DISCUSSION: Are selfies really making us more selfish?
Selfies, as a part of brand me culture, are making us more selfish as it’s a culture built around fulfilling our needs without regarding how others are impacted by it. Understanding this is highly important in evaluating how commonplace media practices are affecting society as a whole.
This essay will explore this statement by evaluating the selfish tendencies seen in both the people affected in our daily life and within the larger context of the users of social media. In order to prevent a misunderstanding, the following definitions are clearly listed to understand the framework that the argument is based on.
Defining Selfish
According to Cambridge Dictionary (2019), ‘selfish’, refers to an individual who only cares about their advantage or what they need without regard for the needs or wants of others. Brand me culture is built on the concept of cultivating a personal brand, mainly on social media. Arvidsson (2006) explains that brands are a prevalent part of everyday life and they are formed by deriving a form of value through a particular lifestyle.
This is often done by building a social world around certain basic human needs and wants, like entertainment or wanting the feeling of being included in society (Arvidsson, 2006). This idea of attaining a certain response is also supported by Goffman’s (1959) theory of the ‘performed’ self. Here, he describes how we perform a version of ourselves in a particular way in order to achieve a certain reaction or view from the audience we intend.
Selfies in Brand Me Culture
Linking this to current practices of brand me culture, we see the prevalent adoption of microcelebrity culture, mainly built on refined and polished selfies (Abidin, 2016). As such, the idea of attaining social capital and fame by showcasing a refined lifestyle forms the foundation of brand me culture. For clarification, the social media accounts referred to within brand me culture are those actively participating in formulating their personal brand through photo editing, seamless connections between each photo.
Selfies are a form of photographic self-portrait used for self-reflection in contemporary popular culture (Klein, 2016). However, in the context of brand me culture, it is more regularly used to showcase the highlight reel of a particular lifestyle. When at a meal or at a social event, people are expected to drop everything they are doing in order to smile at a phone take a group photo together. People are more or less peer pressured to participate in this and are considered a spoilsport for not wanting to participate in this. This type of behaviour, prevalent in brand me culture, is selfish as it invades personal issues such as privacy and visibility; Particularly in the case of consent for a photo to be uploaded for the world to see, a growing issue within media studies (Trottier, 2016).
How we disrespect celebrities and friends for our perfect selfie
We see this also play out in the form of celebrity selfies. Suddenly, the opportunity to post a selfie with a known figure is more important than acknowledging their basic human rights (Klosterman, 2014). Such an event is evident in the number of celebrities who have called out the individuals who invade their personal privacy, for the selfie-taker’s personal gain (Curtis, 2019). People are treated as content for a personal brand rather than as a person. Meaning, when we pressure our ‘friends’ and celebrities into taking a selfie in order to build our personal brand, we negate the others wishes for the wants and needs of the selfie-taker. As such, it is clear that these actions are making us more selfish.
Some might argue that these are isolated cases and that selfies aren’t selfish but rather, a form of narcissism. In which case, history has shown how narcissism often transpires into selfish tendencies (i.e. Donald Trump) (Giroux, 2015). Furthermore, this narcissism on a massive global platform such as social media, has led to a suppression of socially good content that showcases the real, oppressed voices around the world (Giroux, 2015). It is undeniable that this fixation of our personal brand over creating content for the greater good, shows how we value our own voice over those who have been oppressed and are further repressed thanks to brand me culture. Hence, it is clear that selfies in brand me culture are making us selfish. This is especially true when we consider that, brand me culture values the voices of the upper class, due to the digital divide.
How selfies are about you, not the hashtag you’re “supporting”
Selfies in the context of brand me culture focuses more on promoting yourself, rather than promoting creative freedom and social impact. In order to maintain a brand, content has to be regularly updated in order to remain relevant on social media, a platform that favours recency (Gillespie, 2014). This need for new content and also high quality selfies (Abidin, 2016) hence favours the upper class, who have the time and resources to actively promote their personal brand (SBS Dateline, 2019). Here we see how apart from being selfish towards the people physically next to us like friends or celebrities, we are also selfish towards the larger community.
