What's next, photobooths?

A warning to readers who have no tolerance for superficiality and whimsy: you may want to skip this post. But to the rest of you, and the lot of you (let's be honest), have you heard that Polaroid has announced THE END OF POLAROID? And this, only two months after I attended a pollyanna in which TWO (2) of the secret gifts were polaroid cameras bought at thrift stores and in which these two gifts were by FAR the best of the lot, coveted and swiped from several owners over the course of the exchange.

The company already stopped production of the cameras themselves, and as soon as they have enough film to last them through 2009, will halt production of that as well. Which means you'd better get thee to your local camera depot and stock the F up. Or face the indefinite future with no way to record your moments of romance and classical sensibility.



Hipsters and art kids will surely be the hardest hit, whose parties and boredom will look far less glamorous in the clarity of digital photography. Some new accessory will have to take the place of the cumbersome plastic boxes that hitherto hung about their necks, heavy necklaces. Next impacted will be medium good looking people who really rely on the vintage tones and fuzzy lines of polaroid pictures to elevate them from mediocre to remarkably attractive. But mostly, I think, knowing that polaroids are about to be relics of the past (not only relics, but useless objects!) makes this world a little harsher for all of us.



Personally, I feel like this move by Polaroid can only be dubbed a Mistake, one which takes us yet another step further from Real Things like pictures. Into the world of the digital, the abstract, the hypothetical until all we have are megabytes that are memories and all of a sudden our lives will resemble some really heavy science fiction.



Long Live the Polaroid.