Photo Phatigue

Apple’s Photos app, in theory, should be a perfectly organized digital shoebox of memorable moments and creative inspirations. Instead, it’s become a bottomless pit of duplicates, blurry mistakes and whatever happened to be in my pocket when I forgot the camera was on.

I call this condition Photo Phatigue™—a very real, very tiring condition caused by the impossible task of trying to clean up duplicates in my Apple Photos library without losing my will to live.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t ask to have 12 copies of the same picture. Maybe I tried to AirDrop it and failed. Or maybe I transferred the same photo library between devices so many times it’s started duplicating itself, like a Gremlin after midnight.

You'd think Apple would have a simple feature in Photos to detect and delete duplicates.

You’d think that. But you’d be wrong.

Instead, every iOS upgrade seems to come with a new useless feature like "make photos dance to music." They've added albums like "For You" and "Memories," which basically is 12 more versions of the exact same photo you already didn’t delete, but with a jazz soundtrack.

For the younger kids reading this (stops to laugh at the idea any young people are reading this), you don’t remember the glory days of film cameras. Back then, we had 24 shots. Total. That was it. You actually had to think before you pressed the shutter. You had to commit. If Grandma blinked in the group photo, tough luck—she was mid-sneeze for eternity.

But now, we can take 237 versions of the same moment in 3.6 seconds. And we do. Because we can. We’ve combined the power of technology with the attention span of a goldfish.

Sure, there are third-party apps that claim to clean your duplicates. Some actually do a decent job, if you trust them not to delete your wedding photos while keeping 14 screenshots of your grocery list. I've heard it said there actually is a duplicate removal feature in Photos. But I don't have time to look for unicorns, or leprechauns or the Holy Grail. And I don't want to have to send out a search party to find out what should be obvious, native functionality. This is basic. Like spellcheck. Or autocorrect.

Apple, you’re a trillion-dollar company. Can you please just give me a “Find Duplicates” button that's in my face and works?

Until then, I’ll keep scrolling. And swiping. And swearing.

Not throwing away my shot

Let’s talk about vaccine deniers, the warriors of natural immunity. The bold few who say, “I did my own research,” and think it trumps (sorry for that word) 200 years of medical science. But here’s the funny part: most of them are walking, talking advertisements for how well vaccines actually work.

Why? Because they got them.

While loudly claiming vaccines are a global conspiracy powered by Big Pharma, these folks are living in a world where polio doesn’t exist thanks to the very vaccines they now reject. Ironic ain’t it?

You don’t hear many anti-vaxxers complaining about lockjaw — probably because they got their DTaP shot as toddlers. That’s because their parents vaccinated them before YouTube became the Mayo Clinic for conspiracy theories.They're walking around tetanus-free, unaware stepping on a rusty nail used to be a potential death sentence.

But hey, keep sipping your kombucha and crediting “gut health.”

If you’re over 40 and your legs work just fine, chances are you had the polio vaccine. Wild poliovirus used to turn playgrounds into ghost towns. Now it's nearly extinct, except in regions where people stopped vaccinating.

Anti-vaxxers love to boast about their “natural immunity” — the same kind of “natural” that only works because 94% of the people around them are vaccinated.

During COVID, hospitals became battlegrounds. People who had mocked the vaccine ended up gasping for breath, begging for a shot they’d spent months demonizing. For many, that change of heart came too late. Doctors and nurses had to watch patients die avoidable deaths — again and again — while being accused of "killing people for money" by people who got their medical degrees from Reddit.

Some of those same patients — days earlier — had gone viral for mocking mask mandates. Turns out their beliefs outlasted their breath. Now they were on ventilators, posting final videos urging others to “get the shot.”

Remember when New Yorkers clapped out their windows every night at 7 p.m. to thank healthcare workers? Nurses were hailed as heroes. Fast-forward a year, and some of those same workers were being screamed at, threatened, even attacked — for asking people to wear a mask or get vaccinated. Somewhere between “flatten the curve” and “plandemic,” the applause died and the conspiracy theories started.

They saved lives. They worked 18-hour shifts in garbage bags because PPE ran out. They held iPads up to dying patients so their families could say goodbye. And now, some are being called government agents for doing the same job they were once hailed for.

If irony were a virus, we’d all be contagious.

Being proudly “vaccine-free” in 2025 is like being proudly “boat-free” while standing on an aircraft carrier. You’re only dry because the rest of us are keeping you afloat. It’s the health equivalent of living rent-free in an immune system you didn’t pay to protect. You're not a rebel. You're just lucky someone else made responsible choices.

Are there side effects from vaccines? Of course. But the majority of people tolerate them well. With any medicine—from aspirin to prescription drugs—the overriding consideration is do the benefits outweigh the risks. And like it or not, deny it or not, vaccines work. They’re why you don’t have smallpox, and why “typhoid” sounds like something from a pirate movie instead of a real threat.

And as for our healthcare workers: they deserve more than applause. They deserve respect, protection, and the basic human courtesy of not being blamed for a virus they risked everything to fight.

So next time someone tells you vaccines are a scam, and before they start quoting their cousin’s ex-boyfriend who once took a nursing class in 1998, just smile and say, “I’m glad your childhood vaccines worked.”