Some might say that brand me culture provides the oppressed a way to voice their issues (Klein, 2016). However, we see that the most famous brands within brand me culture are typically those who are generally visually attractive and are wealthy (Statistica, 2019). Having an ideological stance of a shared democratic community is only possible in the figurative world as, in reality, brand culture is built from commoditizing lifestyles and the face, using selfies, that is at an unattainable level of perfection. The reality of how brand me culture operates shows how we have become more selfish. Because now, we use people as tools to promote our personal brand, but do not use our capabilities to help voice political and social injustice.
Are Selfies creative or commodities?
To say that every selfie is a work of absolute creative freedom is to say that everything we say is a form of creative representation. However, this form of creative expression has become redundant as the culture of selfies has been diluted by narcissistic motivations. Nightingale (2007) has pointed out that an increase adoption of mobile camera phones would lead to some form of controversial use. Instead of voicing individual thoughts and creative expression, its used to instead enforce an unattainable form of beauty and lifestyles.
Selfies succumb to the commercialized mindset, limiting personal and political freedom. It performs in a 24-hour cycle of maintaining their performance, fueled by the empty consumer culture that focuses so much on visibility rather than its rich content.
Furthermore, As Giroux (2015) says, selfies are so commercialized that it now barely serves much social good. It’s selfish because we use this creative freedom to promote ourselves instead of focusing it on the larger social issues at play. Focusing on building ones’ own brand, over utilizing the platform for the greater good, as defined by Cambridge Dictionary (2019), shows how people are prioritizing their own goals over other people’s wishes. The focus of our attention is now on selfies over news and content made to bring the people’s attention to serious political and social issues around the world. Hence, even if brand me culture allowed for the voices of the oppressed to be disseminated, it’s the voice of the rich that get the attention. This outweighs any social good that selfies in brand me culture could have created to offset its selfish tendencies.
To conclude, selfies, as a part of brand me culture, is making us selfish as we use it to build our own personal brand at the expense of others and its potential to help other voices be heard. From our friends, to celebrities and the larger community on social media platforms; We see through real examples and statistics how the voice of the upper class are more highly valued over the oppressed due to the way they commercialise their lifestyle and face. Showing just how selfish we have become as a society, as we would rather focus on posting narcissistic selfies of ourselves than use the potential and opportunity of social media to voice political and social injustice.
Check out my post about growing up with Scleroderma or about the dating ban in the k-pop industry for more investigative pieces.
References
Abidin, C. (2016). “Aren’t these just young, rich women doing vain things online?”: Influencer selfies as subversive frivolity. Social Media+ Society, 2(2), 2056305116641342.
Arvidsson, A. (2006). Brands: Meaning and value in media culture. Routledge.
Curtis, J. (2018, July 17). Daily Mail. The not-so private lives of the internet’s most famous couple: Alfie Deyes reveals how even his mother can’t visit the £1m home he shares with Zoella uninvited due to fans turning up in their droves. Retrieved from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4702892/The-not-private-lives-Alfie-Deyes-Zoella.html
Gillespie, Tarleton (2014). The Relevance of Algorithms. Chapter 3 in T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski and K. A. Foot (Eds.) Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. MIT Press. [pp. 167- 193]
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life . New York: Anchor Books for Doubleday.
Klein, U. (2016). Sharing Selfies. In D. D. Waskul & P. Vannini (Eds.), Popular culture as everyday life (pp. 85–94). New York, NY: Routledge.
Klosterman, C. (2014, Apr 06). THE SELFISH SELFIE. New York Times Magazine, , 16. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.usyd.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/docview/1513237218?accountid=14757
Nightingale, V. (2007). The cameraphone and online image sharing. Continuum, 21(2), 289–301.
SBS Dateline. (2019, Apr, 9). How Hong Kong is home to the crazy rich and the mega poor. [Online video]. Retrived from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUHDAfD0Z-Q
Statista. (2019). Instagram accounts with the most followers worldwide as of May 2019 (in millions). Retrieved from:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/421169/most-followers-instagram/
Trottier, D. (2016). Social media as surveillance: Rethinking visibility in a converging world. Routledge.
