I went to the Zoo recently and I couldn’t believe how many people immediately whip out their phones to film the animals in the exhibit.
Like, if looking at images of animals on your phone was anywhere near as enjoyable as seeing them in person, why even pay to come to the fucking zoo!?
The animal you are looking at is already existing within a dead facsimile of its actual environment! It’s already like looking at an image!
Do people really go back and look at these images and videos and feel the same feeling as when they’re looking a marmoset of exotic bird right in the eyes a few feet away from them?
It feels like we’ve all become trained to whip out our phones and start filming the moment anything interesting starts happening. The way everyone prefers this mediated experience to just being in reality experiencing art or living things or a concert or whatever just makes me feel kind of bleak. To me this is a great example of what is meant when we talk about Alienation.
Anyone else agree or am I being a grumpy geriatric shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn?
I'd say it's a little of both.
People of all ages are certainly conditioned to record and photograph every little thing out of the ordinary, which takes away from being present. Phones in general are incredibly distracting from taking you out of the moment.
It's also incredible technology the ability to capture any photo/video at any time. There's no real tangible loss of taking too many pictures ie you aren't wasting any film/money.
Photos/video are really just a way to remember the past. People in the 90s would record pretty benign stuff too with camcorders and cameras, just the tech was more expensive and not readily affordable and available like it is today.
Also the zoo in particular brings out the nature photographer larp. Documenting nature in the wild takes an incredible amount of skill, luck, and patience. At the zoo you cut out all the hard work and get the instant gratification of shots which would be borderline impossible irl
Is anyone going to look back fondly on sleeping zoo animals or shaky concert footage? Prob not. I just think the conditioning of it is a way to help us remember the past, so at the end of the day it's only mildly annoying at worst, and pretty harmless.
I think a better example of technology alienation is a couple/family all scrolling on their phones during dinner together.