katieherridgeSelfie – “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” It’s official. This international social trend has reached The Oxford Dictionary. The selfie craze has taken over every aspect of social media, from Twitter and Facebook, to the mother ship – Instagram.
Instagram has to be the breading ground and the sole responsibility of the spread of this vain obsession. With different editing “filters” to choose from, the possibilities become endless. Celebrities, wannabe models and the “Oh – you caught me!” kinda people, hide their true colours behind the filters that can change a whole photograph. For the fair skinned – such as myself – you can go from Casper the friendly ghost to a Victoria Secret Model – kind of – in the space of a few clicks. Every young adult on earth has been guilty to the odd experimental selfie here and there, with the haters and secret instagrammers tending to hide their love of selfie’s through other phone apps such as Snapchat instead.
It’s hard to say when the selfie craze became such a phenomenon. Personally, I’ve been taking selfie’s since the noughties. Using my mums silver Canon XS5 camera and posting them onto my Bebo site, in the album uniquely labeled “Me”. But I wouldn’t have classed it back then as taking a selfie, just a photo of myself and my double jointed arm looking pretty bangin’. No such things as iPhones and front facing cams back in those days. I would dedicate whole evenings of my life finding the perfect lighting in my house, wearing the best clothes I owned and creating my own magazine shoot to try and get the best profile picture.
But what did I learn from this experience? Surely, now that I am older and wiser, I know better than to carry on with this parade of vanity, and fall victim into the mix of a social media frenzy and cave into such a trivial aspect of life’s past times?
In a nut shell – I haven’t.
As much as I would love to rant and rave about how pathetic our society has become and how this drivel of vanity is the petrol for fueling tabloids such as The Daily Mail, I just can’t. I would be a high contender for the world’s biggest hypocrite if I did.
I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a guilty pleasure, and I have got ALOT better than I use to be. But I am known to dabble in the odd cheeky selfie occasionally, and why the devil not? Yes it can be trashy, and yes it can be unnecessary, but if you think you look damn smokin’ then you take a photo of yourself!! People need to see this!! No-one criticises that one guy on your Facebook newsfeed who openly takes selfies of his genitalia, but when one photo of a PYT hits your social media, they are bombarded with unintellectual abuse.
Even though I am a selfie taker, I do agree that this phenomenon has taken a drastic turn for the worst. The craze is starting to get a bit out of control and as a lover of the English Language, putting the word selfie into the Oxford Dictionary should be considered a crime. But in all honesty…
Life is short kids. If you want to take a photo of yourself lieing on the floor of a toilet because you ‘were hammered,’ then do it. At the end of the day, it’s just a bit of fun. Lighten up. People will always take it too far and cross the borderline of ‘I genuinely think I am a hot piece of ass right now’ but just ignore it. They clearly don’t care, so why should you?