I notice my sex tapes are all over the internet as usual. And my premature ejaculation tape. And my shitting tape. And of course my jumping nude into a lake tape. It’s very embarrassing. One minute I upload them to 4oD for safekeeping and then suddenly they’re everywhere.

At least I’m not the only one. The last few weeks have shown how common this problem is, particularly among famous young actresses. It seems everyone gets videoed having sex these days – and then is scrupulous about backing up all the footage to the cloud. Which means that, if something happens to their computer, the data is safe and they won’t need to go through the laborious process of having sex all over again.

Or maybe they know they couldn’t recreate those images to their own satisfaction anyway. Maybe it’s footage of their younger selves shagging that they’re keen to preserve. Maybe these lays are being laid down, like port – to be appreciated decades later, perhaps to momentarily alleviate the agony of a sexless, arthritis-ridden dotage.

I suppose videoing yourself having sex is only the natural extension of everyone’s current mania for recording everything that happens to them – as if a memory is no longer adequate evidence that an event took place. The perpetual snapping and sharing which the internet and the cameraphone have colluded to bring us is much criticised. And it’s certainly annoying: millions of people online banging on about what they’re doing, endlessly illustrating their unremarkable exploits with selfies. It’s infuriating when looking at a picturesque view to see other people experience their surroundings entirely though their phones – to take something amazing and present, and reduce it, with barely a glance, to a tiny image on a screen.

It irritates me because it seems such a self-conscious way to live. But, to be fair, it’s almost always completely unselfconsciously done. It’s people like me, carping at the camcordsters, who are overthinking how life should be experienced. We’re the ones who are trying to impose our opinion of how things should be enjoyed. “Why can’t you just look at a view!?” we fume, but we never ask ourselves: “Why can’t you just let people enjoy the view in the way they want!?” Exasperated by people staring at their phones instead of the world around them, we end up staring at people staring at their phones, miss the sunset, fireworks display or penguin feeding time, and don’t even walk away with a video to watch later.

And it strikes me as odd that those complaining about the constant videoing, photographing and sharing – those shaking their heads at people’s need electronically to document their existences – are often doing so on TV, radio or in newspapers. The complainers are usually people like me, whose job gives them ample opportunities for self-expression. It seems to be people who are blessed with a superfluity of attention who are first to disparage attention-seekers.

Is this caused by a lack of empathy for those who might want to document their holiday even if a newspaper travel desk isn’t paying them to do so? Have the overly photographed forgotten how gratified they felt the first time a stranger took their picture? Or is it worse than that? Is it arrogance? Do they consider it impertinent of people who haven’t broken through into the mainstream media to attempt to leave their mark on the world? “Just because you’ve got a smartphone and Facebook account, you needn’t think you suddenly matter!”

It’s a natural human urge to assert the fact that you exist. Unless you have dangerously low self-esteem, you’ll want some people to be aware of you. That’s why schoolchildren carve their names on their desks and prisoners on their cell walls. And there’s nothing new about the selfie. It’s only technology that makes it any different from a formal Victorian photograph of an industrialist’s family, or a medieval portrait of a lord: the photographer and the artist didn’t pick their subjects, they were just the technology via which the industrialist and the lord took pictures of themselves.

While I understand and share these inclinations, my understanding runs out when it comes to attempts to immortalise a sex act. Because, as I say, I’ve done that several times and found the experience, and indeed the subsequent experience of viewing the footage, mortifying. I suppose I should clarify that, in order to make the several videos of me having sex which are available online, I did not actually have sex. They were shot as part of a TV sitcom, so there were legal obstacles to the production company requiring me and a fellow cast member to copulate. And I believe there are further legal restrictions on the televising of human genitals. Also, on a practical note, in order to shoot something to a professional standard, it is necessary to repeat the action many, many times so that it can be covered from different angles. And I’m only a normal man.

But it does look like I’m having sex. And it also looks like I’ve ejaculated in my trousers while undergoing some heavy petting in a stationery cupboard. And it completely looks like I’m experiencing epic diarrhoea. (These were separate scenes, I might add.) In general, I enjoy acting but the mornings I woke up knowing that I had to pretend to do those things, and that my physical and facial reactions might betray what I’m like when such things happen to me in real life, were not happy ones.

Then again, any of the real-life shagging I’ve been lucky enough to do has not been self-conscious. So I can cling to the hope that I make different faces, then, than I do while faking it on Peep Show. (My wife refuses to be drawn.) (So that was the end of my attempt at a medieval-style record of our wedding night.)

If you film yourself doing it for real, wouldn’t it be impossible to forget yourself in the act? Never mind actually looking at it afterwards. It would have all the horror and disappointment of hearing your own voice on an answerphone message, but to a mind-shatteringly greater extent. Everything’s trickier when you’ve observed yourself at it; how easy do you think Ed Miliband now finds it to relax while eating a bacon sandwich?

I would never condemn anyone for sticking a camcorder up before leaping aboard whoever they just met in a nightclub. But I do wonder if, having watched the tape back, they can ever do anything unselfconsciously again.