Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of people who no longer care, that would suck.

The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.

This situation compounded very gradually. In the late 90s, it was extremely common for young people to make each other laugh by doing dumb things in public (sometimes knowingly on camera) that they’d never expect to be seen by a wide audience. Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on. It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now. It’s not just some new modern prissiness.

> The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.

Realistically unless you are doing something absolutely unforgivable it will be forgotten about in a few days/weeks. At worst you will become a reaction emote.

Also going viral is a huge opportunity. Some viral people have ended up in commercials, podcasts etc.

Lets not pretend it is all negative.

> Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on.

No this is a rewriting of history. What happened is that employers started looking through potential hires and/or current employees and quizzing them about getting drunk at a party a few years ago. This seemed to happen in the US more than other places, or maybe it was reported there more.

Then everyone with any sense made their profile semi-private (friends only) on Facebook.

Also a lot of the stuff that went viral was often clever marketing. There are advertising agencies where they have case studies detailing how they have done it.

Also there is a whole genre of streaming where people literally act outrageously in public, called IRL streaming. People have gone/are going to prison in hopes of going viral.

> It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now.

This is absolute nonsense. I am old enough to remember how people acted before social media in is largely the same while out in public. In fact I would say it was actually the opposite of what you claim.

Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"

There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.

> Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"

I suspect a lot of that is more to do with them being worried about their how they look on the film than actually being on the film itself.

> There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.

Of course there are going to be people uncomfortable with it. I am. The issue is that it isn't ever going to go backwards and being video recorded in public by amateurs has been around for almost 40 years. The ship has sailed a long time ago.

I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone important to them and probably would have found it weird for someone to ask not to be photographed.

Those photos would have been taken with the understanding that they woupd have ended up in Grandma's album, maybe flipped through a few times, but never spread far and wide. The stakes change quite a lot if those photos can be published.