The Poor Traits of Social Acceptance

I have this really bad habit of taking pictures of myself with my phone. I’m not sure why, but I find uses for them all over the internet. You never know when you’ll need a good self picture. I also have a big weakness for hats. I *love* hats.

So I was in Target (yes, I go there often) and found the hats area, and started putting the hats on and making a funny face, snapping pics with my phone. There was only one other person around, and he was on the other end of the Menswear section, so I didn’t worry about it.

However, as I was snapping the pictures and picking through the hats, he somehow snuck up on me, and sauntered over as if he was looking at the hats for himself. For some reason, I immediately became self-conscious, and tried to play it off as though I wasn’t taking silly photos of myself in different hats. However, I noticed that it didn’t sem to phase him in the least bit. He stood there next to me as if every other time he’d shopped, there was some fool snapping pictures in hats.

It really made me wonder how fully-featured cellphones have changed our lives, and altered what is now ‘socially acceptable.’ There was a point at which talking on the phone around others was considered extremely rude, and now people do it in movie theatres, at the dinner table, and other completely inappropriate situations. The same goes for taking pictures, apparently. People don’t seem to flinch or look startled when I take pictures of random things around me (such as rhino statues.)

Have you noticed your concept of ‘socially acceptable’ changing on account of your mobile? For better or for worse?