iCloud Stole My Memories
On taking too many videos & the technological battle of can vs. should
“I often worry that our generation is so consumed with capturing every waking moment that we miss out on every waking moment.”
I had this thought about two months ago when I was at a concert in Dallas. I went to see Marc Rebillet, a man whose creative act is a mesmerizing mix of music and comedy. As I watched Marc do his thing, I noticed these two girls in front of me taking videos on their phones. I’m not joking when I say that they probably spent 60 minutes capturing the concert that night. Snapchat selfies, Instagram stories, and, of course, the classic camera roll. The performance was only about two hours long, but I barely remember a time when I didn’t see those bright little rectangles of light in my lower peripheral vision.
Naturally, I took a few pictures and videos of my own. I couldn’t resist recording the ripped French-American man who makes a living by making up music and weaving it in with random improv skits. No two shows of his are the same, except for the fact that he walks around the stage in his underwear.
Judging by their laughter at the confetti drifting down from the ceiling, I was convinced that the girls were on mushrooms. But as I stood there with my orange earplugs in, one part of me made a snap judgment: “It’s absolutely retarded that they’re taking so many videos. They have front row seats and are missing out on the entire experience by trying to tell their fake friends about what they’re doing right now. They are robbing themselves of their own lives.”
But then the more compassionate part of me argued back: “They’re probably just having fun and want to make some memories out of this. Don’t judge them. Be delicate. Remember: just like Narcissus, they might not have a healthy sense of self and may worship almost anything outside of themselves to fill that sense of emptiness that they don’t even know they have. Who knows: maybe in this DoorDash world, nobody bothered to take a few minutes to truly see or hear them without a screen nearby. Maybe they’ve never ever had the space to listen to themselves while society force-feeds them their every next thought.”
Now that I’ve had some more time to sit with this, I still side with my immediate impression. While I don’t judge the girls personally, their behavior is a microcosm that reveals something scary about our society. To me, it seems wrong to always document things because you can’t really be where you are—even if you have a hands-free GoPro. There’s always some amount of energy expended on thinking about how things will turn out for the unguaranteed future. Even worse, if someone AirDrops their life to the public, then the beauty of secrecy is stolen. I think it’s terrifying that young people today are never truly alone, convinced by our culture that they must become rather than be.
Beethoven
The week before Dallas, I experienced the exact opposite thing when I had the fortune of seeing all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos live in Austin. At the symphony, they have a rule where you can’t take pictures or videos during the performance. While I’m sure some of this has to do with not distracting the musicians, there’s also a more subtle message I think they’re trying to tell us: Listen up: this moment is too precious to record.
During the concert, I thought about rebelling. I had sweeeet seats—just a few body lengths away from the shiny black Steinway. While the musicians worked their magic, I heard the words of Steve Jobs playing on repeat in my mind: “Life was made up by people who are no smarter than you, and you can change it.” So I told myself, “OK, just turn off the flash. Do whatever you want. These rules were just made up by someone else. Take a video.”
But as I sat with that thought, I realized that I might never see the concertos performed ever again. Like every moment in life, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Only this one was extra special, and I mentally kicked myself in the ass once I realized that I wasn’t really appreciating the very thing that I’d been looking forward to for months. Just like a mindfulness meditation, I brought my focus back to the miracle of the 47 people playing their instruments all on cue, free from error, in front of thousands.
Can vs. Should
After the Beethoven concert, I still took a picture of the musicians in black, bowing with their warm wooden instruments. While I’m not against taking pictures or videos, the girls at the concert showed me that this compulsive just-in-case capturing of nearly every single second of life is a categorical abuse of the camera. The camera was invented to take a snapshot of reality, not to replace reality. A 24/7 vlogging mentality seems to whisper something about our generation: we don’t know how to enjoy each moment and therefore this life because we are always worried about the recorded future.
All of this poses the question: what is actually worth recording? Do we always have to take a picture of our noodles? Do we always have to have our phones on us when we go for a walk, like the ankle bracelet of a parolee? As Ayn Rand once wrote, “A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.”
The more I think about technology, the more I come to the same conclusion: just because I can do something doesn’t mean that I should. In his thorough 1934 book Technics and Civilization, the historian Lewis Mumford wrote about this trend in the history of technology:
“One is faced here with a magnified form of a danger common to all inventions: a tendency to use them whether or not the occasion demands. Thus our forefathers used iron sheets for the fronts of buildings, despite the fact that iron is a notorious conductor of heat: thus people gave up learning the violin, the guitar, and the piano when the phonograph was introduced, despite the fact that the passive listening to records is not in the slightest degree the equivalent of active performance: thus the introduction of anesthetics increased fatalities from superfluous operations.”
A friend of mine once wrote that tradeoffs are the meaning of life. But as technology evolves, some of these tradeoffs become increasingly invisible. In an age of abundance, scarcity seems scarce. We never have to worry about how many photos we take, songs we save, or notes we make. Copy and paste diminishes taste.1
But with Polaroid photos and Billy Joel vinyl and Penguin Classics, there’s one thing that makes prized possessions so prized: they can be lost forever. Nobody values a sunset that lasts forever; that’s just a simulation. Nobody values an avocado that doesn’t expire; that’s just a rock. As the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote, “Death is the mother of beauty.” What if our most prized memories are erased when we try to record their entirety? What if our anxious acts of preservation are actually acts of destruction?
Sunsets
A few weeks ago, I was writing at my wooden desk when I suddenly saw these rosy-red fingers of light peek through the window to my left. It was 5 pm, and the sun was already setting. Woah, I have to go out and see this one.
I slipped my flip flops on and raced up the stairs to the rooftop of my apartment to see it. The fact that the sunset would be gone in a few minutes brought an extra sense of urgency into my life. It’s so strange and sad how sometimes beauty is only found in the disappearing act. That’s why I always remind myself that for all the annoying and awesome things in life, it could be the last time that any one of them takes place.
The sunset was pretty, pretty good. I brought my phone up with me for a photo. But then I put it away and spent the next ten minutes caressing my eyeballs over the curves of the red-then-pink-then-purple clouds. As I stood there watching the colors fade to black, I pondered the words of Ray Bradbury: “Who wants a sunset to last?”
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Ironically, people are the worst photographers in an age where the best cameras are available. If you really watch how some people take pictures, they tend to do a quick burst shot of like 7 crooked pics and call it a day. Using a Polaroid camera made me realize how bad I was at this, too. But when you only have 10 pictures to take, there’s higher stakes. I like higher stakes.
That opening line hits hard. Nice essay, Baxter. I enjoyed reading.