Social networking, in its efforts to bring people together in an online community of sharing and caring, seems to be doing the opposite.
The ability to share intimate details of your life with friends, family and acquaintances instantly has created individuals who are more narcissistic and addicted to other people’s validation than ever before.
Supposedly, the 'selfie' - a self-taken photograph that's typically taken with a smartphone and uploaded to social media - accounts for over 30% of pictures posted online by the 18 to 24 age group.
The term ‘selfie’ has become commonplace enough to merit its recent official inclusion in the latest Oxford English Dictionary online update. It may be just a trend, but it’s one that seems to be fuelling the insecurity of under-25-year-olds everywhere.
But unfortunately for most shameless social media self-promoters, most self-portraits are just really, really boring. Everybody already knows what you look like. Unless you’re somewhere special, with someone special or doing something special, a photo of yourself is nothing new.
And while, for the most part, obsessive selfie-taking is more obnoxious and irritating than offensive, there are some circumstances where it is plain inappropriate to turn that camera towards your own face.
The Tumblr Selfies at Serious Places puts the spotlight on the phenomenon. It’s a collection of user-submitted screenshots of people who've taken smiling, laughing, thumbs-upping selfies at such super-fun-happy historic sites as Pearl Harbor, Chernobyl and Auschwitz.
The fact that these places are the scenes of some of history’s most tragic and sombre events, and are not in fact a frat party or amusement park, seems to be lost on the (unsurprisingly) young people featured in the blog.
And it’s not just history that’s being treated inappropriately. The blog also features posts of teenagers posing cheerily at their grandmother's funeral, in front of burning house fires, car accidents and homeless people. Take any sort of human tragedy or misfortune, capture it for posterity whether it involves you or not and with little regard for the emotions of the people actually affected, and watch the 'likes' pour in.
Also featured on the site is a screenshot of a pic posted by the daughter of one of George Zimmerman’s trial lawyers, in which the family is eating ice-cream and celebrating Dad successfully defending the man who shot and killed a 17-year-old high school student. The accompanying hashtag? #dadkilledit.
Americans were unimpressed by the insensitivity of the post, leading to the photo being removed from the girl's Instagram shortly after.
It’s not just Selfies at Serious Places that’s exposing thoughtless amateur photographers to the court of Internet opinion. Blog Totem and Taboo collects Grindr profile pics of men posing at the Berlin Holocaust memorial. Because what better way to show respect for the imprisonment, torture and senseless death of millions of people than using a memorial as the backdrop for the picture you use to trawl for no strings attached hook-ups?
And while it could be argued that a gay-only ‘dating’ app such as Grindr is a righteous celebration of the freedom that all of us, Semitic or otherwise, are entitled to in a Nazi-free world, somehow it’s hard to believe that was the symbolic point the gentlemen featured on Totem and Taboo were making when they chose their profile photo. At least they kept their shirts (and pants) on.
We understand that etiquette is a concept lost on many people nowadays. But if you absolutely have to spam your friends’ news feeds with pictures of your face, at least think before you post.
It’s perfectly okay to document yourself at interesting places or with interesting people, but remember – the point of the photograph isn’t necessarily you.
Your face with a portion of the Eiffel Tower in the background is a wasted opportunity. But your pouting duckface in front of a Holocaust memorial is an embarrassing way of showing the world how clueless and insensitive you really are.
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