Over the weekend the wife and I visited Zoo Lights at the Houston Zoo. It's a fun little walk around part of the zoo with Christmas lights strewn throughout. Good for either a date or family night whichever. At least, it would have been great, if the smart-phone photo takers wouldn't have been EVERYWHERE.
It's to the point now that this mania for taking pictures of everything, regardless of how insignificant, is getting out of control. It's even worse when people have children who are involved. Right from the jump you noticed the lines, people standing in long versions of them, waiting to snap multiple pictures of themselves and family members in "photo-op" spots, or increasingly, right in the middle of the walkways.
While I'm a fan of the occasional snap, and even do so myself from time to time, there comes a point where you're starting to miss out on life being so dead set on applying a SnapChat filter to it.
As an example of this I'll discuss the "Tunnel of lights" feature last night at the zoo.
You were supposed to walk through it, where you would be surrounded by lights on all side for about 10 yards. It might have been kind of pretty. The problem was you COULD NOT WALK THROUGH because, on both sides of the tunnel, there were long lines of people waiting to have someone (or, multiple someones one at a time) standing in the mouth of the tunnel to have their picture taken. After taking the picture they wouldn't walk through, they would walk back to whoever was taking the picture and switch places with them. We sat and watched a family do this for 10 minutes as they cycled through 5 people, taking multiple shots of each.
The thing was no one, ever, walked through the tunnel in the five minutes we were there. No one could because the entrances were blocked with the subjects of the pictures. The entire feature was being wasted.
But it's not just that. My wife got her feet stepped on 4 times by people not paying attention and backing up into her trying to get the "perfect shot". One family took up the entire walkway for 2-3 minutes trying to get the perfect picture of their little Honey Boo-Boo looking daughter mugging under a gorilla globe. You.Could.Not.Get.By without causing a scene because the husband was ensuring people stopped.
Now, at this point, were I a writer for the Houston Chronicle, I'd tell you about this scene of bad behavior and make-up some scenario where the offending family acted like boobs, I acted heroically and walked off feeling smug, while they felt chastened and dumb.
But that didn't happen. In fact, no one really challenged the guy because in most cases people just go along to get along. I didn't challenge them taking the picture. I waited patiently while they did so, and so did everyone else. The gentleman acting as a blocker really wasn't needed because, in my experience, people really do try to be respectful to people when they're taking the memory shot.
But, it's becoming too much. We've moved from a quick, 5 second photo to elaborate posing, multiple shots all trying to catch that perfect memory and we've forgotten about our fellow humans who are trying themselves to have a good time. Our leisure time, has taken on the same qualities as everything else in our lives. We've devalued each-other to the point that we no longer feel the need to travel about this pebble giving any type of respect.
You see the same things on our roads. Driving home from Zoo Lights we rushed up on an SUV that was doing 35 in the second-to-left-lane on the Southwest Freeway. Were his harzards on? Was he in distress? Did he have car problems?
No, he was talking on his phone while driving 25 miles below the speed limit in a lane that should be reserved for faster traffic.
We have lost the ability to live our lives without our smart phones, but we have also lost the ability to function properly in society with them. I'm not sure if there's a fix to this, or if we would even want it should it exist.
