Let It Disappear

There’s something exhausting about Instagram—all the work to make a single moment feel documented. Pull the phone, find the app, take the shot, pick the filter, write the caption, tag people, post. By the time you’re done, the moment’s already dead.

Narrative is this tiny camera you clip to your shirt and forget about. It shoots all day automatically, posts the photos for you, and later you can search through your day by location or date. No decisions, no performance, just life getting recorded whether you think about it or not.

I like the idea. But it also feels like the beginning of something bad. There’s a Black Mirror episode about this exact thing—everyone with their lifelogging cameras, life becoming this total documentation. And the thing that gets me is how pleasant that sounds when you’re pitching it. Just automatic. Just convenient. Just remembering. That’s how you sneak into the panopticon.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe in five years we’re all wearing these things and I’ll look back at this worried about nothing, the way someone in the 1800s worried about trains. Or maybe we’ll realize that forgetting was the feature, not the bug, and by then it’s too late. Narrative’s pricing around 250 euros, so someone’s betting on the former. I’m not sure which I want to bet on.