Note to selfie
So, it’s the word of the year, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. This has spawned the pic of own’s own bottom (the belfie), to show oneself working out (helfie/helfy) or even one’s own mother (melfie). I’m not making this up.
It can only be a matter of time before we have the National Healfie (a picture of yourself next to an exhausted junior doctor after a 72-hour shift) or a delpie (either a picture of yourself next to a piece of classic Greek architecture or next to French actress Julie Delphy. Or perhaps both).
My favourite is of former British PM Tony Blair, grinning in front of a burning Iraqi oilfield (even if it is a photo-shopped piece of satire).
Is it too much to speak of ‘a selfie generation’? I don’t mean necessarily in terms of being selfish- there is a clear argument that so much interconnectedness via the Net makes us linked to millions of people never possible before. (Although it’s also worth thinking that millions of dollars may be pledged to victims in the Philippines, how many of us could honestly pick out the Philippines on a map?)
What I mean is that technology is driving us in a direction that appears to promote outward-looking interconnectedness but actually is more intrinsically about self-promotion. While Barack Obama or Stephen Fry might have large numbers of Twitter followers, the stats are still dominated by the likes of Katy Perry- individuals whose fame and fortune we’d like to emulate, not thinkers to inspire us to original action.
For a generation for whom all the old certainties have gone (professional, financial, social…) where are the certainties now? ‘Friends’ that you can un-friend at will, TV channels that only show programmes you’ll like and individual shows that will only reinforce rather than challenge your opinions.
To me, it feels very insecure, like family and friends who insist on posing in front of landmarks for photos, as if we wouldn’t believe they’d been there if they didn’t. The selfie is like a tag, a feeble cry that ‘I was there’ with visual evidence, as if without this ‘proof’, we’d be nothing. It feels, like my post from a while back on autographs, as if we need to confer value by imposing the self. What real difference is there if a book has a name scribbled in it or not?
It can only be a matter of time before we have the National Healfie (a picture of yourself next to an exhausted junior doctor after a 72-hour shift) or a delpie (either a picture of yourself next to a piece of classic Greek architecture or next to French actress Julie Delphy. Or perhaps both).
My favourite is of former British PM Tony Blair, grinning in front of a burning Iraqi oilfield (even if it is a photo-shopped piece of satire).
Is it too much to speak of ‘a selfie generation’? I don’t mean necessarily in terms of being selfish- there is a clear argument that so much interconnectedness via the Net makes us linked to millions of people never possible before. (Although it’s also worth thinking that millions of dollars may be pledged to victims in the Philippines, how many of us could honestly pick out the Philippines on a map?)
What I mean is that technology is driving us in a direction that appears to promote outward-looking interconnectedness but actually is more intrinsically about self-promotion. While Barack Obama or Stephen Fry might have large numbers of Twitter followers, the stats are still dominated by the likes of Katy Perry- individuals whose fame and fortune we’d like to emulate, not thinkers to inspire us to original action.
For a generation for whom all the old certainties have gone (professional, financial, social…) where are the certainties now? ‘Friends’ that you can un-friend at will, TV channels that only show programmes you’ll like and individual shows that will only reinforce rather than challenge your opinions.
To me, it feels very insecure, like family and friends who insist on posing in front of landmarks for photos, as if we wouldn’t believe they’d been there if they didn’t. The selfie is like a tag, a feeble cry that ‘I was there’ with visual evidence, as if without this ‘proof’, we’d be nothing. It feels, like my post from a while back on autographs, as if we need to confer value by imposing the self. What real difference is there if a book has a name scribbled in it or not?
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