Let me take a selfie first……….

Time to witness the handsome!

Life isn’t perfect. But my hair is!

Some people grow up, I glow up.

This is the most magical picture you’ll ever see in your life.

I took 37 of this pic before I finally got it right.

This is called a ‘selfie’ because ‘narcissistic’ is too hard to spell.

Drunk people, children, and leggings: They don’t lie. And neither does this picture!

This selfie is so good, I can’t believe it’s me.

Sending this selfie to NASA…because I’m a star!

I believe in the selfie that believes in me!

………………. Some selfie captions

People look great; they receive ‘likes’ on Facebook and Instagram. ‘Selfitis’, the narcissists, addicted to the cultural habit of taking an overabundance of photos of themselves, post them on social media sites, not once but every day.

They are always antsy to check friends tell them how beautiful they’re. A day or two later, there is another photo of themselves on their page. It may be a photo showing off a new haircut/outfit or pose in a glamor shot.

Wasn’t one photo sufficient? How many times can people tell someone they’re beautiful? And why should men post their photos where everyone commented on how handsome they’re? Why do people need validation every day?

Why base their self-worth on their appearance? Why all this fishing for compliments? Why not post photos holding up a fish they caught, sharing photos of a cold drink, riding a bike, post some’ affiliation selfies’ to highlight affiliation with people. Selfies taken could highlight a landscape, activity, or event, or collages of multiple selfies.

Selfies have grown popular because camera-equipped cell phones have become so readily available to the masses at affordable prices, not to mention the world’s obsession with social media sharing.

A number of apps developed for smartphones and tablets are based on the selfie concept. Selfie stick steadies the phone farther away from you, so you can take a photo of your whole body and also allows more space in the photo for a group of friends or family to join you.

The Bluetooth shutter helps to take photos while the phone is out of reach and allows you to take pictures without having to set the shutter-timer. If you choose to “doctor up” your photos, selfie apps can make you look more attractive, fat, old, or even like a zombie. Apps like Baldify, Facetune, Fatify, Fotor, Oldify, Photo Express, Zombify are already available in the market.

The boom of selfies is the vanishing of natural, candid pictures. Cheeky cybernauts, under three years of age, are even familiar with posing and developing a photo smile, with a duck face, posing in front of a mirror, and so on in an inauthentic way of showing off, often imitating role models from star and celebrity culture.

Your selfie is yours and it’s up to you what you do with it. But then while aiming for the perfect shot of oneself in front of perfect scenery people trump courtesy and social contract. It does not matter to them where they take it and whether they take permission from people around. A self-portrait photograph of oneself and other people, taken with a phone camera held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, is usually shared through social media.

While some highlight the value of selfies as a new material for creative work and the enhanced possibilities to convey emotions, others seem to be primarily concerned about the excessive self-representation promoted by selfies and point at related conflicts, threats, or self-esteem, or decreased mindfulness.

The craze for selfies is a huge phenomenon. Fuelled by social media, the influence of celebrity culture, and many other factors, selfies have become so popular that billions of them are taken every year across the world. Selfies have become commonplace in public life everywhere with no barriers of gender, class, age, religion, culture, creed, ethnicity, or economic status.

Oldies, wrinklies, nannies, grannies, uncles, aunties, children, toddlers, brahmins, monks, moulvis, priests, politicians, teachers, bosses, all indulge in taking selfies. Among those aged 18-24, every third picture is taken as a selfie. Young people growing up with technology and the internet at their fingertips could be seen to be the first ‘generation Selfitis’.

For them taking and sharing selfies is a kind of communication with others, documenting their lives, expressing themselves, and having fun. It may also mean creating an image for themselves–when you’re taking the photo yourself, you can present yourself in the best light–leading them to put undue importance on their appearance and feel under pressure to get lots of ‘likes’ on photos they share.

Selfie accessories, such as selfie-sticks have meanwhile grown bestsellers, and phone producers have adjusted their products for the sake of selfies.

People have been painting themselves since before written language emerged. Not until digital photography went mainstream, however, has it been so easy to take multiple photos of yourself before deciding which one you favour and want to share with others.

Historically, the proliferation of individual likeness was the sole prerogative of the illustrious. The commercialization of photography did broaden access to portraiture somewhat, but apart from wanted posters, the image of most common people would never be widely propagated. Hollywood created demigods to be recognized and worshiped.

With the arrival of the smartphone and Instagram, however, much of the power of a great film studio was now in every hand attached to a heart yearning for fame; not only could one create an image to rival those of the old icons of glamor, but one could put it on a platform where millions might potentially see it.

Indulging in a bit of self-centeredness from time to time, playing with the trappings of fame, can be a form of entertainment for oneself and one’s friends, especially when undertaken with a sense of irony. Certainly, too, the self-portrait, and the selfie stick, have become too easy a target for charges of self-involvement.

Humans, after all, have sought the admiration of others in various ways since the dawn of time; it is a feature of our social and sexual natures. The desire of men and women to dress up and parade may be as deeply rooted as the peacock’s impulse to strut.

The attention harvesters (Instagram and Facebook) have merely acted upon the yearning already there and facilitated its gratification infinitely. By presenting us with example upon example, they legitimize ‘self-aggrandizement’ as an objective for ever more of us.

By encouraging anyone to capture the attention of others with the spectacle of oneself twists our understanding of our own existence and its relation to others.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.

The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK