What Selfie Sticks Really Tell Us About Ourselves Analysis

A photograph, painting, canvas, or drawing today is not the same as it was a decade ago. Technology has evolved to the point where we can photoshop a person into a picture, enlarge a person’s butt, or even whiten people’s teeth. At what point do those technological advances cross a line? With social media ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Tumblr, do these media sites promote egotistical behavior? In January of 2013, John Paul Titlow discusses some of the disadvantages and advantages that Instagram has in his essay: “#Me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie” that was posted on a website called ReadWrite. Although Instagram was primarily created to simply share pictures, it has evolved to do much more than that. Some businesses use it to advertise, some people use it to share their art, but then there are some people use it to flaunt their own personal lives in the form of pictures. Titlow acknowledges that Instagram is a desirable way to share art and diverse imagery, but additionally acknowledges that it can be a place where one can promote their own self-popularity. He explains that Instagram has become remarkably important in people’s lives to the point that they cannot view life past those Instagram likes (Titlow). Ultimately, Titlow succeeds in emphasizing the issues that Instagram has created by reason of the way he expresses his text, while furthermore expressing who the audience of his essay is, and by making his overall purpose clear.

Lovelock begins talking about Instagram, a social media platform which is used to share pictures with your followers. He talks about how people tend to upload photos with the #transformationtuesday, claiming to have transformed their physical features. As more pictures that are being recently uploaded within social media, the further we see people enhancing their photos to become flawless. As we dig further into the social media side of the internet, we are going to see just how much influence society has on people and their decision to become who they perceive as perfect. Throughout the

They can, for example, endlessly edit their digital profiles and selfies before they post them on the Web or send them to friends.” (Valkenburg 218). Social media is a fake representation of the people who use it, they spend hours editing the pictures they post to make themselves look the best they can

I think the picture shows that in this day and age all we are concerned about is how we look, what pose we just did, what clothes we wear, and how we get judged by other people. We now live in a technology and social media driven world where people post pictures every few minutes of where they are, what there doing, what there wearing, what foods there eating, and every other thing imaginable in this world. There is an endless list of what people tweet, snap, and share that now a days that all we are doing. I think that sometimes social media make us self centered because all social media has become is us just talking about ourselves and our lives. Social media has also created people who are unaware of the actual world around them not the social media driven world online.

Journalist Anna Hart argues this is the new era of people sharing selfies on a daily basis, that society has reached into “the age vanity, the digital vanity, you can argue no generation is immune from the selfie craze” (Hart,2014). A selfie has a variety of audiences from children capturing their best look to The Pope, it’s the new way of capturing evidence of your interaction with different people, better than asking for an autograph. However, in Hart’s (2014) article she argues that the idea that there is a need to look a certain way all of the time, especially when you are posting a selfie on social media, it almost has to be perceived in a positive way, showing the best selfie. Hart (2014) said “I need to look healthy, glossy and polished

Image is everything in today’s society appearance of things have become more important that what they really are and these images are being constantly fed to us through the media. Image has both a positive and negative influence on the individual but most people have been drawn into

But on this canvas, people tend to paint beautiful lies about themselves, blotting over the imperfections. Now, this may not seem like such a bad thing. What’s wrong with people telling lies here and there if it boosts their self-confidence? But that’s where researchers are finding the problem. “”The onslaught of Photoshopped images gives us a false standard to aspire to," she says. “We know logically we'll never look like those women-but those images are powerful in shaping our expectations of ourselves.” …says relationship expert Natasha Burton, author of 101 Quizzes for Couples.” (Tomko) The phenomenon that people are finding to be true is that the constant bombardment of seemingly perfect people is making people wonder why they aren’t as perfect as the people they see in the pictures. And it’s not just social media. Society in general has this proclivity towards perfection. People that fall out of that sphere of perfection that the media projects begin to feel inadequate about themselves. “Girls already insecure about their weight can feel even worse when they compare themselves to ultrathin models” (Thin Fashion Models). This insecurity and self-loathing may even lead to eating disorders, like anorexia and bulimia. Media puts so much pressure on people, especially young girls, to strive to be something they’re not simply because they were taught that it was the only way they would be loved or cared about. “While

“No one is forced to take selfies, but the preponderance of selfie culture inspires a heightened self-consciousness of our personal images online.” This is apart of the Times Article, and how peer pressure is the cause of people being self-consciousness about what they post online.

