The Selfie!

Disclaimer: If you take the time to read this—first off, thank you and enjoy. And second, don’t think I’m hating on you in particular if you find yourself guilty of this. I like you, and wouldn’t want to impose any hate on anyone because that shits just bad for the universe as a whole. It’s a satire, I like you for who you are and respect your hustle.

Selfie:
One thing that’s here to stay is the selfie. The capability that camera phones have given us to snap a photo of ourselves at any given moment is simply not going anywhere – I think these have their place and play a critical role in the advancement of social media networks.

For example: being in a cool place, or having a ‘Kodak moment’ with no one to take a photo of you -- take a selfie so you can share or preserve that cool moment. Before you call me a hypocrite, I do it too when I feel the need.

But of course there are the people who get “#bored” and repeatedly (like 3+ per day) snap photos of themselves, in a mirror, their same puckered lips face, from an angle slightly above their heads to give the illusion of sharp jaw and absolutely ZERO chance of double chin, then they sit back and rely on random “likes” to affirm their self-worth for another hour or two until the likes fizzle out and they need to get that false sense of validation again. Imagine if everyone walked around in public with their ‘shameless selfie’ face on, how funny that would be. We’d live in a world of fuckin’ real life Zoolanders.
             

 

Let’s rewind say 10 years -- Back then, the word ‘selfie’ would have probably meant going and whacking yourself off -- think about it.

Furthermore in this 10 year rewind, if you were a person who went around on the daily with a digital camera and snapped repeated pictures of yourself, just to remind yourself and the rest of the world what you look like, you’d be widely regarded as an asshole.

It’s the equivalent to living in the year 1995, and handing out flyers you printed off at Kinko’s to all of your friends and strangers alike with a close-up pictures of your face from your most flattering angle only. Repeatedly. Daily. Hourly.

It’s the equivalent to living in the renaissance times and painting flattering oil paintings of yourself over and over again, and then posting them in the public square, just because you think the world around you will stop turning should the people stop being able to see your face when you’re not around in person.

It’s the equivalent to living in the caveman times and while everyone is painting on the cave walls --immortalizing a visual memory of a crucial mammoth hunt that fed the tribe for months, but you’re painting a large photo of yourself on the wall, because that is just as momentous, right?

Anyways, you get the point. It’s not that it wasn’t possible before these times; it’s just that vanity and self-affirmation were never so mainstream and encouraged.  Furthermore, now it’s NORMAL! It’s not frowned upon at all, and this kind of narcissism is validated via SnapChat, Facebook, Instagram, and I don’t doubt there’s tons and tons more.

Here’s an excerpt from where the word ‘narcissism’ comes from:

Narcissus (mythology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Narcissus by Caravaggio depicts Narcissus gazing at his own reflection.

Narcissus or Narkissos (Greek: Νάρκισσος), possibly derived from ναρκη (narke) meaning "sleep, numbness," in Greek mythology was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was the son of a river god named Cephissus and a nymph named Liriope.[1] He was exceptionally proud of what he did to those who loved him. Nemesis noticed and attracted Narcissus to a pool, wherein he saw his reflection and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image. Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus died.[2] Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself.

 See, this word in mythology is derived from a person thousands of years ago being the original selfie douche, and he paid for it.

Just these days I get a little annoyed with the way people metaphorically do the “Look at me! Look at me!” on their social media platforms. Personally, if I wanted to know what a person was doing all day every day, I’d keep them in my basement, not in my social media circles.

I guess people do this as a way to fish for compliments on their looks, and fair enough, if you’re proud of how you look and want to be acknowledged based on it, that’s great. Be you and that’s it.

But what I find is how rare it is now to receive those compliments in person anymore. People will rarely make themselves vulnerable for long enough to pass on a face to face comment. There is no tangible ‘like’ button. The whole process gives such a false sense of human interaction, a temporary relief from a person’s natural yearning for attention. Selfies aren’t real. You can self-edit, add a filter, and delete if it doesn’t get these stupid ‘likes’ you were fishing for. In real life, you can’t delete, so how much more relevant is it to give a compliment in person, give your own physical version of a blue-fingered thumbs up. It’s so rare though. physical human statements and intimacy among our social groups is becoming ‘old-fashioned’ and as a result, we are only becoming insecure because our true selves  are not being able to live up to the expectations we set via our digital profiles.

For example: on your birthday, usually your Facebook wall gets bombarded by your friends with something along the lines of “Happy Birthday, hope you have a great day” and you feel good reading it, then at the end of the day you retort with something like “Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes”. It feels good to know people are thinking about you, and care enough about you to wish you a happy birthday.
But what feels even better is someone calling you on the phone or standing in front of you saying the words “Happy Birthday”, maybe give you a hug or something too. That is so much more memorable, and carries so much more weight than digitally doing it. Technology can’t match a personal touch, and any attempt to do so in today’s age is only fake and detrimental to people who buy into them.

I’ve got lots more to write about this and other things (hashtags, privacy, etc.), but I’m going to save it for another day. If you’ve managed to read my whole post then my sincere thanks. I’ll tell that to you in person the next time I see you.

Be awesome everyone. Share and repost as you see fit, or don’t, I don’t care.  J