So, Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year for 2013 was selfie, beating out bitcoin, binge-watch, twerk, and the clear underdog, olinguito (which for the record is a small furry mammal from South America that will now never get its due day in the sun, because we're all too obsessed with our own faces). #sorryolinguito.
Defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website," the selfie garnered a rather mortifying 17,000 percent increase in usage since the previous year, according to Oxford's editors. And while Word of the Year is usually shared by two different words from the UK and the US respectively (for example, last year's words were "omnishambles" and "GIF"), selfie steamrolled the competition and won the title on both sides of the pond, proving that selfies are more than just a passing trend; they are a global phenomenon.
Selfies, Inc.
Here in 2014, the selfie has shown no signs of decline. Type #selfie into the Instagram search engine and it will turn up 89,044,418 posts (at time of press - a number that increased by over eight million since I started writing this article) and counting. #Me is the third most popular hashtag on Instagram, with well over 200 million posts, and examples of global selfie madness abound, from funeral selfies (which, according to a newspaper in Alabama, are also known as "corpsies"), to crying selfies (look it up on Buzzfeed, and feel simultaneously horrified and transfixed, sort of like watching a car crash), to the ubiquitous duck face selfie (for some reason still not illegal in any countries - I checked).
As proof of its staying power, the trend has already spawned a whole generation of new products, apps and websites to go along with it. A Kickstarter crowd-funding project based in Hong Kong recently garnered nearly 10 times their funding goal (a total of $94,943 USD) by introducing a product called the Muku Shuttr, which allows users to take smartphone selfies from any distance via a handheld Bluetooth remote. Last fall, selfie addict and bonafide idiot Justin Bieber invested $1.1 million USD in a selfies-only app called Shots of Me. Meanwhile, while Selfie.com is still a techno-mystery (the landing page offers only the cryptic message "See you soon"), there is a lovingly maintained site called MySelfiePage.com that opens to a list of playable music videos, all relating to selfies. Once you sign up (which I did, in the name of journalism, using a fake email address and a picture I found online of a man holding a cat) you enter a rather depressing virtual realm that resembles an AOL chatroom from the mid-90s, offering personal profiles, selfie albums, and something ominous called Selfie Roulette which was too slow to load for the Citylife server/my attention span.
But why? Why do we selfie? Much has been said about this, about what spawned such a specific and audacious global inclination and what it means for us as humans. There's no easy answer, but the general consensus is that we are a bunch of overstimulated, over-digitalised, self-obsessed narcissists incapable of really caring about anything or anyone beyond our cold little screens.
In a New York Times op-ed from 2011, author Jonathan Franzen noted the "transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb 'to like' from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture's substitute for loving."
In a 2012 TED Talk, Sherry Turkle, a college professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the relationships between people and technology, said that social media provides "the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." She laments that our obsession with technology is causing us to lose the "raw, human part of being with each other," and adds, "Our little devices are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are… I share, therefore I am."
It's a depressing and rather terrifying place we've ended up, it seems. And indeed, I agree with all of the above points, which represent only a miniscule portion of the ongoing discourse on social media, on the selfie and its implications and everything that goes along with it. It is a discourse that often dips back into history, comparing the onslaught of selfie syndrome with the invention of the camera, with the first self-portrait, with the first time someone saw their own reflection in a lake. But what's important to note is that while valuable, nearly all of this discourse is coming exclusively from the Western world.
Amazing Thailand
Meanwhil
in the little country of Thailand, it's safe to say that the social media obsession has reached boiling point. In early 2013, a report established that 80 percent of Bangkok's population have registered Facebook accounts (compared to under 50 percent of America's). Meanwhile, Bangkok has held the top spot for most Instagrammed place in the world for two years running. In 2012, it was Suvarnabhumi Airport. In, 2013 it was…Siam Paragon. Yes. The most Instagrammed place on the entire planet is a mall in Bangkok.
Interestingly, Thailand's social media obsession hits only two out of what we'll call the Big Three; Thais are not even in the top 20 when it comes to Twitter users. "Thais don't like to read much," quipped writer Monruedee Jansuttipan in a BK Magazine article detailing the statistics. And indeed, Thailand's social media obsession seems very much planted in the visual.
"You have to live under a rock not to notice the selfie trend in Thailand," said Thai social critic and journalist Kaewmala in an interview we did, rather ironically, over Facebook. "I find it a bit too self-absorbed and self-indulgent for my taste, but then it's SELFie. The focus is supposed to be on the SELF."
In February, Thailand's Department of Mental Health (DMH) issued an official warning to Thai youngsters addicted to selfies, cautioning them that the obsession could result in a loss of confidence and negative impacts on life and work.
"A selfie creates an impact, more or less, on one's everyday life," said DMH deputy director-general Dr. Panpimol Wipulakorn in a public statement. "Posting photos to seek approval and 'likes' from peers as a reward is normal human nature. But the reward has varying degrees of emotional effects on each individual. Some people are happy after sharing a selfie and getting a few likes, while others expect as many likes as possible and become addicted to being liked."
She continued, rather ominously, "If Thai youth become lacking in confidence, this means they are unlikely to try new things in their lives and they will simply follow or imitate others - and that will make it hard for them to develop themselves. This could affect the development of the country in the future as the number of new generation leaders will fall short. It will hinder the country's creativity and innovation."
