Know Thyselfie

Somewhere during my career as a writer (if, indeed, having a couple of blogs and a few minor published works can actually be considered a “career”), I missed the part where you learn to write posts or columns or anything under 500 words. Brevity, concision, or succinctness — whatever it is, I don’t have it…heck even at the beginning of this sentence I used three fancy words where one normal word probably would’ve sufficed. I think the two reasons for this are that 1) I really only write things that I am passionate about, and am therefore more likely to have lengthy, thought-out opinions on; and 2) I am constantly anxious about being misinterpreted in my writings —especially on the internet — so I go out of my way to add clarity even if it means being superfluously descriptive.

But I digress.

So anyway what’s the deal with the selfie? Is there anything more simultaneously loved and loathed than the selfie?

classic selfie example

 

For the uninitiated, a “selfie” is a pretty simple concept whereupon a person uses their camera or camera-phone to take a picture of themselves, usually with the intent to post said picture on any or all of their social media. A loose history seems to point to myspace as the birthplace of the selfie, with a resurgence in popularity thanks to instagram. Basically the selfie is America’s way of saying, “Hey everybody, come see how good I look.” Even if they’re not that good looking.

selfie in progress

I recently had a conversation with a friend debating the merits and drawbacks of selfie culture, and a shortened version of that conversation went like this:

Me: Hey, you’re young and attractive, you should be posting more selfies.

Her: Yeah, that’s not really my thing.

As you can see, things got pretty heated. There’s undeniably a sort of immature quality to shamelessly posting pictures of yourself just to see how many people will “like” it, but on the other hand…I have no counterargument. It’s all pretty juvenile.

My two cents? As the famous saying goes, “everything in moderation.” If you’re posting selfies all day, every day, even the most attractive guys or gals are gonna find themselves getting as many eye-rolls as they do likes. Conversely, if you wanna impress your friends by practicing your Blue Steel every once in a while, where’s the harm? I personally fight a constant battle between the thrill of having friends and strangers alike feed my vanity with their likes, versus the fact that I am a grown man who turns 30 later this year and should be a more mature role model to younger people. Like Geraldo.

selfies gone wrong. AKA the selfie heard ’round the world.

…Okay bad example.

Ultimately it all falls under my one rule for social media: if you don’t like something, don’t follow it. You don’t have as many social (media) obligations as you think you do, so if something bothers you or annoys you, it’s the one area of your life where you can literally remove the parts you don’t enjoy. You don’t have a timeline flooded with selfies, and the over-selfie poster can get their narcissism fix from everybody else. It’s a win/win. Whew, I’m glad we got such an important topic discussed so we all know where we stand on these important issues that will forever effect our society.

Oh by the way, the United States national deficit is approximately 16.8 trillion dollars as of this writing. Hashtag trillion.

Play on,
Dustin

P.S. Word count: 517. So close. Maybe next time.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.