One thing I consciously decided to do when I first started
this blog was to never post public pictures of myself. There were a couple of
reasons for this. One being a tradition that goes back to the days of bulletin
board systems (BBS) and the early days of the internet that you were not supposed to do that due to a person wanting to keep their anonymity. In those
days, you were expected to use an alias and not go by your real name for a
reason. Part of that was to protect yourself from the potential criminal behavior of others. Now
we have gone in the complete opposite in that not only is your name and face
out there for anyone to see, but where you live, cars you own, etc. In other
words, it’s an open invitation for all sorts of creepy criminal behavior out
there.
The real reason I don’t like to post pictures of myself is
not so much for the reason I just mentioned, but for a more artistic one. I wanted the focus of
this blog to be on what is out there in the world and not myself. I want you to see that mountain, that rock formation, that forest, that animal, that movie location, or
whatever piece of scenery I was showing without me being in the picture. I like
the idea of giving the 1st person perspective pictures (and video)
to at least give an attempt to show you what it would be like if you were
where I was standing.
Years ago I used to mention how a person on a site I was on
was constantly posting nature pictures, but with her face in a good portion of
them. It was kind of annoying because it was almost like someone standing up in
front of the television during a crucial scene. I wanted to see the beautiful scenery,
or check the snow level conditions, and her big mug would be in them. The whole
thing came across as, “Just look at me!” A little too narcissistic and trying
to get attention in a way that the site was not really designed for. In fairness,
she stopped doing a lot of that so I stopped saying much about it on here.
That was really before social media sites took off. What I
was just talking about was the tip of the iceberg because now everyone is
taking pictures of themselves constantly. Just last week I was walking along
somewhere and I passed a family. The father said to everyone, “Time to take a
selfie!” He proceeded to pull out the selfie stick and the family bent down for
a picture.
My worst experiences with this sort of thing are when I am
trying to take a picture of an animal at a zoo or aquarium. People will start
jamming others to get as close as possible with their backs to the animal.
Naturally, they are assuming the animal will cooperate which is a story in
itself.
I understand the need people have for family pictures. I
also understand the need to show those pictures to other family members and
friends. However, I think we are overdoing it on this one. I feel sorry for
people on sites like Instagram because all they know how to do is take
self-portraits.
For all practical purposes, this site is anti-selfie. It has
always been this way, and I intend to keep it that way.
Btw, did you see the pictures above? Notice I didn’t pose in
front of the camera for them? ;)
