David, Princess Belle Marie R. | 2013-25796Ms. Louise Jashil Sonido | ENG 10 X4BResearch Paper: Selfie16 May 2014

Selfie as Affect

Selfie is a self-portrait photograph usually taken by a smartphone or a webcam and is

uploaded to different social media websites. “Everyone takes selfies, but the younger crowd

seems to be especially involved in the trend” (Moreau). We can see the phenomenal trend of the

use of selfie the main reason why it was picked as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in

2013. Since its takeover of the internet, different “genres” of selfies have surfaced. Controversial

trends are the most talked about among the genres of selfies. These trends of selfies can be linked

to larger issues in media such as security, privacy, etiquette, and media ethics as they invoke

audience numbness and empathy deficit.

“The name itself may be influencing different attitudes toward these self-generated

photos, because a ‘selfie’ can have multiple connotations. The “ie” at the end makes selfie a

diminutive, which generally implies some affection and familiarity.   From one semantic

perspective, a selfie is a ‘little’ self, an aspect of identity … where a little self is a small bit of the

self” (Rutledge). The first self-portrait has been taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. The

photograph is hailed as the first ever selfie. “Selfies aren’t new, in spite of the recent surge.” In

2004, #selfie is already used to tag photos in Flickr and MySpace. In 2005, selfie was spelled as

“selfy” and had its first definition in UrbanDictionary.com. Back in the Ancient Egypt, people

with power and wealth are fond of self-portraits, although less for self-exploration than

glorification. In 1860s, the camera launched a new era of self-portraits. As the camera evolved,

more and increasingly creative versions of self-portraits appeared. Then, mobile phones can be

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cameras, too. In 2010, Instagram was launched and in 2012, 86 percent of the US population had

a mobile phone which made taking selfies and sharing it easier (Rutledge).

Today, several selfie trends have found their way to news and popular discussion venues

in traditional and online media. These controversial trends include after-sex selfies, nude selfies,

selfies at funerals, and selfies with the Pope. Many people look upon these kinds of selfies with

distaste and condescension.

The modern person is daily inundated with a flood of media news coverage, television commercials, billboards, and advertisements. Media is everywhere and unavoidable. Urbanites can hardly step outside their door without being bombarded with a plethora of media stimuli. In spite of this, however, millions of people are not being rushed to emergency rooms as a result of this deluge of stimuli. Instead, there is an anesthetic effect, a numbness that has dulled the senses from noticing each and every stimulus (Yang).

“We're surrounded by children who, since they were born, have watched us living like

robots, who think it's the norm” (Turk). In the digital generation, technology has become

children’s definition of entertainment. Now, you just have to tap to run, type to talk, and open up

Siri to find a companion. These result in audience numbness because children grow up exposed

to different media. Without filtering the ideas they encounter every day and continued exposure

to mediated images have created a lack of empathy for events, objects, or images that people no

longer recognize as real, palpable, disturbing, and consequential.

Consequently, numbness toward media may result to declining empathy. A research

published online “found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980,

with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. To make matters worse, during this same

period students’ self-reported narcissism has reached new heights” (Twenge cited in Zaki).

Narcissism and cyber-bullying, for instance, are effects of social media that are considered signs

of empathy deficit. Similarly, many use social media, no longer to connect to other people;

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instead, “narcissistic people use social media more frequently ... or more self-promoting reasons”

(Konrath) since this type of media is highly accessible to everyone. The fact that selfie is the new

trend, it is important to study issues that can be linked to is such the issue in empathy deficit.

Attention has become the major currency in this generation. “The attention economy

brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms

of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy

it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality”

(Goldhaber). This new economy is the main reason why people take a selfie and upload it online.

“In selfies, we can be famous and in control of our own images and storylines” (Lieberman 11)

and by famous means getting attention from people, and getting likes and good comments.

Aftersex and Near-nude selfies

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Fig. 1. Aftersex selfie(Source: @lifeisgrey via Instagram)

Fig. 2. Kim Kardashian’s Near-nude selfie(Source: @kimkardashian via Instagram)

After-sex selfies has been an instant trend in social media that started in Instagram

wherein couples have been posting their selfies literally right after they had sex. “In accordance

with the latest trend to emerge on Instagram, you post a selfie and tag it #aftersex, so the internet

can admire your post-coital glow” (Walker). Some call it edgy and a legitimate expression of

intimacy but for some they call it over-sharing and betrayal of intimacy.

Nude selfies, on the other hand, are posted commonly by people who are very

comfortable with their bodies, like celebrities and models, to show off their bodies or to impress

other people. While some people call it art or an expression of oneself, several people see these

images as pornographic material or as they call it NSFW. A concrete example on how people

look at these images is how they describe the nude selfies posted by girls on the twitter account

full of these kinds of images. Guys viewing these images described these as “hot” and “sexy”

which is not an appropriate description for art.

Near-nude selfies, on the other hand, can be linked to issues of security. If one posts a

near-nude selfie online, then he/she is already giving permission to anyone who can access the

photo anything he/she wants to do with it. An example of this is a video that was posted in

Facebook shows that a girl uploaded a picture of herself in a bikini and without knowing it, her

picture was posted as an ad on a pornographic site.

After-sex, near-nude, and nude selfies are products of the narcissistic views and

numbness of people in social media who opens their everyday life and even private life to almost

everyone in the internet. As Radulova quoted Dr Chris Chesher, a lecturer in digital cultures at

the University of Sydney, “the phenomenon of oversharing is a new one which is expanding as

more people attempt to use new and unfamiliar platforms of social media”. The Internet Age has

created a curious paradox: people hate their privacy being invaded but love sharing supposedly

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private data to the public. “In today’s voyeuristic society, the lines between private and public

life are constantly blurred, so despite the fact that this new online trend is rather shocking, at the

same time it should come as no surprise.” (Kirk). The internet is slowly pushing the borderline

between the private and public lives of people as time pass by. Before, people never even took

nude pictures and never exposed when and with who they had sex, but now even peeing and

pooping has to be posted online. Slowly, people in the internet are losing privacy, that we often

ask for, without knowing it because of the trends we follow, the mindset we have and the

information we share.

