Pics or it didn't happen Culture.

Pics or it didn’t happen Culture.

If a tree falls in the forest, and it isn’t captured, can we be sure it happened?

‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ started as an IRC in-joke, but it’s quickly becoming a cultural norm; it is so difficult for something be completely unobserved, we’re starting to demand visual ‘proof’ of any claim.

If you meet a celebrity, you take a picture. If you see an police officer abusing authority, you videotape it. Experiences are recorded to ensure we know they exist.

The interesting thing, is that I think this is good.

The most common example is people watching a concert through the screen of their cellphone, recording video and taking photos of the performance.

This matters, because it’s ranking the social element of an experience, sharing and using it as a means of developing relationships with others, rather than looking at the experience of solitary. Until we can actually distribute recordings of our sentences, we need to pick: Do I rank my experience over the ability to share it with others, or do I rank the relationship value of an experience over the personal value of that same experience?

As more and more people are using publishing as a form of communication, they are inherently taking the second option. They are quite literally putting others ahead of themselves, when it comes to their cultural experiences. Experiences are considered to be for sharing first, and for consuming second (although maybe not on a conscious level).

I thought of this while I was taking pictures of my niece on Christmas morning, because I knew that my sister (who couldn’t be there) would appreciate being able to see them. The cultural and relationship value of the experience was greater than the amount of immediacy sacrificed by putting a lens between myself and the action.

I’m pretty sure this will only become more true over time.