The Spectacle We Made of Everything
We have destroyed all the beautiful things in the world by turning them into a performance for social media. Every ritual, every piece of memory, every moment we once held sacred has been converted into a spectacle to be showcased online so we could prove to the world that we were truly alive.
Weddings used to be the most important day in two people's lives. The camera used to capture the moments as they actually felt. When you looked back at those photographs, they brought smiles to your faces because you could still recollect what you were thinking, what was happening around you. Now everything has been reduced to an act. The smiles are fake, the laughter is fake, and all the candid shots are no longer candid.
The same applies to raising children. Kids are the most joyful bundle of wonder, but the moment they are born, their parents are already choreographing adorable moments to be captured and circulated on social media. Those moments no longer feel genuine because the spontaneity has vanished entirely. The only way you can sense any of it is through a screen, because when it was happening in front of you, you missed it completely.
People are living the best moments of their lives through the viewfinder of a camera. This compulsion to showcase your finest moments in the most flattering light so the world can admire and validate your existence is so hollow that it makes me want to avoid such gatherings altogether. It is difficult to respect someone who conducts their entire life as a performance for an audience.
We already know how to get out of this. It is not rocket science. We need to return to the camera's original purpose, which is to capture moments without staging them so the photographs feel true. It is perfectly fine to be awkward in front of a camera. What is not fine is missing the moment itself.
You are not a performer. You are a person who experiences good things in life. Treat those moments with the care they deserve by being present in them, by actually living them. The camera can record whatever it happens to catch. It exists only to stir the memory of these beautiful moments later. It cannot define your experiences for you. It should not.
The camera is there to capture the moments. The moments should not exist solely for the camera.