Taking Pictures of People In Pain

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT American culture could descend to no further depths, it does. Happens every time. Never bet against it. Now from the depths of our depraved culture, amid our ever growing arsenal of vicious weapons, emerges: sadistic selfies; pictures taken of one's self with a cell phone, which include someone else, in humiliatng circumstances, most usually, an obvious state of skid row homelessness, a condition, which we Americans all know, is quite common in our land of alleged opportunity. The person in the pic taking the pic is almost always quite young, say college aged, well fed and dressed, smiling smugly, having a blast. Serving the twin purposes of self aggrandizement and the humiliation of some poor ordinary schmuck, for purely comparative purposes. How typically presumptuous of American youth, of Americans, to think that anyone might give a rat's ass. Anyone who pretends to is faking it, a fact which should be pointed out to the camera thugs who wish only to do harm. They usually aren't very smart. One can only hope that this sordid little hobby is materializing all over the world, wherever cell phones are sold, which is everywhere. This would take at least a smidgen of heat of us Americans. Somehow, though, you sadly sense this is an American pehnomon. Welcome to the future, where everything is on camera, not because of the national security police state; because of the masses of private citizens, folks just like you and me, doing their thing. Well, maybe, just maybe, if more and more visuals of people in pain start to turn up on the internet, say facebook, those of us who are more fortunate will finally get the message, put aside our petty differences, and work together to ease, if not end, the pain.