When I asked Kaewmala her thoughts on this prognosis, she seemed sceptical. "I think we've got more fundamental problems than youthful obsession with selfies," she said. "The DMH might be mixing the symptom with the cause of social ill - if it's a social ill. Extreme popularity of selfies in Thailand seems to me more symptomatic of Thai education and socialisation that values form more than substance. It's appearance over content - outside as opposed to inside. The manifest face culture in the digital era."
รบกวนช่วยแปลบทความภาษาอังกฤษหน่อยค่ะ :)
Defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website," the selfie garnered a rather mortifying 17,000 percent increase in usage since the previous year, according to Oxford's editors. And while Word of the Year is usually shared by two different words from the UK and the US respectively (for example, last year's words were "omnishambles" and "GIF"), selfie steamrolled the competition and won the title on both sides of the pond, proving that selfies are more than just a passing trend; they are a global phenomenon.
Selfies, Inc.
Here in 2014, the selfie has shown no signs of decline. Type #selfie into the Instagram search engine and it will turn up 89,044,418 posts (at time of press - a number that increased by over eight million since I started writing this article) and counting. #Me is the third most popular hashtag on Instagram, with well over 200 million posts, and examples of global selfie madness abound, from funeral selfies (which, according to a newspaper in Alabama, are also known as "corpsies"), to crying selfies (look it up on Buzzfeed, and feel simultaneously horrified and transfixed, sort of like watching a car crash), to the ubiquitous duck face selfie (for some reason still not illegal in any countries - I checked).
As proof of its staying power, the trend has already spawned a whole generation of new products, apps and websites to go along with it. A Kickstarter crowd-funding project based in Hong Kong recently garnered nearly 10 times their funding goal (a total of $94,943 USD) by introducing a product called the Muku Shuttr, which allows users to take smartphone selfies from any distance via a handheld Bluetooth remote. Last fall, selfie addict and bonafide idiot Justin Bieber invested $1.1 million USD in a selfies-only app called Shots of Me. Meanwhile, while Selfie.com is still a techno-mystery (the landing page offers only the cryptic message "See you soon"), there is a lovingly maintained site called MySelfiePage.com that opens to a list of playable music videos, all relating to selfies. Once you sign up (which I did, in the name of journalism, using a fake email address and a picture I found online of a man holding a cat) you enter a rather depressing virtual realm that resembles an AOL chatroom from the mid-90s, offering personal profiles, selfie albums, and something ominous called Selfie Roulette which was too slow to load for the Citylife server/my attention span.
But why? Why do we selfie? Much has been said about this, about what spawned such a specific and audacious global inclination and what it means for us as humans. There's no easy answer, but the general consensus is that we are a bunch of overstimulated, over-digitalised, self-obsessed narcissists incapable of really caring about anything or anyone beyond our cold little screens.
In a New York Times op-ed from 2011, author Jonathan Franzen noted the "transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb 'to like' from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture's substitute for loving."
In a 2012 TED Talk, Sherry Turkle, a college professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the relationships between people and technology, said that social media provides "the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." She laments that our obsession with technology is causing us to lose the "raw, human part of being with each other," and adds, "Our little devices are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are… I share, therefore I am."
It's a depressing and rather terrifying place we've ended up, it seems. And indeed, I agree with all of the above points, which represent only a miniscule portion of the ongoing discourse on social media, on the selfie and its implications and everything that goes along with it. It is a discourse that often dips back into history, comparing the onslaught of selfie syndrome with the invention of the camera, with the first self-portrait, with the first time someone saw their own reflection in a lake. But what's important to note is that while valuable, nearly all of this discourse is coming exclusively from the Western world.
Amazing Thailand
Meanwhil
Interestingly, Thailand's social media obsession hits only two out of what we'll call the Big Three; Thais are not even in the top 20 when it comes to Twitter users. "Thais don't like to read much," quipped writer Monruedee Jansuttipan in a BK Magazine article detailing the statistics. And indeed, Thailand's social media obsession seems very much planted in the visual.
"You have to live under a rock not to notice the selfie trend in Thailand," said Thai social critic and journalist Kaewmala in an interview we did, rather ironically, over Facebook. "I find it a bit too self-absorbed and self-indulgent for my taste, but then it's SELFie. The focus is supposed to be on the SELF."
In February, Thailand's Department of Mental Health (DMH) issued an official warning to Thai youngsters addicted to selfies, cautioning them that the obsession could result in a loss of confidence and negative impacts on life and work.
"A selfie creates an impact, more or less, on one's everyday life," said DMH deputy director-general Dr. Panpimol Wipulakorn in a public statement. "Posting photos to seek approval and 'likes' from peers as a reward is normal human nature. But the reward has varying degrees of emotional effects on each individual. Some people are happy after sharing a selfie and getting a few likes, while others expect as many likes as possible and become addicted to being liked."
She continued, rather ominously, "If Thai youth become lacking in confidence, this means they are unlikely to try new things in their lives and they will simply follow or imitate others - and that will make it hard for them to develop themselves. This could affect the development of the country in the future as the number of new generation leaders will fall short. It will hinder the country's creativity and innovation."
When I asked Kaewmala her thoughts on this prognosis, she seemed sceptical. "I think we've got more fundamental problems than youthful obsession with selfies," she said. "The DMH might be mixing the symptom with the cause of social ill - if it's a social ill. Extreme popularity of selfies in Thailand seems to me more symptomatic of Thai education and socialisation that values form more than substance. It's appearance over content - outside as opposed to inside. The manifest face culture in the digital era."