Today’s generations are gonna have more and more of them to look at now, so these lil Gen A’ers are just gonna be able to relive their entire life just about.
Back when I crawled out into the world (80s) pictures were a lot more work than “point phone, tap glass”. You had to carry an entire, dedicated (aka “extra” compared to your regular everyday stuff), device around, point that and hope it came out the way it looked like it did, because you wouldn’t have a clue until you got it developed, which you had to pay to have done (unless you had a special room in your house where you could pay for additional equipment to do it yourself), and then see it.
Growing up in the 90s the process hadn’t changed, and as it finally started to get somewhere in the aughts, but still needed a separate device even if you could see it immediately (or relatively immediately- those images still usually took a while to generate for a while).
All to say that photos went from just not being possible (for some types, like random selfies out funny things you see around you), to being usually only worth the effort for events (family portraits, birthday parties, vacations), to bring fairly easy but still annoying to have to carry around with you, then up to now where we can document entire days with almost zero effort at any given moment.
Babies these days are being photographed constantly, and being seen by their entire extended families within hours of existing, and having entire moments video’d all through their life.
Which just brings up how terrifying AI and capitalism is. There is almost no evidence made or preserved of a lot of my existence prior to the aughts, but now kids can just go “man, this scab on my knee is annoying af- how long has it been there now?” and have a decent chance of looking up the exact moment that happened.
But for us oldies, we get glimpses of moments or eras (like old hairstyles) and being so startled by that forgotten relic, instead of seeing the entire continuity of their hair evolution journey.
Millennials can see this evolution happen through our lifespan, a bridge between boomers and zoomers, and I always get reminded of it when you’ve like this come up.
It’s depressing to me. Look at all the friends I had and fun things I used to do. Now I just exist.
Ok I wasn’t really that skinny was I?
“I can’t believe that haircut was ever in style.”
Just discovered what aging means huh?
Shit sucks. I wanna go back to kindergarten.
To quote Survivor.
Outlive. Outlast. Outplay.
I love getting older. With each day my purpose grows.
Mandatory nap time and games all day? Sign me up.
Dude, I still fondly remember the day my teacher brought in her pet turtles - that was sweet, and then nap time - which was even sweeter.
Hahaha gotta respect the teachers that put in enough effort for you to appreciate them decades later. Had a gym teacher in elementary school who bred rabbits so he would bring a bunch in every once in a while and even let some kids adopt them.
Can’t look back at your old pictures if you never take pictures