I wish to draw your attention to one of the newest and, I believe, most worrying manifestations of the Cult of the Selfie: unregulated recreational use of the GoPro. No longer satisfied with a close-range Selfish, millions of people who, by the looks of them rarely see the inside of a gym, have taken to sporting around those extreme sports type cameras-on-a-pole so beloved of the kind of amateur lunatic whose idea of a nice walk in the country is to spoil yours by bursting out of the bushes unannounced and hurtling past at 150 kph on an all terrain Humvee mountain bike. No visit to one of the world's natural wonders/ruins of a once-proud ancient civilisation/unsolved mysteries (created by aliens or just some clever primitives with a ruddy long ruler?) is now complete without being poked in the eye by someone pole-toting dolt trying to remotely fit all the family into a screen the size of a postage stamp.
And what's wrong with that? Perhaps nothing, but step into my time machine and let me take you back to the days before we all became obsessed with documenting every moment of our tedious existences and and uploading them for the world to see. When we travelled to broaden our minds rather than to collect the obligatory snap of our vacant mugs, jammed up against the screen, looming larger than the aforementioned wonder/ruins/mystery. Warm up the engines, strap yourselves in and we're off, flying back through time. Look outside, there goes A Popular Social Media Site With A Stupid Name, rushing away from us at the speed of light. There's mobile phones and, close behind them, the birth of the Internet, and ooh look, here come letters!
Now press your face to the glass and wonder at the strange and beautiful world outside. A world of lush foliage where strange beasts and primitive hominids inhabit a parallel universe; anything and everything isn't readily available to them at the touch of a button yet they still function. Where man interacts freely with his fellow man. Where, when wishes to have a photo of himself and his family in a local beauty spot he (gasp!) asks a stranger to take it for him! A Neighbourhood Watch survey recently revealed that less than a fifth of Britons can name their closest neighbours (though 65% would like to get to know them better). And there, in an non-allergenic nutshell, you have it. While we are more connected than ever, yet we are further apart in real terms. We can chat to people on the other side of the globe but we seldom speak to the person on the other side of the fence, much less to a passer by in the street. These days, when the phone does ring we look at it with suspicion. Despite its importance for knitting together the fabric of society, actual interaction has become an anathema. We have deleted discourse, traded vitality for virtuality, conversation for comments and love for likes.
And what's wrong with that? Perhaps nothing, but step into my time machine and let me take you back to the days before we all became obsessed with documenting every moment of our tedious existences and and uploading them for the world to see. When we travelled to broaden our minds rather than to collect the obligatory snap of our vacant mugs, jammed up against the screen, looming larger than the aforementioned wonder/ruins/mystery. Warm up the engines, strap yourselves in and we're off, flying back through time. Look outside, there goes A Popular Social Media Site With A Stupid Name, rushing away from us at the speed of light. There's mobile phones and, close behind them, the birth of the Internet, and ooh look, here come letters!
Now press your face to the glass and wonder at the strange and beautiful world outside. A world of lush foliage where strange beasts and primitive hominids inhabit a parallel universe; anything and everything isn't readily available to them at the touch of a button yet they still function. Where man interacts freely with his fellow man. Where, when wishes to have a photo of himself and his family in a local beauty spot he (gasp!) asks a stranger to take it for him! A Neighbourhood Watch survey recently revealed that less than a fifth of Britons can name their closest neighbours (though 65% would like to get to know them better). And there, in an non-allergenic nutshell, you have it. While we are more connected than ever, yet we are further apart in real terms. We can chat to people on the other side of the globe but we seldom speak to the person on the other side of the fence, much less to a passer by in the street. These days, when the phone does ring we look at it with suspicion. Despite its importance for knitting together the fabric of society, actual interaction has become an anathema. We have deleted discourse, traded vitality for virtuality, conversation for comments and love for likes.
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