Leeat Elkayam
Staff Writer
Are you a victim of selfies? The “selfie” has become one of the most controversial types of photograph that people take and post on social networking sites. Selfies are photos that the photographer takes of him or herself on a digital camera or cell phone. Everyday I go through pictures on Instagram and Facebook and see selfie after duck-face selfie.
There are many different types of selfies that people take. In addition to the duck-face selfie, there’s the car selfie, the sultry selfie, the starbucks selfie, the snapchat selfie, and many others. The most popular selfie is the kind that celebrities take of themselves. You get a preview into the life of the rich and famous, which makes you feel like you’re on a personal level with that celebrity.
I am not going to lie, I in fact am a victim of taking selfies. The most common type that I take is the Snapchat Selfie. However, I dislike when people, specifically girls, take selfies and post them on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter nearly every day. The causal selfie is fine because maybe you are feeling especially radiant one day and you want to share that, but if every picture you are posting is a selfie, you’re doing it wrong.
I can only think of one explanation for the overabundance of selfies: people want attention. If the attention is on you, you feel like you are liked and want to post more and get more likes on Facebook and Instagram or more favorites on Twitter. The more attention you get, the more power you hold and can influence others with it.
A counterargument is that these people are very confident and want to show people that with their selfies, but I do not see that in a person who posts selfies every day. On the contrary, I believe that these people are just seeking attention from a pool of people that are tired of seeing selfies everyday.
No matter what kind of selfie you take, just make sure you are doing it in moderation. People would love to see your smiling face, just not necessarily every day on every single social media site they visit.