As a bartender in a club, I see a lot of crazy stuff. Drunkenness, major PDA, fights, wacky dancing: you name it, I’ve seen it. Hey, it’s a nightclub, things get crazy. And that’s ok. But perhaps the craziest thing I see, and the thing I least like to see, is people on their phones…the whole night.
I’m all for taking a snap or two of a group of friends, so they can cherish the night they had.
What makes me sad, is when I see groups spend the whole evening snapchatting, making boomerangs, posting on Instagram, and debating for hours on whether to use the Newport filter or the Earlybird one. At least three groups a night will ask me to wait prior to pouring their shots, so they can film the action. At least five people a night will ask me for sparklers just to take a snapchat video, losing interest in them as soon as the video ends. And of course, as I see waitresses approach the booths with sparkled up bottle service, phones come out faster than Clint Eastwood’s gun in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Sometimes, you don’t realize you look ridiculous doing something. Because, well, you can’t see yourself doing it. Let me be the wakeup call you may need, to tell you that, damn, it’s all ridiculous.
I’ve often tried to pinpoint exactly why we feel this constant need to post every minute of our lives. FOMO is the fear of missing out, but it seems to me there is a kind of social media FOMO that exists as well. The kind of FOMO where, you fear that if you don’t post the awesome moments of your life, they don’t exist. You are basically needing validation for your life. It’s like asking your followers and Facebook friends, “Is this cool enough?”, “Am I awesome enough with this flaming shot picture?”
I am myself a victim to my phone, in a way. I post on Instagram, I post on Snapchat, and I love it! But I think, or I hope, that I haven’t let it disturb my social interactions and my outings with friends.
Last weekend, I could see a table of four people from by bar. They were laughing, and dancing and drinking, and just having a ball. I only saw them take out their phones for a group birthday picture.
Unfortunately, the table next to them were engaging in fake candids, where two of the group’s girls would look into each other’s eyes, and fake laugh, while their other friend took some pictures. As soon as the flash went out, the “laughs” were over, and the two girls hurried over to their phone to scrutinize every single detail and flaw they could find.
It’s been said before, but I feel it needs to be repeated. Don’t trust everything you see on social media. Don’t get down because you see some people with champagne having a good ol’ time. A good handful of those fabulous pictures you are being faced with every day may just be fake candids. I think it’s important to keep that in mind.
So from a bartender that sees it all, pretty please put the phone away. You may just have such a good time that, you will forget you need to post about it.