Reframe it this way. What's more important: the inert and inanimate surroundings of Angkor Wat, or sharing that experience with your friends and family?

When I post a picture on FB or text it, I'm not "looking for social approval." I'm reaching out to friends who aren't there with me and saying "hey man, check this out!"

I would say the former. There are so many things about "being there" that even the world's best photographer with the world's best camera equipment would have a hard time capturing. I'm a hobbyist photographer myself, but there are some times I just want to put my camera away and "take a memory".

My memories of precious moments (first hours with my son, etc) are fragile and fleeting, and already mostly gone. Most of the time the pictures I take are not very good at capturing the essence of what I want to remember, but other times ... it really does. Seeing video of my kids scampering through a park in Ireland, or photos of them from years ago at the beach capture aspects of them that I had forgotten.

Often the pictures remind me not of what is in the picture, but help me remember what I was doing, where I was, and the things around it.

Definitely the former.

I don't go somewhere so I can take pictures to show my friends, I go there because I want to see/experience it for myself. Plus friends don't care to see more than a few pictures, anyway.

Great for you. I personally care a lot more about sharing something with my family or friends. I probably wouldn't go anywhere if I couldn't share it with someone.

And I do the same thing. It's the "looking for social approval" that's the issue here.

> "if we find the Mona Lisa boring, no problem. We can run the image through the Fatify app or add the graphics and colors we like to make it amusing or better than the original! Should we be surprised that people often find the world uninteresting and dull?"

How is the ability to play with the Mona Lisa not part of the world? Our lives online aren't imaginary, they're just as real a part of our world as the physical. If you enjoy tweaking the Mona Lisa, making it more personal, then that's you actively finding the world interesting and fun.

Ahhh! You just sparked a memory of an old graphics application on the computer that let you use smudge and liquify like tools on Mona Lisa's face to distort it in all sorts of ways. I remember playing with that constantly, thinking the technology was soo futuristic, being able to make the Mona Lisa look evil and cartoonish. You could do it with your own pictures too, but the default image was Mona Lisa. I wish I could remember what that software was called.

But anyway, some of this stuff predates social media and smartphones. And it was more of a novelty than anything. It might have even given me greater appreciation for the painting, since it is such a great painting for distorting human features.

Kai's Power Goo?

Yep, pretty sure that was it. Thanks!

What I don't understand is why "we" have your personal problem.

I don't know if I can blame social media for this or not, but people vastly overstating their arguments because they are caught up in their own emotions does not make for illuminating discourse.