Why do grown women post photos of social events?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like, a group of friends going out for drinks or at a party?
I admit I see these and get FOMO -- even if I'm not close with the people in the photo!
Is it to stoke envy? Assert a place in the social hierarchy? Just cluelessness or the authentic drive to share joy?

Yep women are sucky.

FOMO, Jealousy, I'm better than you etc..

Get off FB people

[Anonymous]

They are on autopilot mode! And even when they are not, a friend from the group will remind them to post; I've seen it time and time again!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those reasons and probably several others.

It's pathetic. Whatever.

+1 and it seems like most people have woken up and realized how stupid it is.

I have noticed this too. It's great.

Imagine being so miserable and pathetic that a picture of your friends having a good time bothers you this much. Are you jealous?

DP. It is perfectly normal to feel jealous or left out when presented with a photo of people from your community having fun together. It need not be a particularly intense feeling and most people move on from it easily, but it's a normal and human response because humans are social creatures whose security is dependent on belonging in a community. A photo like that is likely to prompt a temporary (and primal) fear that the individual may not be securely part of the group. Most people will remember that, actually, they are securely part of the community via other means and move on. But that initial pang of jealousy or, more accurately, fear, is pretty common and normal. If someone cannot move on, it may be because they do not have secure belonging in a community, in which case their fear is real and understandable, not something to be criticized and derided.

The greater question is what compels people to post such photos to public feeds? I believe it is related to the same fear. People post these photos as a way of asserting their belonging in the community. They may be particularly compelled to post photos that show them in high status settings or with high status people, as a self-protective way of showing how embedded they are. In this case, posting the photo is actually done, on some level, to provoke jealous and fear from people who may be further from the inside, high status parts of the community. Thus the feeling of jealous/fear that many people feel when seeing these photos is actually the intended effect the poster hopes it to have.

Your choice of the words "miserable" and "pathetic" -- exclusionary words that emphasize the low and outsider status of the person to whom you are talking -- indicate that this is a behavior you participate in and that it is very much about asserting your belonging over that of others when you do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had 2 close friends pass away and 1 I have not picture of us together, the other I have 1 because I posted it on FB.

Insta and FB help me see what my friends and family are doing... my family is very large and impossible to track... just found out my nephew moved from instagram post. I have over 25 nieces and nephews.

I enjoy seeing them and looking at them and so do my friends.

I'm not doing anything that amazing so no need to be jealous.

I also print a photo album yearly from it.

why does anybody take pictures? Why do cameras even exist?

Instagram/Facebook are not good ways to share photos with friends and family unless profiles are limited to those people. Many people's accounts are either public or they are connected to a lot more people than just friends or family, so when you post you are sending that photo to a huge community of people including colleagues, old classmates, neighbors, etc. People who don't really need that info. This is the technological equivalent of distributing your personal photos in the town square to anyone you encounter. Most of those people don't need to see those photos.

It is very easy in this day and age to share photos with just friends and family, via locked down social media accounts or simply using text. That is what many of us do in order to preserve privacy and also to prevent the kind of brag-sharing people are talking about on this thread.

If you didn't know your nephew moved until he posted about it on Instagram, you are not very close and he likely did not care if you knew.

[Anonymous]

It's the only time I'm dressed up and it's nice to have pictures with my friends?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the only time I'm dressed up and it's nice to have pictures with my friends?

you still have the pictures if you don't insecurely broadcast them lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had 2 close friends pass away and 1 I have not picture of us together, the other I have 1 because I posted it on FB.

Insta and FB help me see what my friends and family are doing... my family is very large and impossible to track... just found out my nephew moved from instagram post. I have over 25 nieces and nephews.

I enjoy seeing them and looking at them and so do my friends.

I'm not doing anything that amazing so no need to be jealous.

I also print a photo album yearly from it.

why does anybody take pictures? Why do cameras even exist?

The question asked wasn’t why do people take pictures. The question asked was why does someone take a picture and post it (share it) with people who weren’t at the event.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree OP. And I participated in this activity 10+ years ago when I was in my late 20s/early 30s. It was absolutely an effort to show people that I was popular and had friends, that I was busy and interesting. It was for exes, coworkers, old classmates, etc., to show them "look at me, my life is very lively and socially successful."

Once I realized that was what I was doing, I stopped. I also discovered that when I stopped posting like this to social media, some of these activities became less appealing to me and I stopped attending some of them. The biggest thing to fall by the wayside was the kind of big group "girls night" dinner where like 10 women of varying levels of friendship get dressed up and dine at a trendy restaurant and take photos and post them. It turns out I never enjoyed them! They were often unnecessarily expensive, it was common for various people to under-contribute to the bill, and often there would be several people at the dinner who were unpleasant to me or engaged in weird behaviors like competing with me to prove how was better friends with another woman or something stupid. I am so glad I don't participate in this stuff anymore!

I'm glad I stopped participating in this before I had kids, because I now never feel the compulsion to post photos of my kids or family events in order to, again, show how interesting and active we are. When I have the urge to share photos of my kids, I text them to friends and family who I think might actually be interested in, for instance, a pic of them in Halloween costumes or my DD at her ballet recital. I don't try to use my kids to project a personal brand of some kind, and I'm grateful for that.

And then every single person tagged in the photo comments “such a fun night!!” one after another. Ugh, the worst.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those reasons and probably several others.

It's pathetic. Whatever.

+1 and it seems like most people have woken up and realized how stupid it is.

I have noticed this too. It's great.

Imagine being so miserable and pathetic that a picture of your friends having a good time bothers you this much. Are you jealous?

