Keeping It Real

Under the photo of the warm red-orange sun hanging low over the grassy expanse, the hashtag said, "Good  morning Everglades." Someone flipping through my son's Instagram account would probably look at it for a moment, consider it a beautiful shot, and then click on to the next image. But I lingered on it. Because I was with him when he took the picture, and I know it was a picture not of the sunrise, but of the sunset.

We've all seen fake pictures doctored in Photoshop and read fake information on the Internet. We who live in the era of irony consider ourselves savvy enough to laugh at crazy photos like the one I've seen of President Obama riding a unicorn while laser beams shoot out of his hands. Or cats parachuting out of planes. Or, cats doing pretty much everything, actually. (What's up with all the cats?) Sure, we get it.

But what about the literally millions of subtle inaccuracies that populate our high-tech world? My son, and everyone else out there who posts items on the Internet, has no obligation whatsoever to be accurate. He's not a journalist. He has no rules to follow when posting something that is for him an artistic endeavor, a hobby.

Alterations are everywhere. Profiles on Facebook or Twitter or any social media range from slightly distorted to laugh-out-loud purposefully and entirely fictional. The way we look, the way we talk, the way we write is all filtered. Instagram has a popular hashtag that says #nofilter when labeling photos. But we are living in a time when all information is filtered. The only question to ask is: To what degree?

When and where were pictures taken? Is the text of that post genuine or satirical? Is she really posting that, or did someone hack her account? Whose voice is it? Whose image?

If a brunette dyes her hair blond for 30 years, and has never been seen as anything but a blonde, doesn't that mean she's really a blonde? What is the reality of her image? And if a sunset is casually referred to and accepted as a sunrise, does that mean that to people viewing the picture, the sun rises in the west?

It's a jumble to consider. And it could very well be that unfiltered truth and reality may soon be gone. So it makes me wonder: Just where is Obama hiding that unicorn?