Sharing oneself

I heard recently that when some tribes in Papua New Guinea were first shown photographs of themselves they started to walk around with the photographs on their foreheads. After, that is, they were taught that the photograph was of them.

              To us this seems silly. The person’s face is right there: why wear the photo too? The tribespeople even greeted each others’ photos. We know that’s ludicrous.

              When I was a child, I was privileged enough to go on a few holidays with a camera. While others were wasting their time and photos taking pictures of themselves, I was taking pictures of what I could see. There are no self-portraits of me as a child. It was what other people did: they took photos of beautiful places they had travelled thousands of miles to see, but plonked themselves in the way to obscure the beauty with the mundane. I now realize that they were trying to associate some of that wonder with themselves, and needed it embodied in a photograph in a way I didn’t.

              The same thing happens nowadays. We can now take photos of everything, in a moment, and share the special and unusual things we see with our friends… and what do we do? We have ‘selfie culture’. People live their lives from one photo to the next, trying to display themselves having a life rather than the life itself.

              I still don’t take selfies. My friends know what I look like. Maybe for fancy dress, or after an injury, or in a group photo, it makes sense to take a record to share; and maybe even a rare photo of myself to show that I was there; more as a record than because of the view. I want to share what interests me with the people who see my photos. Perhaps that’s what motivates selfie-sharers too?

              Of course, there’s a lot of baggage attached to this sort of social communication. Sharing a photo of oneself is intended to enhance one’s status: you look amazing, you eat amazing food, you are amazingly happy, you are at amazing places. Selfies are intrinsically a different message from a normal photo (or what I call normal). But, just as with bullying, enhancing one’s own status has side-effects. For every person who is impressed, there’s a person who’s jealous: who is slightly more dissatisfied with his own life. A few people might be able to be impressed without feeling sad about themselves; those few of us who have achieved everything we want, or are deluded enough to believe that we are about to achieve everything we want.

              In particular it’s a curated self-image, one that misses out the bad bits, that makes everyone feel awful. Just like advertising does. After all, selfies are advertising, but with a person as a brand. I know that we are beginning to use photographs as language, to tell people how we feel and share our experiences, and showing how we feel might best be done with our face. But those selfies of us having fun all the time, living a wonderful life all the time, are a lie. If you are happy all the time you are mentally ill or ignorant of the wider world. Don’t lie to your friends.

So next time you see a selfie, remember what that person is telling you: that he’s insecure and without enough social approval. And next time you think about updating your carefully-managed selfie selection, remember what you’re telling your closest friends, who actually see this stuff: that you’re willing to make them unhappy in order to achieve a fleeting dose of happiness yourself.