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In the same vine, people "doing it for the 'Gram": you go to a fancy vacation or restaurant not to enjoy the experience, but to enjoy the validation from the th

In the same vine, people "doing it for the 'Gram": you go to a fancy vacation or restaurant not to enjoy the experience, but to enjoy the validation from the thumbs up, hearts, comments of your friends social media... I wonder if that's a valid craving after all, a craving for social contact, sadly a craving being answered not by real life interaction, but by a mobile client hitting some API endpoint called something like /post/{$ID}/reaction/heart , ending on your phone pinging with the notification "$friend liked your post"...

nonrandomstring 2y ago
> but to enjoy the validation Absolutely. It makes me think about the things in life that don't need "validation". Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". It draws a circle around a personal or group experience that explicitly does not or cannot be shared. I think maybe it somehow earns more respect and interest than a photo, and I think with ubiquitous AI image manipulation the currency of "pics or it didn't happen" and "for the Gram" is going to vanish in a puff of incredulity. Now you can just text-prompt for a picture of you and some celebrity you "randomly met" in front of Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal! You can probably rent some bots to "auto-like" you on social media, right? So who is fooling who now?
- rexf 2y ago
  > Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". sounds like a partial retroactive justification to me. sure, you wouldn't get the full experience via a photo or verbal anecdote, but it's not like camera smartphones were ubiquitous in the 80s either.
  - nonrandomstring 2y ago
    > retroactive justification Oh I'm not "justifying" it, because I don't need to. This isn't that conversation. I'm just remarking on a difference of culture over time for those who are interested. As you say, there were no cellphones back then, so a quite different world.
cambaceres 2y ago
It's always so easy to spot these people at restaurants.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

> but to enjoy the validation Absolutely. It makes me think about the things in life that don't need "validation". Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". It draws a circle around a personal or group experience that explicitly does not or cannot be shared. I think maybe it somehow earns more respect and interest than a photo, and I think with ubiquitous AI image manipulation the currency of "pics or it didn't happen" and "for the Gram" is going to vanish in a puff of incredulity. Now you can just text-prompt for a picture of you and some celebrity you "randomly met" in front of Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal! You can probably rent some bots to "auto-like" you on social media, right? So who is fooling who now?

rexf 2y ago
> Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". sounds like a partial retroactive justification to me. sure, you wouldn't get the full experience via a photo or verbal anecdote, but it's not like camera smartphones were ubiquitous in the 80s either.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > retroactive justification Oh I'm not "justifying" it, because I don't need to. This isn't that conversation. I'm just remarking on a difference of culture over time for those who are interested. As you say, there were no cellphones back then, so a quite different world.

cambaceres 2y ago

It's always so easy to spot these people at restaurants.