I want to take this opportunity to bring to your attention a photography related disease that is going mainly un-reported in the mainstream media. It could strike any photographer at any time and its effects are usually terminal. I refer, of course, to Flickr Addiction.

I urge you all to take this very seriously. You should not under estimate the effects that flickr.com can have on your health.

Take a look at this fresh faced nerd (photo right). This was me some years back. It is clear, apart from looking like the love child of Bill Gates and Gollum from Lord of the Rings, that I had a bright future ahead of me. I was going places.  A happy childhood and good education, the world was my oyster.

Now I’m a broken man…..those dreams have faded and I can’t think about the future….it just isn’t on my radar. All I can concentrate on is where the next comment is coming from, what new group needs my input, how to tag my photos to increase my chances of reaching explore and how I can best get around to organising my photos into sets to please my contacts. I no longer sleep for fear of missing new uploads from friends and family. I have lost the power of speech and merely babble incoherently when a member of my family talks to me about anything other than photography. It is ruining my relationships and affecting my work. I guess the worst thing is that I just didn’t see it coming. I thought it was harmless. I was wrong.

It starts off quite innocently, you start uploading a few of your holiday snaps and old family pictures to share with friends. They make it so easy with their fancy uploading widgets and desktop applications.  Then you start receiving comments and looking at other people’s photostreams in return. You get excited about the images you’ve seen. Some images seem of such great quality it inspires you to do better. You must find more. You make new friends who comment on most of your uploads. It makes you feel giddy with glee and you have to take more pictures just to hear the feedback from your peers. You feel suddenly like you should learn about photography properly and start taking pictures of flowers and kittens just to fit in with the other guys. At this point it spirals out of control. The addiction has you now….resistance is futile. (Scientists suspect that this trigger point is possibly directly related to the effect of kitten images on the human brain)

Then you begin to join groups. The gang mentality kicks in. You suddenly decide your camera isn’t good enough and you must spend money on more equipment. This well known and embarrassing side effect – GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) – is very common in flickr addicts.

You slowly but surely run out of things to photograph in your neighbourhood. You rely on finding like-minded sufferers in groups to fuel your appetite for flickr and photography. In my case I joined a 365days group. Taking a self portrait every day for a year, what could be more indulgent?…I had turned hardcore junkie!  The resulting set of photos now almost serves as a diary of my fall into despair.

Only a week into the project and I had forgotten how to eat properly, I didn’t leave the house for days at a time and was forced to eat what I could find at the back of the cupboard.

Nearly a month into the project and symptoms of flickr addiction really kick in. Mood swings associated with withdrawal experienced during the day at work would result in random acts of violence.

I am ashamed to say that these episodes of violence only escalated as my project continued, each time growing in severity until one day the inevitable happened, I killed in the name of flickr….

The boundaries between real life and flickr life became blurred. Maintaining my own identity became an internal struggle with fantastical delusions and flights of fancy becoming prevalent.

In the end the conclusion was inevitable and I became my online identity almost 24-7. Disco~Stu took charge and nearly all that remained of Stuart Mackenzie was buried deep in my subconcious.

I’d like to tell you that there is hope for me, but I can’t. There is no cure for flickr addiction, the best you can hope for is short periods of remission. Although my 365days project is finished I still waste the majority of my time trawling through the pages of flickr for my next fix…any project I can think of – just to get that buzz….that flickr high.

I hope there are people reading this who maybe are not completely hooked yet. Please let this be a warning to you. ACT NOW! while you still can.

The addiction itself is not deadly but  it is extremely difficult to live with. You will struggle to find time for normal life. Your family and friends will need counselling at some stage if they decide to support you through the difficult stages. Please also be warned that the disease can be contagious and you may find real-life friends falling into the trap. I am sadly responsible for at least one of my friends becoming a flickr addict and this weighs heavily on my mind.

Try to keep your exposure to normal people to a minimum and if necessary you may have to seek out other infected individuals for company and social interaction. Sufferers are not difficult to spot to the trained eye.

If I can leave you with one thing from this post I urge you all to please PLEASE PLEASE….think of the children….they are the innocent victims of this terrible disease.

!!spread the word people!!

 

If you’ve been reading this article and suspect you are a flickr addict or you live with one….please phone this free helpline number 00876 4442 789012 for assistance or leave a comment below