The Narcissism behind Selfies

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Smart phones have been in our hands, excuse the pun, for years now. Gone are the days of painful thumbs because of having to push buttons, we now have sleek screens to glide them on. Gone are the days of hauling around a brick and here are the days of sitting carefully whenever your phone is in your back pocket in the event that it breaks, snapping in half with it the battery that never seems to survive long enough.

And here are the days of 'selfies', portraits of ourselves taken with our smart phone cameras. In fact, we take so much that photographers of the times before us cannot compete, especially professional ones who spent most of their lives in the aura of the dim red light waiting for their exceptional pieces to develop in multiple liquids, hanging them like wet underpants on a line with a couple of pegs and later mounting them professionally without getting any thumbprints in the way of the art they worked so hard for. Nowadays, all we do is snap and post. I do not believe that any of the future generations will know what a 'photo album' is apart from that digital place where digital photographs are stored.

Selfies are infiltrating our lives. They ensure the longevity of our narcissism. Some people cannot leave their house if they are in an outfit they deem appropriate enough for everyone's eyes to enjoy unless they photograph themselves in it and share it - I will admit, I have been a victim of this on numerous occasions. There is nothing bad about this, because the comments you get may, if you are lucky, boost your self esteem. This becomes bad when there is an inflation of selfies. This becomes bad when the outfit you deemed 'appropriate' only covers less than 3% of your body. This becomes bad when it is a daily thing.

And it is. My photo album, on my smart phone, that is, is filled with photographs of myself. I never saw myself to be a narcissistic person until I critically analysed it, and boy, was I wrong. If somebody found my phone one day, they would think that I thought of nothing else but myself. And I can guarantee that this is the same way with every smart phone owner. Neil Armstrong, in the photo above, did not take five photographs on the moon. In fact, he took seventy-seven, a total of one-hundred and twenty-two photos in total taken by his crew including his own. This is significantly higher than a mere five, yet the funny photo above does make a point. Even if Neil Armstrong took seventy-seven photos, I am willing to risk my left arm that most smart phone owners in their lifetime will take more than double that amount of photographs of not necessarily themselves in the bathroom, but themselves in general.

Smart phone photographs are not all that bad, though. Take iPhone photography, for example. The most convenient thing about the iPhone in this case is that though it cannot compete with the pixels an SLR camera has to offer, it is far more convenient. It is pocket-sized, light to carry, has a fast response time and is there when you feel the need to capture things instantly, which is how we are exposed to so many great videos nowadays, particularly the random jam session that happened in Irving involving Jesse Rya and two random strangers. The person who happened to capture this footage did so by accident, intending only to record Jesse's great guitar playing and singing. What he ended up capturing in the heat of the moment was something that could not be captured if it were planned. 

Do we enjoy our narcissism? How would our lives be if we had no smart phones tomorrow? How would we go about with our days without having our appearances approved? Yes, to imagine a world without the convenience of smart phones is terrifying, but I think the world with smart phones can be worse.