Didn't you read the article? Damn the worth! We're all unique snowflake rockstars and all our meals and coffee mugs are blessed by our specialness. Share all the pictures!! (insert crazy meme guy with a paintbrush) Join the photo revolution man.
It's a girl.
It's a brush.
It's from Hyperbole and a Half.[1]
It's the overly used image that bothers me most because that person needs the traffic and their image is pretty popular yet they never get accreditation for it.
Omg that is hilarious. Like a billion times more hilarious than a funny but mindless "it's hilarious because everyone is in on it" meme. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
Ironically this is relevant to the discussion. Memes are kind of like Instagram (I imagine there are other similar phenomenons). They share the instant gratification of a trigger-like social connection between a huge mass of people, but lack all the fulfillment and self-discovery that REAL content can bring. But it's really not surprising that things like Instagram and memes thrive in the digial-social space. Most people will generally get a much higher response to a "MY CAT HAZ GLASSES!" fake polaroid, then to share something like "Hi all my friends, I read this insightful 5 page article on adulthood and I think you all might get something out of it too."
It sort of reflects a broader-scale problem with people just not having time (or not wanting to bother) with discussing things like sex, politics, art, religion, relationships... They'd rather just share some Ha-Has, small talk and get drunk. I think this is especially pronounced in North America and in large urban centers.
I guess it's a matter of intent: if I already know I'll want to share the pic I'm about to take I just fire up Instagram, otherwise I use the standard camera app.
On a related note: the Google+ Instant Upload feature does even 'better'. From the G+ website: "All photos and videos taken with your mobile device are uploaded to the From your phone album. These photos and videos are only visible to you unless you share them." That's even more frictionless sharing, but not in a way I like: it freaked me out when I inadvertently turned this on.
That actually sounds reasonable -- you can log-in, decide which photos you want to share and delete the rest. Unless you don't like it using bandwidth or don't like google itself having access to all your stuff.
No, you can in fact discard the picture you took. What OP is saying is that it's one button to share to as many different social networks (plus email) as you want. It sounds minor, but it really is much more convenient.
My guess (I don't use it either - I can't stand the stupid filters), is that if you fire up Instagram, instead of the regular camera app, you'd know that it's going to automatically share everything you take.