DP. It is perfectly normal to feel jealous or left out when presented with a photo of people from your community having fun together. It need not be a particularly intense feeling and most people move on from it easily, but it's a normal and human response because humans are social creatures whose security is dependent on belonging in a community. A photo like that is likely to prompt a temporary (and primal) fear that the individual may not be securely part of the group. Most people will remember that, actually, they are securely part of the community via other means and move on. But that initial pang of jealousy or, more accurately, fear, is pretty common and normal. If someone cannot move on, it may be because they do not have secure belonging in a community, in which case their fear is real and understandable, not something to be criticized and derided.

The greater question is what compels people to post such photos to public feeds? I believe it is related to the same fear. People post these photos as a way of asserting their belonging in the community. They may be particularly compelled to post photos that show them in high status settings or with high status people, as a self-protective way of showing how embedded they are. In this case, posting the photo is actually done, on some level, to provoke jealous and fear from people who may be further from the inside, high status parts of the community. Thus the feeling of jealous/fear that many people feel when seeing these photos is actually the intended effect the poster hopes it to have.

Your choice of the words "miserable" and "pathetic" -- exclusionary words that emphasize the low and outsider status of the person to whom you are talking -- indicate that this is a behavior you participate in and that it is very much about asserting your belonging over that of others when you do so.

Oh boy, that is a whole lot of BS. I am not the one who posted this thread or wondering why other people socialize and feel the need to share they are having a good time. I don't share almost anything on facebook but if I see a collage of photos from one of my friends enjoying herself and having a good time, my first thought is NOT "what is wrong with her." Quite the opposite. I think, "hey, good for her. She looks happy." If you feel jealous and excluded, then you need to work on that. Work on being a better friend, colleague, person instead of expecting the world to be miserable WITH you.

[Anonymous]

I assume it’s to easily share photos with each other. There are a couple groups of women I know who do this, and every time I see a group photo of them doing things together, my immediate thought is “wow, that is a WHITE friend group” I don’t really feel bad about not being included because there’s clearly a criteria and I don’t need to be a part of a group like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those reasons and probably several others.

It's pathetic. Whatever.

+1 and it seems like most people have woken up and realized how stupid it is.

I have noticed this too. It's great.

Imagine being so miserable and pathetic that a picture of your friends having a good time bothers you this much. Are you jealous?

No normal people still do this. You're in a class of your own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because some of us use Facebook as our diaries and photo albums. That is all. Judge away: it’s not going to change. I love the convenience

This for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree OP. And I participated in this activity 10+ years ago when I was in my late 20s/early 30s. It was absolutely an effort to show people that I was popular and had friends, that I was busy and interesting. It was for exes, coworkers, old classmates, etc., to show them "look at me, my life is very lively and socially successful."

Once I realized that was what I was doing, I stopped. I also discovered that when I stopped posting like this to social media, some of these activities became less appealing to me and I stopped attending some of them. The biggest thing to fall by the wayside was the kind of big group "girls night" dinner where like 10 women of varying levels of friendship get dressed up and dine at a trendy restaurant and take photos and post them. It turns out I never enjoyed them! They were often unnecessarily expensive, it was common for various people to under-contribute to the bill, and often there would be several people at the dinner who were unpleasant to me or engaged in weird behaviors like competing with me to prove how was better friends with another woman or something stupid. I am so glad I don't participate in this stuff anymore!

I'm glad I stopped participating in this before I had kids, because I now never feel the compulsion to post photos of my kids or family events in order to, again, show how interesting and active we are. When I have the urge to share photos of my kids, I text them to friends and family who I think might actually be interested in, for instance, a pic of them in Halloween costumes or my DD at her ballet recital. I don't try to use my kids to project a personal brand of some kind, and I'm grateful for that.

And then every single person tagged in the photo comments “such a fun night!!” one after another. Ugh, the worst.

This was circa 2012 and I'm so glad people don't do this now and are probably mortified that they did in the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had 2 close friends pass away and 1 I have not picture of us together, the other I have 1 because I posted it on FB.

Insta and FB help me see what my friends and family are doing... my family is very large and impossible to track... just found out my nephew moved from instagram post. I have over 25 nieces and nephews.

I enjoy seeing them and looking at them and so do my friends.

I'm not doing anything that amazing so no need to be jealous.

I also print a photo album yearly from it.

why does anybody take pictures? Why do cameras even exist?

I do all this on Shutterfly and don't need to share any of it. Shutterfly can back up all my photos and make albums. I don't need my friends, family and old coworkers to bear witness to my photo preservation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree OP. And I participated in this activity 10+ years ago when I was in my late 20s/early 30s. It was absolutely an effort to show people that I was popular and had friends, that I was busy and interesting. It was for exes, coworkers, old classmates, etc., to show them "look at me, my life is very lively and socially successful."

Once I realized that was what I was doing, I stopped. I also discovered that when I stopped posting like this to social media, some of these activities became less appealing to me and I stopped attending some of them. The biggest thing to fall by the wayside was the kind of big group "girls night" dinner where like 10 women of varying levels of friendship get dressed up and dine at a trendy restaurant and take photos and post them. It turns out I never enjoyed them! They were often unnecessarily expensive, it was common for various people to under-contribute to the bill, and often there would be several people at the dinner who were unpleasant to me or engaged in weird behaviors like competing with me to prove how was better friends with another woman or something stupid. I am so glad I don't participate in this stuff anymore!

I'm glad I stopped participating in this before I had kids, because I now never feel the compulsion to post photos of my kids or family events in order to, again, show how interesting and active we are. When I have the urge to share photos of my kids, I text them to friends and family who I think might actually be interested in, for instance, a pic of them in Halloween costumes or my DD at her ballet recital. I don't try to use my kids to project a personal brand of some kind, and I'm grateful for that.

And then every single person tagged in the photo comments “such a fun night!!” one after another. Ugh, the worst.

+1. "Thanks for hosting, Larla!"