POV

 Like so many human types around me, I am prone to clicking on videos that exhort me to do just that. i must see them. They are put there for my reaction. And all of yours. Sometimes it's an easy "Awww." Or maybe a chuckle. 

Then there are those that are for the specific intent of outrage. "Can you believe this happened?" asks the header. Seeing, it seems is believing. At least that is the hope for most of these minute slices of what we are inclined to believe are realia. It is here that I would like to sound clever by invoking Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, but since this has more to do with physics than it does with human behavior, I will back off slightly and suggest that the fact that we all seem to be staring at one another and intermittently taking video to post on Al Gore's Internet makes it all but impossible to to discern truth from fiction. 

In my own life, I cite the example of my wife insisting that we recreate clever moments from our everyday interactions for the purpose of showing the world just how clever we are. I do not tend to be a very good sport about such rehashing, leaving my poor wife to suffer through the memories of what might have been. How we could have had all those likes. How someone, spotting our collective cleverness would have scooped us out of obscurity and placed us in front of real cameras that would record us doing all those clever things. Except by then it doesn't seem that clever anymore. 

Which brings us to the topic of pets and children. If you are one of those evil manipulators who stand by with your smart phone continually on record in hopes of catching some spontaneous cute crash or amusing catastrophe, I have a message for you: Put The Phone Down. The embarrassment and possible concussion you will be promoting through the exploitation of your loved one will not be subsumed by the adoration of strangers. They will not be paying for the therapy or corrective surgery needed to repair the damage of that one "perfect" video.

And then there are those who seem to be carrying out a daily search for confrontation. In parking lots, check out stands, street corners, and all those places where unpleasant interactions are now being mined for content. "Catching" someone being stupid or rude or both isn't that difficult. Putting your phone into the equation is not going to take things down a notch. Selective editing and giving your personal context won't change the fact that someone was caught being less than their best. With very few exceptions, this is not grounds for a class action lawsuit. This is a chance for commenters to line up and express their two cents worth of opinion from the safety of their keyboard. Is that the validation we were hoping for?

This comes to you from the mind of a teacher, who has been shuffled past hundreds posts of fellow educators and students acting less than their best. Security camera footage of adults caught in the act of being caught confirms the existence of what we already knew. 

Sooner or later we are all going to catch on to the idea that we are all being watched all the time and should act accordingly. Like it was some sort of belief in a higher power. Creepy, huh?