If you’ve visited Instagram, Facebook, Match.com or other social media/dating sites in the past few years, you’ve likely been greeted by a woman, lips pursed, head angled and arm extended, in a picture that looks remarkably similar to all of her other photographs.
Or perhaps you’ve seen a man, flexing, possibly shirtless, in the mirror, cellphone often visible off to the side. There’s no doubt in these pictures that there’s no photographer at the other end of the shot.
They’re “selfies.”
We’re the “selfie” generation, and we enjoy taking a multitude of photos of ourselves and sharing them with our friends, acquaintances and strangers.
Is this new? Not completely.
A married couple who honeymooned 15 years ago probably has plenty of “selfies,” taken not with their cellphones but with a camera strategically pointed at them and the attraction behind them.
They’re not the greatest pictures ever taken. But unless the couple wanted to stop stranger after stranger and ask them to snap the shot, it was pretty much the only way to do it.
Then came the cellphone camera, and selfies became part of our everyday life.
On its heels we got the “selfie stick,” a device that allows you to attach your cellphone and that extends away from you in order to capture everyone in a single shot.
To its snap-happy users, it’s market innovation at work.
To its detractors, it’s the unholy union of millennial narcissism and crass consumerism.
And now there’s a movement to ban the selfie sticks — and even selfies in general.
Get you and your selfie stick off my lawn.
While some selfie bans are logical, most of the bans are pure snobbery.
New York’s ban on selfies with lions, tigers and other such beasts is reasonable because, well, they could kill you while you’re making your most alluring duck face.
You may think you’re adorable, but that camera flash and its annoying clicking noises aren’t music to the ears of a jungle cat.
Same goes for the selfie ban at Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls festival. And perhaps Disney World’s move this week to ban selfie sticks is for safety’s sake, and not — as the cynical among us might think — so that Disney can sell us the photos taken by their employed photographers.
But a ban on fans at the Cannes Film Festival taking selfies with celebs is unnecessary, except to keep the riffraff away from the special people.
A similar ban at the Met Gala went entirely ignored. Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber will likely still be invited back next year despite snapping a selfie and posting it on social media (another no-no).
La Garoupe beach in Cap d’Antibes, France, banned selfies last summer to cut down on social-media bragging. The police in the town, which actually did enforce the ban, might have too much time on their hands.
There is, of course, the antisocial angle to the selfie backlash.
We have our food delivered from Seamless, without ever having to speak to anyone to get our beef and broccoli right to our door. Groceries come from Fresh Direct so we never have to answer, “Paper or plastic?” Our lobbies and porches are filled with boxes from Amazon.
The fact is, we’ve mastered living without communicating much with strangers. The selfie stick is merely the self-portrait extension (no pun intended) of that.
Additionally, let’s face it, selfies are often the best pictures we have of ourselves. We know the most flattering angle and light for our face and can nail it most frequently when we’re taking our own picture.
The unspoken issue most people really have with selfies is the incessant posting of them on social media.
We live in a time of rampant exhibitionism where people enjoy sharing every aspect of their lives with the public at large.
Maybe we’re all sick of seeing each other all the time. But that’s a different complaint than of selfies themselves.
No one’s forcing you to live digitally. Get off Facebook and Instagram if they annoy you. Pester strangers to take your picture, if that’s what you’re into.
Or take that selfie and share it proudly with the world. The choice is — or should be — yours.