Way back in the day, when cellphones with digital cameras first came out, the Grinder got one of the first models and was mercilessly mocked for it by friends.
"What good is that thing?!" They laughed. "You'll never use it."
Then, just a few weeks later, the Grindmobile was hit when a crazy/bad driver ran a red light.
"There's no damage!" she screamed while jumping out of her car, before even looking at the fender she just smashed.
The woman had wild eyes and was obviously going to be a jerk about paying for the damage. What a comfort, and a revelation about the power of technology, to whip out the camera phone and document what happened. Who knew back then, in the early 2000's, cameras would become omnipresent? Okay, everyone knew. But that doesn't mean cameras haven't also become hateful in many, many ways.
Of course, the Grinder is glad to laugh at pictures of athletes getting drunk and ogle celebrity nipple-slips. Obviously, we are delirious that sexting has become fashionable among high school cheerleaders. Still, we can't help but think our collective national obsession with cameras is sucking some of the fun out of American nightlife.
One the most basic level, cameras suck because they keep people from acting like morons. There was a time, dangit, when a man could get publicly drunk and not expect pictures of his stupor to show up on the Internet the next day. Today, you take one dance-floor pratfall, you wear one lampshade on your head, you pass out once a friend's house where friends draw on your face with magic markers, and your shame becomes immortal.
Even worse, than the loss of privacy, is the nefarious Girl Pose -- a symbol of everything wrong with American photo-philia. You know the Girl Pose if you have left the house within the last decade. A pack of young women press their cheeks together, scream and pretend they were having a fabulous when someone with a camera just happened to walk by.
The Girl Pose, as well know, is a sham. Immediately before most of those pictures are taken, the women in them are doing absolutely nothing of interest. Usually, it's just a group of girls standing around bored until someone gets a camera out and, bang, suddenly we are in Times Square on New Year's Eve. They will hug, kiss, smile, laugh, vamp for the camera, and, in extreme cases, flash gang signs and a kissy face; a whole separate category of evil we haven't time to address here.
We've got no issue with the endless panoply of party pictures on MySpace and Facebook, except to note that no one in them is having as much fun as they pretend to be. But there's an insidious effect at work here. Cameras have gone from a fun addition to a night out, to an essential tool for leaving the house, like keys and wallet. A nation of exhibitionists and voyeurs, we act like nothing is worth doing unless someone else will see it. Soon, no one will do anything but take pictures of themselves. No dancing, no listening to live music, or playing pinball. Just people taking pictures of themselves having their picture taken.
The next time you go out, watch the Girl Pose girls. They are often so busy posing and pretending to have a good time, they never have any actual fun. Take it from the Grinder, many, many things in life are worth doing even if no else knows about them. In fact, some things in life are only worth doing if no one knows about them. Like, for instance, spying, or having sex with unattractive women and some other stuff that we aren't going to tell you because we don't want anyone else to know.
