I interviewed my friends and my mother. They are in different generation but they basically gave me the same answer when I asked why they are so interested in taking photos. I also asked some other friends and most of them told me it is pretty interesting to take those pictures. When I asked them, however, if they looked their photos very often. They are quite embarrassed and hesitated. Most of them shake their heads when I ask them that question. Also some of my friends told me that they take pictures before they eat their dishes because most of their friends do so.
What is the point of taking photos if they are not very likely to look their album very often?
I asked myself this question again. In my opinion, they usually take excessive amount of photos, much more than they would like to look after they take those photos. I tried to find what my friends do after they take that many photos. And it turns out that they usually update their photos on their social networks. I asked many friends and finally I thought is that nowadays we take so many photos is because we want to share our lives with other people? That means, we take photos not just because we want to record our lives but also we want others to see our lives. As we have different social network accounts, we get more exposed for people to view our lives. In this case, usually we want other people to know our lives like my friend: she took lots of photos of her life, many pictures of food, various scenes of her lives so she can finally pick one she likes most among all of her pictures. Because of social network, people can see different people’s lives. As a result, they want to share their parts of life to others. They took many pictures, pick the best ones and post them on social networks and then they receive many likes from other people. After they have done all of these, they feel like they have communicated with their friends.
When we see our friends posting pictures of beautiful places, delicious food or pretty items, we would feel we also want that or feel happy about our friends, so we do that ourselves. We have a delicious food, thinking “oh I also want my friends to know that I am having fun over there” or someone just want to show off that I am having such a fantastic life over here, it is not what I can do everyday so I want to post it online and let everyone know about that.
What is the point of taking photos if they are not very likely to look their album very often?
I asked myself this question again. In my opinion, they usually take excessive amount of photos, much more than they would like to look after they take those photos. I tried to find what my friends do after they take that many photos. And it turns out that they usually update their photos on their social networks. I asked many friends and finally I thought is that nowadays we take so many photos is because we want to share our lives with other people? That means, we take photos not just because we want to record our lives but also we want others to see our lives. As we have different social network accounts, we get more exposed for people to view our lives. In this case, usually we want other people to know our lives like my friend: she took lots of photos of her life, many pictures of food, various scenes of her lives so she can finally pick one she likes most among all of her pictures. Because of social network, people can see different people’s lives. As a result, they want to share their parts of life to others. They took many pictures, pick the best ones and post them on social networks and then they receive many likes from other people. After they have done all of these, they feel like they have communicated with their friends.
When we see our friends posting pictures of beautiful places, delicious food or pretty items, we would feel we also want that or feel happy about our friends, so we do that ourselves. We have a delicious food, thinking “oh I also want my friends to know that I am having fun over there” or someone just want to show off that I am having such a fantastic life over here, it is not what I can do everyday so I want to post it online and let everyone know about that.