A “selfie” is defined usually as a picture shot of oneself using a mirror to reflect the image of the person holding the cellphone, often depicted as an apple iPhone, shirtless or making some sort of strange face, usually a duck face. By adding a hastag # to the front of the word #selfie it helps promote it via social media to other people searching that term.
Somewhere along the line here, people have become unbearably jaded for reasons that they probably don’t even believe in. Just because a new outlet somewhere or blog on the internet has deemed “Year of the #Selfie” to be a travesty, perhaps you should all pull back a bit and look at things like Fukushima, the Boston Marathon, Synthetic pot causing users to eat their own dogs, Natural disasters, a polar fucking vortex!
What a selfie usually ends up being is a person thinking, “Hey I look good today, I want to take a photo.” They look around for someone to take it, realize they are alone in their apartment or don’t want to walk up to the random person in the gym and feel like an idiot, so they use the technology in their hands to make it easy, flipping the camera or using a mirror, snap a picture. Then they look at the picture and either go, “Ewwww” or “Hmm that looks good, I want people to see this of me, it depicts what I am working on progress wise, I think I look good, or I SHARE EVERYTHING” Either way, they then publish this picture to social media like Instagram or Facebook. Tag it #selfie.
What the world is starting to look at it as, “Why the fuck does that person get to be half naked in a mirror? How fucking full of themself!”(then thinks to self that they should do it but are “better”)(Because obviously you know someone from a selfie so well to call them narcissistic, when you are sitting there judging “who they are”… double standards are fun.)
“You fucking bitch, you have better tits, ass, abs, than me”.
“Your face looks stupid, what are you a duck?” (immediately tries it)
“You are not a teenage girl” (because for all the men, we think we are teenage girls, and for the girls they have magically forgotten what it was to feel young and have magically turned into the word “adult”, accepted cubicle life, and are perfectly content to ignore technology and hide in the shadows of their own self loathing…)
The same thing has happened with home movies and pictures. Back when the cameras and film were more expensive and less exposed, people would move the earth to make sure they posed for the photo being taken or went along with the stupid home movie. But put a camera in everyone’s hands and have it take up no space and you will constantly hear “Put that thing away”, “What could you possibly be recording?”. I dunno just the memories that my family had and shared with me as a growing adult, but I don’t need a lighting setup and 500 dollar film per minute. So even though those same videos are watched and loved by family after the fact, the gut reflex to reject it because it is much more prevalent in our lives is nauseating. The easier it is to do something the more people overlook it and do not condone it. But if it is a giant effort it must be legit. It is the difference between a new caster with an iPhone and full DSLR unit covered in microphones, lights, and accessories making it look much bigger than it really is or needs to be, 9/10 the people who are targeting news media to get exposure will go toward the “Fancy setup” than the “functional” one, regardless of if the results could be the same. I used to buy attachments for my cameras way back just to make myself look more “legit” at events. The inner psychi is fun.
Did you know men take more selfies than women? Did you know other men appreciate selfies from other men than women do to other women? Did you know men look at those selfies and appreciate muscles and form of other men in a “I want to achieve that” fashion? Did you know women take less selfies? Did you know women express their hatred of selfies way louder than men? Did you know women really are split 50/50 on who is attracted to your six pack and who just doesn’t care? Did you know most men feel as though their fitness will help their chances of finding the right woman? Did you know all of that is just primal instinct!?!? Did you also know that who the fuck cares, stop judging books by their covers!
I take selfies and I pick things up and put them down, does it mean I am a meat head? Nope. Does it mean I am completely vein? Maybe lol. But probably not. Will I stop? Nope, I like to keep a record of the way I look, even if it is ridiculous, who doesn’t like to go back and look at ridiculous photos of themselves.
So while you all start to eat up mass media’s approach to the #selfie… maybe what you really need to do is form an opinion of your selfie? Maybe you don’t even need to have an opinion… Maybe you can just let people use the cameras attached to their phones the way they want. Taking a selfie does not DEFINE someone. Judging someone else’s selfie does DEFINE you however.
