Carlos Meneses, Contributor
Featured image courtesy of Paško Tomie, Flickr
The artistic concept of the self-portrait is not new. Self-portraits offer an insight into the world of the artist that explores the artist’s psyche, ideas, and feelings. By doing so, the artist is able to create abstract expressions of themselves through a myriad of different ways to create a visual representation of their passions and modes of expression.
Picasso and Van Gogh have stylistically created the image of themselves as abstraction while others take portraits in convex mirrors. The self-portrait is a reflective work that’s seen many iterations trying to capture the artist’s meta-artistic expression conception of themselves, rather than as narcissistic work.
So if a self-portrait is a piece of legitimate art like paintings of mythological epics or climaxes in literature, why is the concept of the selfie met with repulsion?
Let’s not get it confused – modern selfies usually are kitsch and they have been the object of cringe for many people. A lot of people would tell you that selfies are something like an epidemic; it’s a narcissistic indulgence and it feeds the stereotype that millennials are a selfish, entitled bunch.
For the most part that’s true, selfies can be self-indulgent. “Banal” can no longer serve as a word that can properly describe the distaste for selfies.
Selfies in themselves are ridiculed and have become part of the zeitgeist that the modern generation is deluded. The creation of social media is now a nuisance that millennials have to apologize for because of what it makes everyone put up with.
It’s apparent that this selfie criticism is catching on. Most selfies are usually followed by some ironic caption or accompanied by the meme flavour-of-the-month and this is slightly worrying. Before, this used to be a contrarian’s opinion, but now it is becoming part of the social consciousness and opinion of the general public.
A person might not take selfies because they have to be funny, or have to offer something like a hashtag to the social media sphere because a selfie in itself is just tacky.
The criticism has itself become sardonic nonsense, cynicism for cynicism’s sake. Selfies, whatever their intention, are quick pictures, just for fun, and that’s it.
Since when do we owe it to strangers that whatever our contributions to the internet have to be of any merit? That’s not to say that we should not give considerations into what we post on the internet, as the post-internet shaming world has shown that reckless posting could lead to straight ridicule and even ejection from jobs.
However, the shaming of selfies represent a larger problem. One that, even in an escape from reality, a person will still have to take into consideration of offending someone’s taste or to not upset fickle internet tastes and bring down proverbial hell.
People hold internet users to an unspoken standard, and they shouldn’t. Selfies are part of a fun, spontaneous, and random place and to only indulge ourselves ironically in selfies is awful in itself. Posting ironically in memes is takes the joy away from the internet because it’s not sincere.
It’s fair to say that most internet users are not people who think in artistic standards when it comes to taking selfies, but they shouldn’t have to, and they shouldn’t have to oblige a joke either. So for what it’s worth, I’m asking you to not worry about taking a selfie for fun because it’s such an insignificant drop in the ocean of the internet. You don’t need likes to have fun.
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