Minh-ha raises the point that now; women in particular have the potential to be “co-creators” in regards to their body image. She argues that the images of women – particularly those previously marginalized – have been radically transformed and that they now have agency to portray themselves wherever, however and if they chose. Gone are the days where the object of an image was controlled and objectified. Now, one may control how and if they are to be objectified and to what audience. She muses over Giroux promoting the idea that selfies (and thus other forms of self-presentation on social media, inclusive of reality TV shows) are simply

Think about the pros and cons of social media does social media hurt or help people more. In the article “Student examines negative effects of social media on teens” by Aurelie Krakowsky is about a girl named Duley notisting the negative effect of social media and finding a way she can help. In the second article “The Upside of Selfies: Social media isn’t bad for all kids” by Kelly Wallace is about seeing that there are more positives than negatives with social media. Social media can be harmful; however, there is more evidence that supports that social media is more beneficial than harmful. To begin with, one example of social media being more beneficial than harmful is stated in the text “The Upside of Selfies: Social media isn’t bad for

Furthermore, the “selfie” or digital image seeks to represent a moment of time or fun that does not prove to be an authentic representation of one self. Moreover, it can be eluded from the text that self portraits are the art and the selfie or “digital” image is the human need. The text elaborates this ideology, stating “…digital photography has

To begin with, selfie shaming has illustrated how social norms in new media culture conflict with the social norms of older generations. Unlike the social norms of new media culture, more traditional social norms call for people to use technology moderately and in the appropriate places. This is exemplified by how the sports announcers commented that “Every girl in the picture is locked into her phone. Every single one is dialled in. Welcome to parenting in 2015! They’re all just

In the article “Sportscasters mock sorority girls for taking selfies at a baseball game, get ridiculed for being old”(2016), sorority girls who take selfies at baseball game is defined as bad behavior, the grown men did selfie shaming to them, therefore many people joined in the army of criticizing those girls, even some people did not want, but they have to follow the social beliefs. It is clearly to see that the social understanding leads people to think. Actually the sorority girls are just a group of teenagers who want to take a beautiful picture, but the selfie shaming makes them become the public attention. The selfie shaming tells us that the society has a bias to new media

How did the simple (and perhaps narcissistic) act of snapping a picture of oneself become a global phenomenon? A more pressing question is, what special characteristics make a person, product, or idea capable of becoming a social epidemic? In his nonfiction work, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell proposes that there are three rules of epidemics: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context. Focusing on the selfie in particular, two of these three rules can effectively be applied to analyze what is behind the vast amount of selfies found on various websites today - The Power of Context and The Stickiness Factor. The technology and social media of the modern world prove that the selfie has tipped.

If one looks up from their phone and looks around they’ will notice everyone around is on their phone too. This is not an issue, but it does create a few. Technology has many branches, but the one that pushes the importance of perfect beauty is social media. Most people who use social media use it to keep in touch with friends and talk about how their day is going, but like Dorian Gray, society puts emphasis on the importance of beauty and aesthetics. Social media is used as society’s tool to perpetuate these beauty standards. As a result, many people become obsessed with portraying the perfect image. In Wilde’s work, Dorian is a young man who immortalizes himself through his painting so that he may be beautiful and live beautifully forever, as one might do on social media, but it is only an image. Beauty today is faked. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray beauty comes from experience, while my adaptation reveals the obsession of the perception of beauty.