How COVID19 is Contributing to Camera Roll Clutter

08 Apr How COVID19 is Contributing to Camera Roll Clutter

Have you noticed that social media is awash with memes right now?

Are you saving them to your camera roll?

Today I am sharing how and why I am intentionally CURATING memes rather than just amassing them.

Let’s start with WHY.

Usually, I am not much of a meme sharer or saver.  I consider them camera roll clutter that doesn’t need to be saved to my digital photo hub (aka the photo collection I am curating to be handed down to the kids). Those rare times I find a meme that I want to share socially, my usual habit is to immediately delete it once I have done that. To date I have never considered a meme to be important enough in the story of my life to waste storage space on.  Also, frankly I think the kids likely would be scratching their heads about the meaning of them if I kept them in the family archive.

However, the ones I have been seeing during this whole crazy time in history have been so on point that I decided I wanted to keep some for prosperity. I am after all a dedicated storyteller! Especially here in Australia we love to make fun of a bad situation and there have been some cracking memes in my daily feed of late! For me the storyteller, intentionally curating some memes to save in my photo hub gives me a jumping off point to write in my online journal. Which in turn feeds into the annual family photo book I create each year.

Yesterday I saw one idea that was a Covid19 Time Capsule with some journal pages to complete and today I saw at least 6 people copy and paste a bullet point summary of what has been going on to their Facebook status.  It starts “Just so I never forget…”. They are relying on Facebook memories to be around for many years to come so that they will be prompted to reflect on their experience. For me I am more intentional in the curation of my story and you can read more about that process in this blog – 3 Simple Steps to Your Next Family Photo Book.

What about HOW I am curating the photos?

Trust me, it’s not rocket science.

If I am working from my desktop when I see them, I simply download the new sub folder I have added to my 2020 folder called Covid19. Then I follow along with my usual monthly photo management workflow.

If I see it when I am on mobile, I download it to my camera roll and again follow my usual routines.

The secret sauce here is the other C word – CONSISTENCY! There is the consistent process of saving the ones I like. Then the consistent process I follow with monthly photo management, when I will cull down to the best of the batch, name the files something meaningful, back up and write in my journal. And that my friends is how I am dealing with Covid19 camera roll clutter.

Have you been collecting memes lately? Had you thought about what you might do with them or what future generations might think of them if you amass hundreds of them? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.