For lunch, Sue and I had a hamburger and fries at our local diner. Let me send you a picture of us eating it so you can see it.
Oh yeah, I forgot: Why on Earth would we do that? You don't care, I don't care, Sue doesn't care.
Yet all across the country and all around the world, there are people doing that very thing. There are even demented people walking around with expandable metal rods called selfie sticks that let them trigger their cellphone cameras from a considerable distance, so they can take pictures of themselves, their friends and their food at the same time. These pictures will all end up on Facegram or Instabook or Spamtastic.
Whoever decided it would be a good idea to put cameras in cellphones should be run out of town on a rail. Now that would be worthy of a picture. Of course, we'll never find the person responsible, because he or she has so much money they are probably living on their own billion-dollar island like some villain in a James Bond movie.
Where did we ever get this idea everything is better if you take a picture of it? We all know couples who spent thousands of dollars on their wedding pictures and are now having month-long battles over who gets custody of the money. Did the photographs make their marriage better? I'll bet none of those couples fight over who gets custody of their wedding photographs.
Does your food taste better if you take a picture of it? There's one blog out there where people post pictures of every airline meal they have ever been served. I didn't even know airlines still served food; these people must be traveling in first class. But what's the point of traveling in first class if you're sitting next to a yahoo taking pictures of his food?
"What is your problem with people taking pictures?" asked my friend Betsy after she snapped me with a cat on my lap.
"I don't want to sound like a crank," I said, "but ..."
"Oh," she said, "don't worry about it. Everyone knows you're a crank."
"I am not a crank," I said, and realized that it sounded pretty crankish as soon as I said it. Only cranks say things like "I am not a crank."
"I'm petting my cat. Why do I need a picture of that?"
"Because I'm going to put it on Facebook," Betsy said.
"But I don't want to be on Facebook. Don't I get a say in this?"
"It's all about you, isn't it? Think about somebody else for once."
Yes, what is my problem? Why wouldn't I want someone to post my picture to hundreds of people I don't know?
Betsy came back over today and said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but your picture didn't get very many Likes. Everybody said you looked like that creepy villain in 'You Only Live Twice.'"
Contact Jim Mullen at JimMullenBooks.com.