Papal Selfie

“The Ilocos Norte First District Representative Rodolfo “Rudy” Fariñas experienced the

“selfie of his life” with no less than the highest official of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope

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Fig. 3. Cong. Rodolfo Fariñas’ selfie with Pope Francis(Source: @rudyfarinas via Instagram)

Francis, right after the canonization of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII at the Saint

Peter’s Square, Vatican City on Sunday.” (Umbao). The image above was not even the first

selfie taken with the pope, and yet, this issue made it to headlines of newspapers and it became

an issue well spoken off on television.

The netizens hate how the congressman took the selfie. Many people in the internet

expressed their hate and dismay through comments on news pages and blogs :“The way Cong.

Rudy Farinas took a 'selfie' with Pope Francis is nothing but shameless!” (Natibker). “He thinks

all his sins are forgiven. You will go to hell” (koolkid_inthehouse). “This is very unfortunate and

very embarrassing, and done in full view of the public and live TV!” (de Manila). “[S]hame on

him!!! dapat tanggalin sa pwesto..mangayaring [sic] nakaupo pa mn [sic] din sa ating

gobyerno..papa'no uunlad ang Pilipinas kung ang mismo politiko ay hindi man lang marunong

gumalang!!!” (aussieanime). In these comments we will see that people are aware of the issue

and on what is happening but it does not mean that they were critical and they shared the same

emotions as of Cong. Farinas. Several know that what he did was wrong because popes does not

take selfies with people. Also people does not know the whole story behind the picture, how it

was taken, and is it really wrong. Given that the pope gave him permission to take the phot, and

there was nothing malicious on the manner that the phot was taken, people see this act as

"shameless" and "embarrasing". This is all the media's fault.

Let’s say that what he did was wrong, but these comments and reactions of the netizens

are not even close enough for this issue to be published in broadsheets, and even put it to the

headline or a daily update in the news in television and radio. According to the 2007 Broadcast

Code of the Philippines Article 1, Section 1: “News and public affairs programs shall aim

primarily to inform the public on important current events and issues rather than merely to

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entertain”. People are very dependent to media that they believe everything that the media say.

Knowing that selfies are of public interest, news media filtered information to the way that they

want it to be: interesting. With this sensationalism, important issues are covered up with ‘edited’

information just to entertain people and get viewers.

Jon Stewart told anchor Chris Wallace that the bias of the mainstream media is toward

sensationalism, conflict and laziness (Rogers). “Sensationalism, simply put, is hype – news or

topics that are played up to appeal to your senses and not necessarily your intellect”

("Sensationalism in Journalism"). News media uses sensationalism to catch the attention of the

viewers and readers and increase their sales since attention is the new currency in this generation.

The public is interested into selfies so the news media “would run minor news stories with huge,

overly dramatic headlines and the lavish use of attention-getting pictures or drawings” (Hinders).

Selfies in Funeral

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Fig. 4. Funeral Selfies(Source: Yulia Mayorova via Shutterstock)

Fig. 5. President Obama’s Selfie at Mandela’s memorial service

(Source: Roberto Schmidt via Reuters)

“If you were alive and on the internet yesterday, you're already familiar with the very

latest in Tumblr cringe porn: Selfies at Funerals. … Since the Tumblr debuted [last October 29,

2013], the web has exploded with undisguised hatred for these kids” (Doughty) who posts their

selfies in social media. Moss of Business Insider says that this trend as narcissistic impulse while

Clark-Flory claims that this trend is healthy and a way of saying “I still exist.” The Tumblr was

created by Fast Company editor Jason Fiefer who collected selfies at the funeral in Facebook,

Twitter, and Instagram. Selfies in Funeral has been talked about more after President Barack

Obama’s selfie at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela in become viral.

Many people think that it is okay since many are doing it, even President Obama. “In the

realm of funeral etiquette, those two factors—the memorial service, the glowering wife-- taken

together, scream "social faux pas." But there was more to the story behind the image.” According

to Roberto Schmidt, the photographer who captured the photo, told that he shot the picture

during a jovial, celebratory portion of the service (Swann). Patricia Fitzpatrick, founder of the

Etiquette School of New York, agrees that there is a time and a place for everything, and funerals

or solemn occasions are not the time to take pictures of oneself to post on social media site.

“Funerals and memorials take on a different meaning from culture to culture; some are very

somber, others quite celebratory. It is our duty to be sensitive to the entire moment” (Swann)

The funeral selfie is a kind of narcissism that is nauseating and transparent but acceptable so long as it remains a contained indulgence that brings with it a consciousness of potential shaming… The charge of narcissism has become overfamiliar as social media has spread. We are all capable of acts of narcissism, but only other people are true narcissists, so in love with their self-importance that they feel entitled to hijack a family member’s funeral. In its original sense, what makes narcissism bad is not self-interest but when it leads to neglect that becomes damaging to those around them (Thomsen).

Selfie is a great factor in influencing behavior or action of the people. These controversial

trends are not controversial because some think that they are inappropriate but because they are

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linked to larger issues in media. Aftersex and near-nude selfies are linked to privacy and security

in being open to social media. Cong. Fariñas’ Papal selfie brings the issue of media ethics in

journalism and funeral selfies raise issues in etiquette and social media faux pas. These trends of

selfies linked to larger issues invoke audience numbness and empathy deficit.

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