Captured on Film

With so many cell phones on the market today able to take photos (and video), do you ever worry about being “captured” in a not-so-flattering moment? How would you deal with a friend who decided to share such a picture or video with others?

There have been countless times that extremely unflattering pictures have been tagged of me on Facebook. It’s even worse when I’m spotted in the background of a picture in half-motion with a stupid look on my face and my friend spots me and thinks it would be funny and clever to tag me. And its EVEN WORSE when my friend knows that I hate the picture and that I don’t want it to surface and once again thinks it would be funny and clever to tag me. Well…it’s not funny and it definitely isn’t clever. Putting a picture on Facebook is an open invitation for people to look at it and when a friend puts up an unattractive picture, it is there for everyone to see.

Facebook is a phenomenon, especially in college. It’s all about posting pictures to pretty much let other people know what you’ve been up to and who you hang out with.And these days you can even post pictures from your cell phone. It’s rare to go out and not hear someone say, “You better tag me in that!” (Or something along those lines). And at a party it is pretty normal to see flashes going off and groups of girls posing for pictures. Then it makes me wonder how many pictures I’m in the background of. How many unflattering pictures of “Kara in mid-sentence” are actually floating around the internet? The thought of that makes me feel slightly ill.

Koan 6, “Nothing Goes Away, ” ponders on what actually happens to the data about us. Say a picture of you is sent through e-mail, when that photo is shared, is it stored away and somehow accessible forever? Is it impossible to completely erase something from the computer once it’s been entered? The thought of that is slightly scary to me.