide show. (ten minutes? two hours?) But setting up the slide projector was a fair effort, so it could easily be put off "until next time you come over" (phew! Dodged a bullet!)

Now you just pop them up on FB and they are there for all to see. Compound that with the fact that FB's sharing controls are so complicated that actually just sharing with a particular subset (immediate family, grandparents, etc) is nigh impossible for ordinary mortals and there you are! Bazillions of terrible family photos a click away, or worse: a scroll away, no click needed.

Physical photos did have some advantages: at least they could be avoided! ;D