My Go-Around with a Tough Topic Today
Alright, so today I had a bit of a weird one on my plate. I was thinking about different kinds of visual content, you know, for practice, and this phrase, let’s just say it was about “photos of inbreds,” kinda floated into my workspace as something to, I dunno, explore the nature of? Like, what’s the actual substance there, what’s the deal with looking into something like that. Seemed like a straightforward enough thing to poke at for my daily practice log, at first glance.
So, I started digging a bit, trying to figure out what kind of “practice” this could even be. My usual routine, you know, I try to understand the scope of a topic, see what information is actually out there, what the general vibe is. I figured, okay, maybe there’s some historical context, or some kind of specific, academic or anthropological angle I wasn’t aware of. Just trying to keep an open mind, like I always aim to when I start on something new, to see what can be learned.
But man, it got uncomfortable fast. Like, really, really fast.
First off, the term itself. It’s not exactly a neutral word, is it? It felt kinda off, just thinking about it as a category. And then, when I started considering what kind of material or discussion even gets associated with it, it just went downhill. We’re not talking about some detached, clinical study here, not from what I could gather about the general use of such a term. It felt more like… well, not good. Potentially exploitative, maybe? Definitely not something I’d want to be “practicing” with or featuring here.
- The whole idea of “photos” of people labeled this way just started to feel incredibly wrong from an ethical standpoint.
- You gotta ask, who would be creating such things? And for what purpose?
- And who would be looking for them, and why? The implications started to pile up.
My “practice session” pretty quickly turned from “let’s explore this topic for content” to “hang on, what am I even doing here? Is this a valid thing to explore in this way?” It’s one thing to practice, say, understanding a complex dataset or trying to learn about different cultures through their art. It’s a whole other thing when the subject itself is so deeply tangled up with potential harm, historical misuse, and basic disrespect for people’s dignity.
So, the long and short of it? My practice today didn’t end up with a new gallery or a collection of interesting visual finds. It ended up with me shutting down that line of inquiry pretty damn quick. Sometimes, I guess, the best practice is recognizing when a particular path isn’t productive or ethical to go down. Realized this wasn’t a “topic” for a casual blog post or a “practice” session in the way I usually do things. Some areas are best approached with extreme caution, if at all, especially if there’s no clear, ethical framework. Yeah, that was my “practice” for today – a lesson in recognizing boundaries and thinking about the impact of topics. Not what I expected to be working on, but probably more valuable in the long run than just chasing down any old subject.
