Flickr oddities

Hmm… with a rather detached and somewhat masochistic interest (you know… the sort of interest/curiosity that prompts you to keep on probing an imminently aching tooth with your tongue… you know you shouldn’t do it cos it’ll turn the imminent ache into a real pain, but somehow you just can’t resist) I’ve been observing the antics of a particular Flickr user regarding some (well, quite a few actually) of my pics.

This particular user seems to have been “favouriting” quite a lot of them.
Nowt wrong with that of course, ‘cept they’re all on a certain theme. And there’s no comments been added, no contact been made. Nothing. Just this faving business. (Aside from anything else that’s a bit bloody unsociable… says he, renowned for his antisocial tendencies!)
So, intrigued (and guessing the visitor’s motives from their rather giveaway nickname), I visit their profile.

Curiouser and curiouser. Although not altogether surprising at this stage.

They don’t appear to have uploaded any pics of their own… leastways, none that are publicly available. Yet lots of “favourites”… not just from my ‘stream, but from those of others as well.
And if confirmation were needed regarding their motive, well, here it is.
All those faves appear related to the male torso in various poses and guises.
Clearly what we have here is a member of the “gay” community. And as if proof were needed, a quick scan of the Flickr groups he’s joined is it (if indeed he is a “he”! And if “he” isn’t, well, that raises all sorts of other questions.).

And the ones this character has “faved” of mine? Well, they all seem to come from my collection of “cop shots”. Y’know, the ones I take to (generally) document the antics and misbehaviour of cops at protests and suchlike.
So perhaps this Flickr user has a thing about cops in uniform. (I never realised cops in uniform were so popular… until I started uploading pics of them to Flickr. I suspect such a fascination could almost merit an in-depth discussion on the psychology thereof. Hmm.)

Ok, whatever turns you on I s’pose. Must confess there’s been a couple of cute female cops that I’ve snapped because… well, not cos they were “misbehaving” in typical cop fashion but cos they were… er… cute. Oops. (The fact that they happened to also be cops in uniform was merely incidental from my viewpoint… just gave me a legitimate excuse reason to snap ‘em!)

(One thing I haven’t done though is to browse other folks’ streams in a quest for pics of cute female cops. Hmm. Now there’s a thought! But no, I can’t really be bothered.)

However (back on topic) I’m not too sure how I react to all of this.

A part of me finds it distinctly distasteful. Though I’m not too sure why. But then rationality and common sense kicks in.

The reality is that if one puts pics “out there” then the fact is that there’s actually very little or nothing one can do about how those pics are perceived… or even used by others.
One could of course jump through hoops (only upload thumbnails, make them private, create Flash slideshows instead of uploading “raw” pics, embed totally disfiguring watermarks blah blah blah) but then what’s the point of joining a photo sharing community in the first place? None, I woulda thought.

And again, who are we to try second-guessing the reasons why someone may like/enjoy certain of our pics… or the purposes to which they’re put?

No point in getting paranoid about it. Its a simple choice: either upload pics to the ‘web for all to “enjoy” (and for whatever reason)… or don’t!

And, I have to say, I have no real issues (moral or otherwise) with the gay community.

Yeah, I may have my own personal feelings about it and that particular predilection but the bottom line is, its their life and up to them how they choose to live it. May not be my thing, but that doesn’t mean I have to be judgmental or condemnatory either.

Each to his (or her) own basically… providing it doesn’t interfere with me living my life. Or causing harm to others.

Hell, one of my most valued Flickr contacts is self-confessedly gay. Yet there’s nothing dodgy about him at all. We’ve met “in the real world” and he’s a great guy. Plus he takes super pics (of all sorts of things) and I love browsing his ‘stream. Never had a moment’s concern about him or his interests at all. (Though I have a sneaking feeling my “in yer face” attitude to cops on protests causes him some concern!)

But getting back to this other character, I still can’t shake the feeling that there’s something distinctly seedy about his behaviour on Flickr. I guess the homosexual community has its fair share of seedy characters in the same way that the heterosexual community has.

Or p’raps he’s just shy?

I did initially think about including a link to his Flickr profile in this post… but on second thoughts it struck me as not being an entirely ethical thing to expose a user’s behaviour publicly and positively identify them. After all, we’re all entitled to some degree of privacy, even online.
And its not as though he’s doing anything technically wrong… though it does seem to be rather in conflict with the spirit of what Flickr’s about (or what I understood it to be about). Perhaps that’s what I find disturbing… the implicit onanism of the behaviour.

Which sense is encouraged, I suspect, by an expectation I appear to have unwittingly acquired that if a significant number of one’s Flickr pics are being “faved” by a particular user then at some stage that user will at the very least acknowledge one’s contributions to the Flickr community by a courtesy Flickrmail… or something.
On the other hand, would I really want to be contacted by such a seemingly creepy person? Probably not.

Of course, much more satisfactory would be if that user also had pics of their own (and preferably not of the male torso exclusively!) to share with the Flickr community at large. Its just damn rude and selfish otherwise. And… er… creepy!

P.S. The behaviour pattern I’ve described above isn’t particularly unusual on Flickr. Accounts of similar behaviour patterns pop up periodically in discussions in the Flickr Central group. Its just that this is the first time I’ve had personal experience of it. Its a tad unsettling.