Maybe it’s because I think I’m un-photogenic, always have, always will; that I don’t want photos of me tagged. I choose the pictures of myself that I want to share with the world carefully. Sorry, does that make me weird?

And maybe it’s also because I value my privacy – something to do with a creeping sense that what with Facebook, Gmail chat status, twitter, Flickr, Zoominfo, and LinkedIn – someone always knows what I’m doing right now, i.e. what my status is, what I did last night, who I did it with, what I’m going to do today, tomorrow and next week and who else will be there.

Now I’ll be the first to admit: I buy into this stuff with the best of them. I change my Facebook status when I want to be noticed, and when I want to share. When someone takes out a camera at a party I rush over because I want to be in the picture, because I want to be tagged together with these people.

When I’m lonely or bored I check who’s online on Facebook and Gmail chat.

When I miss my friends I click on their latest photos to see what they’ve been up to.

And yes, sometimes I Facebook stalk, just like you do. I even went from ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘single’ and back a few times – I shared.

But lately the shine has started coming off. There are too many cameras everywhere. I’ve noticed that at every bar, club, picnic, café, restaurant and beach I go to people are snapping away. Snapping and tagging, snapping and tagging.

In real life I see real people at real events, and they’re all taking pictures of themselves all the time. Later, when they post the pics online, I see photos of the events, from different angles, things that I didn’t know were going on while I was there; I can even catch people giving others looks they didn’t think the others would catch them giving. Sometimes that’s good, and sometimes that’s bad. You naturally miss a lot of subtext at any real life event, but on Facebook you can go back and see more, almost like using a time machine. Snap and Tag.

Soon, shop owners at malls will take my picture and post it on their profiles, tagging me as a valued customer. The storeowner will throw one arm around me and snap a photo with the other arm, him all smiles and me all embarrassed. Or if I haven’t been to his shop for a while, he’ll post a pic of me and tag me as lost, offer a reward to someone who brings me back. What if I’m tagged shopping at a competing store? Will there be a group established that hates me? Will I be charged more?

Soon, we won’t just be able to relax, to disappear into a crowd. Even if we’re not directly facing the camera and photographer, we still might be in the shot, and still be tagged. This just makes me nervous. I find it harder and harder to relax in social settings, when every few minutes someone around is posing for a picture. Was I in the frame? What was I doing at the exact moment when someone across the room took a picture of someone else entirely, but managed to get at least a part of me in the frame? This calls for a level of situational awareness I simply don’t have.

It’s bad enough to see myself in pictures online not giving it my best pose, you know, just talking to someone, or looking at something, you know, like you still sometimes do in real life. What’s worse is to get critiqued on those photos when somebody makes a comment about you. Now you have to deal with a review of a performance you didn’t even know you were giving.

I still want to be a part of Facebook, I’m not ready to live unplugged yet.

But, in the tradition of Don’t Tase me Bro! Please, Don’t Tag me Bro!