Selfie Culture: old practice, new format

You’re likely familiar with the rebuke to “be present!” wielded whenever someone draws for their camera or smartphone during a dinner or a vacation. Think about how many people you know who “hate Instagram” because it’s “so fake.” Granted, between the daily Starbucks chroniclers, new human/ plant/ pet parents, sunset bro, and the window seat jetsetter, ‘Selfie Culture’ can be a little banal. But human beings have always liked to navel-gaze.

Take the prehistoric man drawing scenes of himself on the walls of his cave, fast forward to the Sumerian Epics, and then whizz through the medieval monarchs who commissioned songs, murals, and portraits immortalising life as they knew it. Pausing at the 15th century you’ll find a celebrated canon of renaissance artists and writers spending the next 300 years utterly obsessed with themselves. To me, the evidence is clear. Our “pics or it didn’t happen” mentality is not a pathological symptom of modern technology.

Technology has simply advanced and democratised our ancient disposition to document life. Today, creating and telling stories is no longer the reserve of powerful kings and aristocrats. From memes regularly influencing conversations in culture and mainstream media, to viral moments ending up as life and work opportunities, today anybody with a smartphone or access to social media can add their story to the human tapestry, shaping reality by degrees, in real time.

I can never get enough of catching up my parents' lives before us. And I certainly enjoy having a peek into the lives of strangers from another time. So I encourage whoever will consider it that today's banal #content might just be tomorrow's museum of lost memories.

Selfie culture definitely isn't new. In my opinion it isn't bad either.