Let’s Talk About Selfies

Today I would like to propose an apparently “light” topic, but perhaps it affects many in terms of our privacy, and it is a trend (I call it a craze!) Of the modern world.

One of the cornerstones of our society sadly clinging to the present is the selfie. The question is: is it legitimate to put group photos on social media? Or also: is it possible to avoid selfies in the company?

When you see someone immortalizing a group image with a mobile phone, or making a film about several people, without notifying all those present, one can instinctively think of a gesture of subtle violence. That is, to the evident and aggressive subtraction of a right: that of not appearing, of not being reduced to the appearance of a mandatory home-made fiction. Not everyone has the presence of mind and the strength to escape the group selfie, to protest because their privacy is violated. Because we know it well, within a few minutes (even seconds) those images go around the world on various networks.

We live in a media society, but we must be able to remain absolute and undisputed masters of ourselves, even of the virtual image that can appear on social media. Indeed, I would say that today a frame on the Net is enough to modify the perception that others have of us. The moment it happens, our identity is in question. For this reason (or for a thousand reasons) it is a duty not to force others to appear on our personal show.

The other side of the coin is the consideration that the life of a selfie usually lasts a few moments. The selfie is pure present. If you are in company and someone says “let’s take a selfie”, that someone, half a second later, is sending it to other friends who will watch it and then put it back somewhere. And this also applies to the sender, who in the intervening time between taking the selfie and sending it will already be forgotten. Suffice it to say that for at least 15 years we have been shooting with a camera in a pocket disguised as a mobile phone yet it is rare that we have our photos.

After all, the selfie photographs a moment that, in the minds of those who propose and shoot it, is cloaked in happiness. Perhaps it will be the happiness of an instant. But it is always happiness. Why deprive yourself of it and refuse it?

The selfie is then a kind of ghost that sometimes comes back to life. It happens when we change the phone and someone routes us to that boring data backup practice, with photos to be transferred from the old to the new. It is there, in that moment of time and space, that the sum of hundreds of instants comes back to life – as many as the selfies – of the old present become the past. Moments of old happiness of gone time. So let’s say: let’s take these selfies. Today they seem useless, or even intrusive of our privacy, But tomorrow maybe not!

What do you think?