Flash, bang, wallop – what an inappropriate picture

We seem to be more obsessed with photographing our memorable moments than just experiencing them – and sometimes, we forget our good taste when we activate that camera phone shutter

An excellent New Yorker cartoon recently depicted a ragged, bearded castaway on a desert island. The scenario is an old standby for cartoonists, allowing them scope for making observations about contemporary traits among the human race.

In this one, two people arrive on a boat and, instead of rescuing the castaway right away, hold up their phones to take his picture. We smirk because we recognise the behaviour.

There have been terrible instances of this sort of thing during accidents where, instead of pitching in to help, or even just maintaining a modicum of decency, people take pictures with their phones.

The idea behind it, I think, is that they will get lots of hits when the pic is posted online, this being a form of fame that many crave. However, the beauty of the internet is that they usually find themselves excoriated for their crass, insensitive behaviour.

People make terrible mistakes online, not just with pictures but posting messages that they think clever – possibly while the mind is befuddled by sherry – but which others find insulting, inaccurate or impossibly stupid. Take it from a newspaper columnist, you don’t want to expose your opinions to a wider public.

In the past, I have expressed the view that most things should be banned and most people imprisoned, but I do not extend these strictures to photography.

Often, people will take not inappropriate pictures of events so that they can have a personal memento and I think there is a fair case to be made for allowing this to continue without the threat of imprisonment or a large fine.

All the same, the propensity for taking such pictures has led to amazing photos – irony alert – in which a famous speaker is ululating or a band playing in front of a crowd all holding up their camera phones.

I suppose the problem with this is that, if taking a picture is your first instinct, you are absenting yourself from the experience. You are not being present but recording the present. I’ll just read these last two sentences back.

Bit deep, what? I’ll have to have a word with the guy who writes this stuff for me. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t amount to that much existential dissonance (right, you’re fired, mate). You get the photies took then enjoy the experience.

Presumably, even the photographers in the New Yorker cartoon rescued the bloke afterwards, though you could also infer that they took the photies then left without him.

One practice I have never been tempted to indulge in is selfies. Never taken one, apart from botched attempts at doing my own driving licence pictures. I like comedian Sanjeev Kohli’s claim that, in the past when we had to get other people to take pictures of us, these were called “otheries”.

Today, I guess it’s all look at me, me, me. But, again, I’m sure it’s pretty harmless. Nothing wrong with taking a picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower, the V&A or your dinner.

Perhaps I am mellowing in my old age. The massive prison-building programme I had planned when I become First Minister may soon find itself devoid of inmates.

That said, when you come to hear my victory speech, you will have your phones confiscated at the door.