Joanne McNeil at the Tomorrow Museum:

"Paris, Texas is about two people who dream to reunite. But it seems more often than not the reason we run away from people is to stay away.

The film made me think of a situation that is now so familiar — the inescapability of past relationships due to the encumbrance of Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. The ductile spreadability of the web makes it impossible to forget anything — especially people — even if you are careful never to google someone, never to follow their updates. You can chose not to follow someone, but that doesn’t mean they won’t enter your stream as a retweet or “shared” item.

The way we think of love and friendship has fundamentally changed due to social media. The past is no longer a black box into which we can dump painful memories. It’s not just the capacity to watch, but the understanding that we are watched.

It means living life online knowing people from our past can always call from behind a one-way mirror. This is worthy of examination beyond the hastily written columns in women’s magazines (“Can’t stop looking at pictures of my ex-boyfriend’s wife and baby! Ack!”)

The emotional consequences are not fully understood because it is all so new and unsettling."