This is about
How the ubiquitous social networks are changing our societal/cultural imperatives/norms.I'm not sure whether this is about technology/commercialisation as cultural evolution, or - what would seem to be, on the face of it - an evolutionary dead-end (in human cultural terms). Time will tell.
First off, look at this rather well-made video - as an example: (apologies if you find it cringeworthy/nauseating; I didn't make it.)
You can find lots more similar YouTube videos to the above. They are apparently part of a modern phenomenon of narcissistic self-promotion, and the likely drivers seem to be not very nice, and it's enabled by IT&T (Information Technology and Telecommunications).
Photos, videos or "stories" on Facebok, Instagram, YouTube, or other social networks are becoming a common avenue for people who are seemingly compulsively seeking validation from relatives, friends, or followers, and oftentimes they do that by publishing with videos, photos and hashtags.social media,
throughout the duration of these events (as they occur) in their lives or their family's lives - whether it be, for example (say), their wedding, or honeymoon, or a birthday party, or a child's wobbling progress through pre-school kindergarten, or a holiday. The awfulness of having to suffer obligingly by sitting through a viewing of someone's family or holiday snapshots, post-holiday, is thus made worse by the thing having morphed into a sort of monstrously compelling cultural slave-driver for the holidaymaker/honeymooner.
The planning and preparation for, and the time spent on the ongoing scene-shooting for an event and then publishing/posting the photo and video shots, together with appropriate text comments, in timely fashion to the social networks can thus become a major new chore and a new and
de facto vitally "necessary" part of the event itself - but it's a chore which potentially could (and usually does, it seems) detract from the very enjoyment of that event. So one now reads reports of "horror holidays", or "horror honeymoons", where what should be a relaxing time and a time to connect with loved ones becomes quite the opposite, due to the overriding compelling objective of attempting to showcase their holiday/honeymoon on (say) Instagram. These people can apparently feel driven by a narcissistic need to prove to the world and be validated - that they are "having a great time” or "look how much we love each other", or similar - and to upstage others ("keeping up with the Joneses"), and so half or more of each precious day might be spent in production - i.e., shooting photos/videos, flying drone cameras, editing, uploading or planning Instagram posts - rather than holidaying, relaxing and passing quality time with and connecting with loved ones.
So what's the point of the holiday/honeymoon, in this context?One of the feeds I have in my BazQux feed aggregator is a journalistic site - getreligion.org. The above is discussed in an interesting commentary:
#HoneymoonHell @NYTimes: Might there be a religion ghost somewhere in this story?Interesting quotes from that article:- “It was like a photo shoot for some magazine that would never exist,” said Mr. Smith, 38, a real estate agent in New York, and he didn’t mean that in a good way. He described the weeklong vacation with his new wife, Natasha Huang Smith, as a “sunset nightmare,” “stressful,” “cumbersome” and “torturous.”
- ...70 percent of brides “post on social media throughout their honeymoon,’ according to the Knot Social Media Survey 2016. The key word there is “throughout.” And the husbands? Maybe they are not into competitive photography to the same degree, for some reason.
- “You see other people posting photos of their great vacations, romantic engagements, and exciting honeymoons, so you compare yourself to them and feel the need to do the same thing yourself,” — Gwendolyn Seidman, a social psychologist studying relationships and online behavior and chairwoman of the psychology department at Albright College in Reading, Pa.
- Maybe it’s because I am, well, old and also, you know, a religious person, but this passage left me with a question: Is this competitive, commercial and materialistic #HashtagHell syndrome more common between people who have been cohabiting for several weeks and months? In other words, there is no “marriage,” in the old sense of the word, to “consummate.” Each partner may have “consummated” a few or even many temporary relationships in the past. [I find this interesting because of what it tells us about the societal/cultural evolutionary trends/implications.]
- "Marriage and life is not a sacred journey with a partner that - sacramentally speaking - helps complete you. Life is a movie. Or a website."
