This is one of the reasons I don’t delete the often 5 - 15 mins videos that my children make of themselves Narrating their lives in that very moment, when the steal my phone and manage to open the camera app, or of us - never at our best; usually when i have a mouthful of toothpaste or food. They’re hilarious and infuriating but they feel real, like us.
What a beautiful piece and something I have thought about often. With the way we curate our lives now into the perfect little moments it can feel like any challenges or boredom didn't exist. When I argue with my siblings about something from the past, we may all have different memories of how a shared even went down, but we don't have some perfectly curated moment that smooths out all the friction. How many times do we take that perfect photo when we feel terrible. If that is all we are left with does it effect how we view our past? Even worse is AI creating memories that didn't even exist. I'd rather have the imperfect past. The boring parts. I may never want to sit and watch the mundane parts of life for hours at a time, but I lived them and I don't want to pretend I didn't. I think being able to look back and see what was true is a gift. Even if we prefer it in small doses.
My childhood spanned the last of the analog, the establishment of affordable digi cameras, and the earliest smart phones. Growing up, families were either still rocking film cameras or had “invested” in a small digital camera. Wealthy families were the first to covert to smart phones. At the time, my family converted very late to smart phones and had a small “family camera.” All that footage trapped on that camera is lost. Due to this, I have no videos from my childhood. This is the case for plenty of early Gen Zers. The BBC actually did an article about this (“Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever”).
This is one of the reasons I don’t delete the often 5 - 15 mins videos that my children make of themselves Narrating their lives in that very moment, when the steal my phone and manage to open the camera app, or of us - never at our best; usually when i have a mouthful of toothpaste or food. They’re hilarious and infuriating but they feel real, like us.
<3
What a beautiful piece and something I have thought about often. With the way we curate our lives now into the perfect little moments it can feel like any challenges or boredom didn't exist. When I argue with my siblings about something from the past, we may all have different memories of how a shared even went down, but we don't have some perfectly curated moment that smooths out all the friction. How many times do we take that perfect photo when we feel terrible. If that is all we are left with does it effect how we view our past? Even worse is AI creating memories that didn't even exist. I'd rather have the imperfect past. The boring parts. I may never want to sit and watch the mundane parts of life for hours at a time, but I lived them and I don't want to pretend I didn't. I think being able to look back and see what was true is a gift. Even if we prefer it in small doses.
Thanks!
My childhood spanned the last of the analog, the establishment of affordable digi cameras, and the earliest smart phones. Growing up, families were either still rocking film cameras or had “invested” in a small digital camera. Wealthy families were the first to covert to smart phones. At the time, my family converted very late to smart phones and had a small “family camera.” All that footage trapped on that camera is lost. Due to this, I have no videos from my childhood. This is the case for plenty of early Gen Zers. The BBC actually did an article about this (“Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever”).
You would like the movie The Secret Agent.