Just Eat the Food

There’s this moment when someone orders something that looks perfect, and before anyone picks up their fork, out comes the phone. The food cooling while they hunt for the right angle, the right light, the right filter. I do it constantly, guilty as anyone. Then I’m eating something lukewarm, not really tasting it, because I’m composing a caption in my head.

Rhett and Link made a video about this—some song about putting your phone down and actually living. The premise is simple: you’re so busy documenting that you miss the actual thing. You film the concert from behind a screen. You photograph the sunset but never actually look at it. The documentation becomes the memory, and the real memory just vanishes.

What’s weird is knowing this is happening and not stopping. I’ll catch myself mid-shot, already framing the narrative, and think: what am I actually here for? I’m tasting the food but I’m really just composing how I’ll describe tasting it. The real experience is always one frame behind, filtered through whether it’ll photograph well.

It’s not about Instagram or Snapchat or whatever app is flavor of the month. It’s just that gap between the thing and the proof of the thing, and we’ve all gotten used to it. You document to remember, but the documentation is what keeps you from actually remembering. You take a picture and somehow that replaces the moment.

Last week I went somewhere without my phone and actually paid attention. I retained more of it. Tasted the food better. Saw the actual colors instead of how they’d render on a screen. It’s strange realizing how much the documentation was getting in the way of the living.