#swans.

You told us to do something original, and interesting. 

I hereby defy you.

I don’t, actually. I was searching around for the most posted captions/hashtags on Flickr (I don’t have an Instagram) and I came across a very interesting fact: one of the most popular captions is “love”.

Well, I thought to myself, staring at my screen. This could be fun.

I was only a little bit wrong - love, as it turns out, is painfully boring in the world of Flickr. This, of course, makes it endlessly fun, but I really have to work to bring out the entertainment hidden within the endless photos of “love”. 

As I was scrolling through these pictures, I noticed something interesting about the human race: we love a lot of things. A lot of really dumb, really boring things. Do you know what the most common photo I saw captioned “love” looked like? Two animals stretching their necks to one another. Popular others included hearts made out of hands, various cute animals, scenic pictures, and the occasional rose. People were featured much less than expected - I was picturing sappy selfies of couples enjoying one another’s company, but I was surprisingly wrong. It turns out we don’t love each other. We love just about everything else, sure, but other people? Bah. The majority of people pictures I saw on Flickr were those involving babies, or clearly different cultures (why Japanese geisha looking at the camera is considered love completely baffles me. These women could hate each other). In contrast, he only couples featured were predominantly heterosexual and white. How’s that for an appreciation of diversity?

These photographs have completely reshaped my understanding of love. Clearly I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time! Love isn’t about your partner, or your friends, or your family - it’s about dogs and strangers who dress in things you’ve never dressed in. Next time I’m wandering through Isla Vista, I pledge to approach the most obviously culturally aware person and inform them of the greats service they are doing for the world in their inescapable promotion of love.

I’m left wondering what these definitions of love point to. Is it a deeper insecurity of one’s place in the world? They can’t post pictures of love as they view it, because their experiences are mediocre compared to the greater love circulating the globe? Perhaps they feel their love experiences really don’t compare to those of two swans reaching for the same fish. I really can’t say, for sure. I can say I’m not getting an Instagram, or a Flickr account, any time in the near future. Regardless, I’m happy to have explored the deeper meaning behind a concept I clearly know nothing about. I’m eternally grateful to have seen the picture of a sun suspended within layers of clouds, as the sun is, again, a concept entirely new to me.