![]() ![]() Such a paranoia presumes that what other people think about me is both consistent and matters a lot I don’t know what I look like to other people. This renders our online existence into a kind of diorama – we are not just people-watchers, but people- watched. And implicit in this compulsion is the suspicion that our lives are best understood at a distance, the way someone else might experience us, rather than the way we experience ourselves. Technology and social media are full of such promises – not just that we might gain a 360-degree understanding of our pets, but of ourselves. I’d watch studiously, as if by inhabiting an outsider’s perspective, I might unearth some grain of truth about myself. It felt almost like looking at a stranger. And whenever I’d catch myself on the edge of the frame – running to the bedroom for a pair of socks, opening the blinds – the way I moved was unfamiliar to me. It was funny to see Bug going about his life funnier, for some reason, because he thought he was alone. ![]() In the beginning, I would go into the app and poke through random moments the cameras had captured. One is pointed at Bug’s food bowl and another at our bedroom door, but they do catch us from time to time. ![]() Today, my cameras aren’t set up to observe my boyfriend and me that way. Did that matter? I lost the camera in the breakup, but kept the cat. I remember thinking I looked different in the video than I imagined I did when it was happening. We sat stiffly on opposite ends of the couch. One time I came upon footage of us getting in a fight. If we wanted to remember when we’d gotten home the night before, we’d check the camera and watch ourselves stumble in. Years ago, when my ex and I got one for our cat, he once caught me eating Pringles on the couch and sent me a text: “Once you pop.” The camera, in those moments, was a comical imposition, fulfilling its duty of surveillance in precisely the ways we didn’t want.Įventually, though, my ex and I gave into our role as subjects. The problem with getting a camera for your pets is that you also inadvertently get a camera for yourself. ![]()
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