In August of 2013, the word “selfie” became a part of the Oxford Dictionary database, which is pretty much the pinnacle of all online dictionary sources. Once this event took place, the “selfie” officially became part of our daily jargon and a (seemingly) permanent source of anxiety and stress in my personal life.
So, along with the emergence of the selfie into everyday life, came the expectation that everyone born after the year 1987 must be able to take a perfect, amazing, earth-shattering, jaw-dropping, socially-praised selfie. I am here to tell everyone—but most importantly, the selfie itself—that this is not the case.
Selfie, I am going to tell you something that I do not believe you have ever heard before: you expect too much from me. I wake up in the morning, check my social media, see your presence under different news feeds, boards, threads, and so on, so I think “I must take part in this thing we call ‘selfie.”’ I get out of my bed with this mission in mind, but then I face the mirror, and my hope of including myself in the world of social media comes crashing down, as I realize I should probably cake on some goop to cover up my scales.
48 minutes and at least two mental breakdowns later, my face is prepped and ready to take part in selfie-ing. I adjust my trusty front facing camera, distort my arm in just the right angle so that my chin looks small and my eyes look like they are competing in a beauty contest with a Tim Burton character. Bam. Snap. You now take on a physical form and have a permanent presence in my life.
I fiddle with my phone to investigate the final product. IS THAT HOW MY FACE ACTUALLY LOOKS? Panic ensues. And so, the next step is obviously to take more of you. Many more of you. Too many of you. I scan all of you with a concrete grimace, and I inevitably settle on the first one. I filter you so hard that, when I’m done with it, the girl in the picture looks absolutely nothing like me. She looks… not bad. I think I’m ready. The next step is to post you and inevitably, of course, wait for the likes to roll in.
But, here’s the thing, selfie, are you really worth the 28 likes? And, if you are, so what? Will I really look back on you and think, Wow, remember that one time when 28 cyberhumans acknowledged my existence by clicking a button? No, probably not.
In fact, I have a theory about you, selfie, in which I will equate you with an advertisement of a nice burger. While a picture of a burger has the ability to be aesthetically pleasing, it does not capture the essence of the burger. When we think about a burger, we don’t simply think of how pretty a burger looks in a picture. Then why are we forcing the entirety of our identities into one, single picture? I refuse to be a picture of a burger. Do not misunderstand me,. Burgers are amazing. They’re spectacular and delicious and quite satisfying…I’m getting distracted.
And so, selfie, I think we should reexamine our relationship, as it seems to follow this destructive cycle: seduction (aka me witnessing how beautiful you can look), stress (as I try to take you), a mix of disappointment and excitement (getting likes on you but never enough), rinse, and repeat.
I declare a change in this cycle of selfie-ing. And personally, I declare an official break from you, selfie. But most importantly, I declare a break from the selfie thought process, because we all need to realize that we are more than our selfies.
Sincerely,
A Faithful Member of the Internet