Privacy, sure, but here’s another reason to leave Facebook
On the way back from lunch, I happened to pass a fire truck and an ambulance that had been called to College Park to deal with an emergency. The vehicles had been left unattended, which made it a perfect opportunity for some woman to hop on the back of the fire truck so her boyfriend could whip out a camera phone and take a picture of her.
I don’t know what it is about that, exactly, that didn’t sit right with me. I mean, it’s probably technically illegal, but so are a lot of things that aren’t a big deal and which nobody cares about. I don’t even think it was a case of being someone who works on Yonge Street looking down on one of the many people walking around with a camera, because to be honest, I usually think that’s kind of cute.
If suppose if I had to guess, I’d say it was the whole “Omigod, baby, get a shot of me on the back of the fire truck while some old man could be laying on the floor of the mall having a stroke right now for all we know” aspect of it that rubbed me the wrong way.
I know it’s becoming a cliché to rattle off a list of reasons why we should all leave Facebook forever, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that these two people represent a new and perfectly valid reason. I mean, you know what they immediately did with that photo, right? They posted it online so that a bunch of friends and aggressively compiled acquaintances could see it, acknowledge that they’d done it, and validate their trivial afternoon.
Facebook’s obviously not the cause of that sort of behaviour, but it’s certainly the most popular symptom of it. And if leaving Facebook en masse could be counted as even a small step towards a society in which nobody considers it a dignified accomplishment to jump on the back of a fire truck and pose for a photo while the city’s finest struggle against the clock to pull a terrified Girl Scout troop from an elevator shaft before the final cable snaps, then I think we can call that a collective victory.
But as it is, those people probably took their photo, added it to their profiles, and then just walked away without so much as a firefighter coming back to the truck and shouting “Hey, what the hell?” and turning the hose on the both of them. I mean, to be fair, I really have no way of knowing what happened after I left. But I’m assuming it wasn’t anything like that.
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Very good point. In the spirit of such things, I’ve been trying to refrain from posting anywhere details of my amazing Sunday afternoon, even though it was an afternoon dreamed up for a social media update, what with the beer pitchers with lunch on dreamy patio under grapevines, followed by indulgent afternoon karaoke, you know? And there I’ve gone and done it. At least firetrucks weren’t involved.
Aw, go ahead, Kerry! Everybody does it from time to time. Lord knows I’m guilty of it.
Yeah, I don’t know why people think that that’s cool. “Look, I’m on a firetruck!” Unless you then put out a fire, that’s just stupid. I went out for drinks with a Naval officer a while ago and when we went to leave he discovered a couple of girls were wearing his hat and posing for pictures. I had a similar reaction of annoyance, except I did get to see them blush when he said “Um, that’s not a costume, thanks,” and took it back.
Heh… Very nice.
And to be fair, now that you mention it, I have no way of proving that those two people didn’t put out a fire before they jumped on that truck.