The selfie acts as a large factor in one’s daily use of social media. Us millennials saw the rise in popularity of this autobiographical documentation and we made the selfie popular; a normalized practice in day-to-day life, and a means in which we communicate. We are also the ones to bring forth the repercussions of this habit, however unassuming these repercussions currently seem.
The selfie is actively ruining the compliment.
The selfie places an individual in the past. This happens both in the position of the photo taker and the photo viewer. An individual who posts a selfie takes a photo, posts the photo, and then spends the following moments of their life receiving notifications about the likes that this photo receives. The “like” acts as a form of communication between one person to the other, but then any further communication halts.
The other day I ran into my classmate and told her that I liked her profile picture. It was clear that she had taken the photo earlier that morning and immediately posted it. I could have simply complimented how she looked in that very moment, as it was similar to how she looked in the photo, but my gut reaction was to provide this girl with the most limiting compliment.
The most frightening part of this entire situation is that with most people, I probably would never have even bothered to pay the compliment of “I like your profile picture” at all. The selfie places the viewer in the past and afflicts individuals with the feeling that a compliment in person would be repetitive and redundant.
While giving and receiving less compliments on a daily basis seems like it could aid in lowering superficiality in a generation that is often mocked for our obsession with aesthetics, a more probable outcome will be an increased attention on picturesque beauty and a decreased level of socialization in everyday life.
So, while a selfie can receive attention at a global level, this attention is focused upon a recipient’s past experience, creating a social connection that falls flat and leads to limitations of possible daily interactions. Receiving a compliment in the form of a “like” from a follower on the other side of the world offers little potential for emotional depth and connection in comparison to the compliment you might have otherwise received from someone you see on a daily basis. With the help of the selfie, the “like” has become a norm that has pushed real life compliments to the wayside.
Therefore, the selfie and the way that we treat selfies are leading us into a path of rarifying the casual compliment from one person to the next and thus into a more antisocial future.