Vanity and Videotape

So I bought a new camera for my trip to New Zealand. The amount of technology that you can buy for a couple of hundred bucks these days is pretty silly. If I don’t have any pictures in the memory card, I can film a video clip that’s an hour and a half long. That’s three consecutive sit-coms, including the commercials. Ridiculous. Of course, I did what any other person does when they have new recording technology. I turned it on myself.

Seeing or hearing yourself from outside of the confines of your own head is such a bizarre experience. Remember the first time you heard your own voice? Everyone has the same reaction, “Who is that nasally douchebag?” Followed by, “Do I really sound like that?” (Of course you do by the way.) Something about experiencing yourself in this different way makes almost everyone’s skin crawl. Objective judgment of oneself in a recording is impossible. In fact, I’m not sure I can think of a less objective exercise. Seeing your own behavior without the filter of your consciousness is really like looking at a stranger, eerily familiar and yet foreign at the same time. Anyway, it made me realize a few things.

I apparently have trouble forming coherent sentences without constant use of the word “um.” This is horribly irritating. I know that I’m not necessarily the most nimble tongued speaker in the world, but wow. Evidently my brain has been redacting all of these lame interjections before they reach my interior monologue. I had no idea that I had the verbal equivalent of Parkinson’s.

I’m also chubbier than my mental self-image. This was something I’ve been aware of though. You can only declare a certain number of pictures of be inaccurate before the math starts to get a bit strained. Basically it came down to there being a giant conspiracy to portray me unflatteringly or me being less attractive than I originally thought. I’ve almost decided that there isn’t a conspiracy. (See ladies, guys are neurotic too.)

To conclude, the only thing more destructive to personal vanity than self-criticism is informed self-criticism.