Wake up and smile for the data camera

I was on a red-eye flight back to Sydney last week. In my exhaustion I fell asleep. I did the shuddering-head-flop.

A smartphone in the dark.

I was on a red-eye flight back to Sydney last week. In my exhaustion I fell asleep. A few times I did the shuddering-head-flop, oopsy, head up, head flopped again. And noticed when I roused that my mouth was hanging open which I promptly closed. At one point the plane must have had turbulence because I fully woke with a jolt, and to my horror noticed the girl next to me had taken a photo of me on her iPhone — but immediately turned it off so I couldn’t confirm.

I’ve seen what “asleep-against-window-Ruth” looks likes to another person. My daughter did it to me all the time when we were recently travelling around Europe. Mum on a train, dribbling in her sleep, mum with double chin as she eats, mum just awake in the morning without her make-up, mum on bad-hair day. I would scream and shout and threaten to fly back to Australia, and all sorts of dramas unless she stopped doing it straight away, horrified that my privacy was being breached in such a disrespectful way. “I can’t relax with you, I can’t be myself because there is always a camera in my face. And you post them on Facebook!!!” “Oh come on mum, chill. As if any of my friends are interested. Stop being so vain.” “You shouldn’t be taking them in the first place. How would you like it if I snapped you and posted it?” (Ironically, a mega-angry reaction to that.)

Children you can control with a good slice of bribery or blackmail, and certainly sneaky deletes. But what do we do now about the constant in-your-face breaches of privacy? Where cameras in restaurants can look down and see what you are typing and who to; and the snap-n-post to the Funny Travel Pictures site? A friend recently recorded me — without my permission — talking about sex, to be played back just for fun … But what if the phone got lost?

The question is really — who cares? Me asleep looking ugly, or my dirty fantasies (yawn) aren’t much to get excited over. But there are things that are private, just private, that’s all, and to breach them is a betrayal, a form of disrespect. And perhaps even dangerous if bosses, or friends get hurt, or things are exposed that we hold precious.

Says a friend who is head of marketing at a Sydney-based corporation (name withheld to protect his privacy!) “There is no privacy any more. Don’t kid yourself. Everyone is watching and many have mastered the art of capturing moments that appear completely different to what they are because of editing. The addition of colour, shape, style, movement can turn emotions into a certain scenario.”

To prove his point he showed me a revealing video sent to him by a friend, of himself dancing provocatively with someone in a club. It looked pretty out-there and sexual. “I faked this for the camera. I thought he was taking one photo, but because he was filming it all comes out differently and of course there is no ‘backstory’ to say this was all just a put on. If it was an employee I was dancing with like that, I could be in real trouble.”

It seems our whole lives are just being turned into one big boring story with voracious audiences feasting on nothing but other people’s dross and droppings. The thrill is not in the content, but simply because it was obtained secretly and might cause shame.

“Live life full and out loud” — goes the slogan. But I now add a line from Nightmare on Elm Street: Yes, but “whatever you do — don’t fall asleep (and dribble)”.

@OstrowRuth

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