Thursday, April 14, 2011

...This world holds some universal truths...

I'm something of a relativist when it comes to the big super serious issues. I don't like to lock myself into the notion that there are universal truths. I find that kind of thinking terribly closed and limiting. Therefore I tend not to speak in absolutes (though I'm sure my shitty music Mondays would have convinced you otherwise....) However there are occasionally things, concepts, ideas, that end up bringing my otherwise accepting and open mind to a halt. It turns out there are some things that are absolute in this world. Nothing serious like good and evil or the value of life or anything like that. No the one absolute truth in this world is far less serious, yet just as sinister.

Let me draw up a scenario for you. You're a sophomore in college (probably a girl...lets be honest here...), and it's your first day with your brand new macbook. You've already set it up just the way you like it, and downloaded your favorite non-standard browser (chrome most likely...Firefox if you're a stumble addict like me...) and now you're poking around the preloaded software to see if there's anything interesting. Lo and behold, you come across a little application called "photo booth". Curious, you click on it and it obeys your commands, bouncing happily on the dock as it loads. The webcam activates and your face appears on the monitor. Curiouser still you click on the camera. The application counts down and, unprepared for the picture, you make a stupid face as though you were paused unexpectedly mid-sentence (a place where nobody and I do mean NOBODY is photogenic).

Well after a few retakes, you finally have a vaguely acceptable picture. But then, oh what's that? This button says effects. I wonder what that does. Barely able to contain your excitement, you click the button and up pops a menu. Like a kid on christmas, you tear through each and every single filter. From sepia tone to that stupid Andy Worhol multi-colored one, from the filter that makes your head skinny to the fish-eye one that makes you fat. Of course, seeing as you've been given this VIP access to instant hilarity, you must take one photo with every filter. Like a mad scientist, you giggle incessantly to your own distorted visage as though this is the most hilarious thing you've ever come across (as if you'd never EVER seen a funhouse mirror in your life before). Naturally this infinite well-spring of good cheer simply cannot go unshared. So you run down the hall and get all of your friends to come experience the glory that is your new-found photo-taking-application. Inevitably, they find this application hilarious as well and, giggling like a group of teenagers who bought their first ever copy of Cosmo (and yes I'm talking to you too guys...you know you laughed at that thing). After you've had your fill of hilarity and mirth, your rampage is not complete yet...oh no. Now, like the ever loving philanthropist you are, you feel the need, no the compulsion to share your treasure trove of laughs with the rest of the world. So what do you do? You put them all up on facebook.

That's right ladies and gents. The ONE universal truth in this world is that somehow macbooks inevitably mean that YOU, the OWNER of said macbook will create an ENTIRE 300 PHOTO ALBUM ON FACEBOOK of you going through EVERY. SINGLE. FILTER. and taking pictures with your friends. Now I may be a jaded, cynical internet superstar, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. I mean one can only look at so many permutations of a person using that half-of-your-face-mirrored-so-that-it-looks-like-your-whole-face-but-isn't-quite-perfect filter or that REALLY OBNOXIOUS Andy Worhol multi-colored unicorn vomit of a filter before you become a hateful son of a bitch like me. I don't know how many albums there are of this swill on facebook, but I don't think we have even INVENTED a number that goes THAT HIGH yet. So, to all you macbook owners out there, PLEASE stop taking A BILLION photos of yourself and your friends with photo booth. I get it, there are filters that make your face look funnier than it already is. Fine, have fun with that. But you HAVE to draw the line somewhere, and that somewhere is spamming MY newsfeed with that nonsense. I don't need to know that you've just tagged yourself in 300 new pictures of YOU taking pictures of YOU sitting in your room alone. I know that you're not that vain (and if you are, how have you not starved to death admiring your own face in the mirror yet?!)

...And that's what I learned today.

PS Those runs of pictures make it SUPER annoying to creep your profile on facebook too...just saying...

3 comments:

  1. heh, I've had my MacBook for a year and a half and haven't done this yet... maybe I should get on that. >:}

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  2. Somehow I knew you would say that :P

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  3. Haven't noticed these things...

    Then again, I don't generally look through the albums that have more than twenty pictures. I don't have the patience for that many.

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