Selfies are interesting. On the one hand, people have wanted pictures of themselves since before photography was even a thing. We enjoy ourselves, which is an entirely human thing to do. And I could understand wanting to capture that moment in time. On the other hand, I can't help shake the feeling that it's a bit narcissistic to do it. Then again I've always been overly humble. I suppose I still don't "get it", especially when the caption has nothing to do with the selfie. "It's cold out today!" Takes picture of self. What's the thought-process that leads to this other then validation of a superficial quality like beauty? Going back to that "moment in time" bit: I think the difference is the amount in the old days versus now. A self-portrait painting is expensive and time consuming. Even a professional photographic sort of selfie takes a lot of effort. This is opposite to the mass consumption of a cell-phone selfie. Is how often a selfie done an indicator of its quality? Should it be?
I was talking to someone here on the Hub about Snapchat and how I use it and why it rocks. This article articulates so much that I was not able to. flagamuffin was it you?
Well I wrote out a reply to this and managed to lose it thanks to a dead link. Bottom line is yeah I think that was me, I still hate/don't understand the whole thing, and someone in that article makes the very good point that we are hard-wired to respond to faces. So maybe that's literally the sum of the phenomenon. Evolutionarily we like faces.