Yesterday, a 29 year old man jumped from the 24th floor down here in Battery Park. He landed on a car driving by. I noticed that it was a lot of traffic outside our door in the afternoon, which was kinda strange since we usually don’t have that much traffic, but after reading about the incident I understand why. Anyway… In the article that my husband sent me about this jump it said that “Tourists in a nearby open-air bus that was stuck in traffic, saw more than they bargained for when the gruesome scene unfolded right in front of them. Then they quickly found their bearing and realized the tragedy would look perfect on their Instagram profile, and scrambled for their cellphones to snap pictures of the body, said workers at the building.”
This made me think. Isn’t that just sick? Someone is dead and people see an opportunity to put a picture of it on social media. Can’t we just be there in the moment, feel sorry for the man who jumped, try to help or walk away from it? Do we really have to share it on instagram? And also, do people really want to see those pictures?
We are constantly connected, we live our lives through a camera lens and our memories involves checking updates on our phones. I am very tired of this. I have a blog, I have a new phone, I have a camera, we have internet on all the time etc, but I also take time to enjoy things without all this. For example, I usually don’t bring my phone when I take the dog out. I also get really annoyed when my husband is doing stuff on his phone when we are having a nice dinner in a restaurant.
Soon we might not know if things are our own memories or someone else. Soon we will all stay inside while selected ones are out taking all the pictures to share with us. Soon we end up like the kids movie Wall-E. Or, what do you think?