Opinion
Why Candids are a Bad Idea for Social Media
Photographic Representation
Much like the primate in the picture above, there are many of us who reflect time and again on the nature of all things philosophically ugly and subjectively unkind, especially of the photographic variety. Such reflection does not come without massive degrees of cringe, at least for those like me. And, that explains my abhorrence for candids or candid pictures.
Why candids are a bad idea? If you must know, catching people with their guards down, in all their double-chinned, relaxed abdominal carelessness is a crime against humanity. The photographers seem to regard this violation of dignity as a form of art. On a more personal note, I’ve had to let go such dear friends of mine for this constant felony. They would insist on candids and I would end up a potato in a sea of people.
Don’t get me wrong here! I have forgiven trespasses so many times that I have even allowed them to post my potato avatar on social media with hashtags #candid #withfriends #beingmyself and then looking over them, untagging and embarrassing myself in the quiet privacy of my room as the world was exposed to the lie of my staged beauty.
Interestingly, the offenders kept trying to convince me that I looked cute and adorable. Ha! Like I would buy into that lame compliment — I cleansed myself off of oppressive and untrue friendships. Till date I believe that it was the candids that caused us this huge loss of connection.
Then, I also see other people’s candids of all varieties — blurred, funny, downright awkward, even inappropriate and I read how people have commented on them. The comment threads are very informative, if you wish to gain insight into people’s pea-sized emotional quotient. Some have even chosen the comment thread to promote their business, causing me to think that those pictures that I deem social-media unworthy are fairly bankable as marketing strategy (for others!). What an amazing world of virtual nincompoops, have I entered!
I have warned my dear ones of dire consequences if they post anything unstaged where I am smiling (or not) without my vetting it first. So, I have a good laugh in the safe privacy of my room and I pep-talk to my unphotogenic self in the pictures before I approve a few or none at all. Much to the chagrin of my well-wishers, I overthink and decide after decades that even those I approved were ‘kind of a bad idea, in hindsight’. At best, I enjoy exasperating them as much as they relish clicking me candidly.
Social media is actually pretty much an unsocial media where people visit each other to feel jealous, to induce envy, to inspire awe, to collect validation, to garner virtual approvals and, by and large, to stalk and prey on insecurities of the unguarded. Therefore, unless there is a God-given, rare ability or beauty possessed that even candids will not be able to ridicule, please desist from challenging fates and hoping for a natural photographic epiphany. Nine hundred times out of hundred, it is disappointing.
Thus, the idea of a ‘fake or staged candid’! The half-open mouth, faraway eyes and an intelligently contemplative or enlightened expression on the face, the body skewed at just the perfect angle to keep the secrets of a well-fed belly from the world — lo and behold, a ‘fake candid’ is born.
The fakes are as real as the fakes that wow them and now you can string the behavior of your pesky audience and inject them all with generous doses of jealousy, awe, admiration and thirst for more of you. Hard work pays off and you (and I) can revisit those ‘candids’ decades from now and chuckle into our hot chocolate, “What? Ain’t that a perfect shot.”
