Mike Wise

   I’m really bothered by a series of photos I saw recently show up in my Facebook and Twitter streams. The content wasn’t objectionable or offensive. I saw pictures of cottages, canoes, and lovely lake-side views of Ontario’s cottage country. What bothered me was that the senders of the photos were sending them during their vacation. I felt bad for them: how could they possibly be relaxing during their time off, if they weren’t offline? The photos were nice, but they didn’t add any must-have information to my day. A pretty picture of a sunset is still a pretty picture of a sunset, whether I see it in real-time, or a few days later. Why weren’t they waiting to share these pictures?
Remember that old stand-by homework assignment from the first day of school? The teacher would ask students to write about “what they did on their summer vacation.” I can only remember doing this assignment a couple of times (perhaps it is more cliche than reality), and each time I can remember racking my brain trying to remember something meaningful to share. It’s not that I didn’t have a memorable childhood – I just found it hard to remember in September what I did in July.
If I were to do the assignment today, in our socially connected world, that wouldn’t be an issue. I could simply review a summer’s worth of status updates from Facebook and Twitter and write up a recap. But perhaps we could use a lesson from our school days. I’m not saying we need to wait until September to share our stories, but what’s wrong with waiting a couple of days to get home from your holidays before posting photos?