22 TtdWaMO-- 2

Things you can do with a mandarin orange: Get Pretty

Well today was the last of my classes before spring break so now I'm FREE until the Monday after Easter...it's nice and all, but a pretty long time considering that I have no way of getting anywhere. Oh well, it's a break and I will most definitely enjoy it.

So I was "tutoring" yesterday in the writing center, which in this case actually means that I was just sitting IN the writing center hoping that somebody would come in. Well nobody came, so I was stuck in the little prison room reading college writing textbooks. They're not actually that bad if they're the kind that have essay excerpts and stuff, which is what this particular one was, and one author had some thoughts that I found interesting. He said that Americans are obsessed with photographs (I'm raising my hand on this one) because we want to "prove" every moment we live. We don't go somewhere to see it and be amazed, we go to take a picture so we can remember and at the very least prove to ourselves that we went. He said that we're so quick to pull out a camera to put between ourselves and the object we're capturing that we rarely experience things without the restraint of "recording" it. I dunno how much of this matters, but I think he's right...I mean (again, I'm raising my hand because I do this), before facebook and digital cameras we still took pictures, but you had to have them developed and then either have friends over for a party to show off snapshots of your trip to the Grand Canyon, or you had to stick the prints in an envelope with a stamp and everything. But now, pictures are instant-- point and shoot, upload, then tag...presto, the world knows that you exist and that you weren't kidding when you said you accomplished NOTHING over the weekend. I suppose I could somehow open the can of worms about privacy in our "modern digital age," but I think when it comes down to it, we're obsessed with people knowing about us...we've disguised unabashed self-disclosure as "sharing" and "networking" but really it's just another way for us to not be surprised and to feel a little bit closer to one of our 835 "friends." I think, somehow, this ability really isn't doing us any favors. I mean, honestly, if you only know me because we're friends on facebook, then there's kind of a whole lotta stuff that you're missing, and it zorches any chance of me ever cooking for you. But seriously, how close of "friends" are we with all these people? What do they know about me? What do they "think" they know about me? The representations we give of ourselves through the pictures we take can't ever be entirely accurate, because I'm not sure we can ever entirely know who we ourselves are-- ourselves are a mystery to many people, including ourselves.