60 Photos That Capture the Human Experience As It Really Is

People (Photo via)

Yesterday, a website called Distractify uploaded a bunch of photos under the title: “The 60 Most Powerful Photos Ever Taken That Perfectly Capture the Human Experience”. People lost their shit for it on social media, but for a very different reason than I lost mine. Here’s why:

What is it? 
A pretty indiscriminately thrown together bunch of photographs, mostly showing “powerful” moments involving humans and sometimes animals.

Why do I hate it?
Because it’s a lazy piece of bullshit. It’s clearly and transparently designed to attract as many clicks as possible and drive up advertising revenue for the website. Plus, there’s something uniquely careless about putting a picture of a Rwandan torture victim next to a photo of an ageing hippie with a rabbit on his head, then claiming that, together, they somehow represent the “human experience”.

Of course, a few of the photos are genuinely moving – there’s no denying that. But the photos themselves aren’t really the problem, it’s the completely arbitrary lumping together of happy Iranian skateboarders and crying widows that I have a problem with. It’s like the author has decided that events like the Iraq war, Euromaidan, The Troubles or the Kosovo war are just scrolling fodder for a Friday afternoon.

That’s why I decided to put together a different compilation – one that doesn’t rely on genocide for clicks, and instead shows people as they really are: insecure, hopelessly in love, depressed and horribly dressed.