Content givers
02 Jul 2017Our routine is like clockwork. After each hangout, Ryan and I will exchange photos and videos to store in our digital attics. This habit sparked from the realization that although it’s hard to approximate how many photos our generation takes each year, a quick scroll of our Camera Rolls shows just how rarely we take photos of ourselves and others.
The photos you’ll care about later will be the ones with people in them.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) January 8, 2014
When was the last time someone took a great, candid photo of you? How special did it make you feel? When you do this for others, you probably won’t remember the slight faux-awkwardness involved and they’ll almost always be thankful for it1. Ryan calls these folks “Content Givers.“ They’re a rare breed these days. Taking the extra moment to document small moments and share timestamped assets can help increase the surface area of any friendship.
Footnotes:
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This, of course, goes without saying that the subject is comfortable having photos taken of them. Tangentially, I’ve seen this navigated extremely well by the wonderful folks over at XOXO. They color coded conference lanyards to indicate levels at which attendees were alright with their photographs being used (i.e. not at all, taken with permission, public, etc.) ↩