viz.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

About half of my Facebook friends live in the SF Bay Area, and out of everyone they are by far the most active posters. They're constantly touting political views, promoting their startups, recommending good reads, and most of all reminding everyone through pictures and status updates that they live in the "best" city in the country (Businessweek made it official with their city rankings for 2012).  As a former resident of SF who once drank the Kool-Aid, it's hard not to sound bitter and hypocritical about the locals' enthusiasm.  Who knows, maybe instead of Kool-aid, now I'm just sucking on sour grapes.  Let me be clear: there's no reason why San Franciscans shouldn't love there city. It is indisputably one of the most beautiful urban centers in the country.  Pastel-colored buildings decorate its famous hills, which look out over the Pacific ocean and the wrap-around bay.  And it boasts world-class universities, progressive politics, and vibrant international communities, all of which attract a distinctly intellectual, liberal, and enterprising kind of person.  Like I said, it makes perfect sense that SF residents love their city, and that they would want to share this pride through social media. Most of the time I’m grateful for their posts because they offer me a way to vicariously experience the beautiful and eclectic place where I came of age. But the pictures also consistently make me laugh, and I confess they increasingly make me groan. This post will explore why that is.

People who live in SF--and I'm not talking about newcomers--love to take pictures of the city's landmarks and breathtaking overlooks, and share them on Facebook.  I understand the impulse to snap a photo of a lovely view; but to constantly share pictures of famous places as if no one had ever seen them before, raises some questions. How many longtime Manhattanites share personal photographs of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty? I'd wager relatively few. Yet, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marina, Coit Tower and the Ferry Building are all over my Facebook and Instagram feeds. None of my friends are particularly good photographers, either, so it's unclear why their pictures of these places would offer viewers a novel experience of them.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

But I'm coming at this from the wrong angle. These photos aren't being posted to indulge the viewer's sense of curiosity about San Francisco. They're being used as evidence for ethical appeals about the person who is posting them, evidence that these treasures are "in my backyard, and part of my everyday life"--proof that "I chose and can afford to live in the most celebrated city in America." The Facebook photos are also evidence of the person's immediate location, which has become a social commodity and a valuable asset to companies like Foursquare that trade in "check-ins."  The picture above with its unassumingly assuming caption, "Golden Gate from the St. Francis yacht club," serves as evidence that the photographer was at a yacht club, whose proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge implies that it is an especially exclusive one.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

The caption for this snapshot of the Ferry Building and the distant East Bay uses an intentionally transparent form of understatement.  The view from this Facebook user's office is anything but shabby, and the picture establishes that the photographer works high up in a building that must have an extraordinarily high rent.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

This user hits us with a 1-2 punch of SF-related imagery. Her profile picture features the iconic Golden Gate Bridge while the Ferry Building clock tower looms in the background.  Her choice to surround herself, virtually, in loco-specific images indicates that her joyous hair-toss in the photograph expresses her feelings about the city.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

Here we have another enthusiast--let's call her the SF hugger--whose wide grin, we are led to conclude, is related to the cityscape behind her, which she gestures at with outspread arms.  These kind of photos make me laugh and sigh irritatedly (if you allow that those two respitory events can happen at once).  They attempt to suggest something about a person's life in a city--that it is free and joyful?--beyond the moment in which the photograph was taken. But this message is undercut by the incredibly staged and exaggerated aspect of the figure's pose.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: Citizens of SF, we know you live in a beautiful city. It has been well-documented by thousands of instagramming yuppies before you. Your ethos is not enhanced by standing (or gesticulating wildly) in front of the city, whose skyline you have transformed into a status symbol, and the danger of posting photos like these is that your friends will rhetorically analyze you.