I am a story teller, and while almost all my stories are a figment of imagination, they describe a real world issue. Let me tell you the story of a location tagged photo and how it impacted me and my relationship with my Mom.
At 23, me and my buddies got this wild idea to hit up Vegas for a long weekend. My mom, though, she’s always been super wary about the whole Vegas scene because of some tough times with my dad’s gambling problem that really knocked us around in the past. So, knowing she’d be against it, I told her we were going somewhere else entirely.
Vegas was exactly what you’d expect: non-stop fun, with us getting lost in the lights, the noise, and just being free from everything else. Then, right in the middle of all that, my mom calls to see how things are going. She asks for a pic of us hanging out. So, I snap a photo and send it over WhatsApp as a document – I always do that to avoid the photo getting all pixelated when it sends.
What I didn’t think about was that sending it this way also sent the photo’s location. So, my mom opens it up and bam, our secret’s out. We’re caught red-handed in Vegas. That moment really opened my eyes to the whole location tagging thing on photos. It made me see that while it’s cool to remember places, sometimes you end up sharing more than you planned.
Why was I taking location tagged photo?
This whole mess made me rethink the whole privacy thing and why maybe we shouldn’t have our location tagged on every photo. Like, it’s fun to share, but you don’t want to accidentally give away where you are all the time. It could lead to trouble, especially if the wrong person finds out where you’re at or if it just gets you into a situation like mine with my mom.
It took me almost a week to make my mother calm down and understand the reason why I did not tell her where I was headed. It was not like I hide a lot of things from her. However, sometimes you understand that the other person may not be able to understand and hence you chose the easier route.
But one learning was pretty sure, I do not need the default ‘location tagged photo’!
So, now I’m all about keeping some things on the down-low. Not every memory needs a GPS tag to be meaningful. It’s about finding a balance between sharing the good times and keeping a bit of mystery in your life. Plus, it saves you from having to explain yourself when you’re supposed to be somewhere else.
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