Hmm, a couple of weeks back we had the snowmobilers chasing a moose in Maine and this week we have a man taking a selfie while just about cheek to cheek with a squirrel.  Well guess what? Neither episode ended so well.  What’s wrong with these people?  Are they candidates for this years Darwin Awards?

And it got me thinking, always a dangerous thing!  When people post photographs or video that go “viral” was that (going viral) their intent all along?  Or is it just caprice?  I would not strictly rule out purposeful intent.  I suppose that you could focus your raison d’etre to “viral” – all for a brief shining moment of fleeting fame and then a return to anonymous oblivion.  There are clearly folks who follow this Kafkaesque path – to join the ignominious pantheon of those gone viral before them, whom no one remembers now.  But for the most part, I believe that people just post because people just post.  We don’t feel complete unless our friends, superficial and real, witness our antics, and no antic or event is too trivial to record.

It all kind of goes with photographs of dinner.  About fifteen years ago my wife, son, and I were appalled by a couple who video recorded what they were having for dinner on vacation in Santa Fe.  What a moronic thing to do, or so we thought.  Now people do it all the time.

I suppose that as long as there are people who care, or fain to care, such pursuits are legitimate.  A hundred years from now logs of Facebook activity will offer up valuable historic records of everyday life and everyday concerns.  In that regard they are automatically placed in an annotated context.  And these images will speak to us, perhaps a bit more clearly, than the glimpses of nineteen century life that everyday photographs from that period do.