Selfies. The name says it all. And, a bit like Marmite, you either love them or hate them.
Perhaps I should modify that. You either love them, and take them – and post them, share them, Facebook and Instagram them etc etc – or you loathe them, and are all too easily drawn into ‘tutting behaviour’ when you see others taking them.
But is there a darker side to our obsession with ‘being seen to be’?
I will come clean now as one of those who, at best, smiles indulgently and at worst, tuts judgementally when I see someone taking a selfie.
Perhaps it’s a generational thing – I don’t know – or even a passing fad. (Will there be a whole generation in a few decades time, pulling out a telescopic attachment from that box in the loft, smiling and shaking their heads saying ‘Oh, yeah! I remember this!’?)
What seems to be a fundamental point of departure is what our photo’s – and by that I mean our online photo-footprint – are for. For some of us it remains a way to record places where we have been. Or to share occasions, sights or the faces of others that we want to remember.
But for some of us there may be less wholesome forces at work.
In Private Eye magazine* this week there is a seemingly innocuous but bizarre report about a man called Keisuke Jinushi, who has been posting selfies of himself online. Nothing unusual there. Most of these selfies include a female hand playfully feeding him doughnuts etc, while he wears a romantic expression.
Still nothing out of the ordinary.
The bizarre – and worrying – aspect of this story is that the hand is, in fact, Keisuke’s own. “My girlfriend is imaginary.” He confesses.
Using nail polish and make up to make his hand look feminine, he has even posted pictures of his ‘wedding’. The article, quoting from the Japan Times, has Keisuke saying “For me a successful life is about having a girlfriend, and a family, and a successful job, and I’ll continue taking pictures that make it seem like I’ve achieved those things.”
I’ll continue taking pictures that make it seem like I’ve achieved those things.
Now, I am not in any way suggesting that all of us who post pictures online are being as deliberately deceptive as Kiesuke clearly is (although you do wonder who is fooling whom, in his case.) But isn’t there a dangerous element of ‘editing’ that goes on – in the photo’s we choose and the ones we discard?
Are we trying to present to the world a picture of – for want of a better catch-all – ‘Me living the perfect life’, much the same as Mr. Jinushi? And who for?
The selfie aspect just seems to compound this question. It is no longer enough to have a picture of a place we have been. The focal point of the picture is no longer even the scene, but my face in it. We are re-educating ourselves from the onlookers point of view.
How many of us have posted – ‘Me looking cool’, ‘Me looking happy’, ‘Me looking thoughtful’?
Or try, ‘Me in a lovely / exotic / expensive / fun / unusual / romantic / place’?
By contrast, how many of us have deliberately posted pics or selfies of ‘Me first thing in the morning,’ ‘Me just doing my job,’ ‘Me being bored,’ or even ‘Me being unkind’, ‘Me ignoring someone’, ‘Me __________ (insert anything you wouldn’t want to be seen doing by anyone else.)?
The art of the selfie is “This is how you see me in this place”, as if how we are seen is more important than the fact of who we actually are.
How we are seen is more important than the fact of who we actually are..
In trying to make sense of this I’m drawn to the story in the New Testament when Jesus is approached by ‘a rich young man.’
‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ he asked. To which Jesus gives what may appear to be a rather prickly answer –
‘Why ask me about what is good? There is only One who is good…”
I’m drawn to this young man because, in his society, he was seen to have it all. Although selfies were a long way off, we would have found him in all the ‘right’ places, doing all the ‘right’ things. He was rich enough to wear all the ‘right’ clothes and be in with the ‘right’ people. He also mentions later that he has done all the ‘right’ things.
Yet he has a gnawing worry that he’s missing something. He knows that the 
life he is living isn’t eternal life. It isn’t lasting. It doesn’t fulfil him. No matter how perfect his life appears to others he knows it isn’t.
So he comes to Jesus and asks what he must do. (I note that he asks what ‘thing’ he must do to find this life. That suggests to me that he is looking for another act – another selfie – another ‘right’ thing that will enable him to find this life he is searching for.)
I’m afraid that this encounter doesn’t end well for him. (It is unique, I believe, in being the only occasion an ordinary person comes to Jesus and goes away unchanged in the Gospels!)
After a discussion, Jesus invites him to give up this search for self-fulfilment and to find fulfilment in a life with Jesus at its’ centre:
“Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.”
Put another way,
“Your obsessions with yourself, with all that you have, and with how you are seen to be, is not where you will find true life. But this eternal life is not an app; it’s not an ‘add-on’ to what you already have. You can’t just put yourself in the frame and click. It’s a whole new adventure. One that starts with me and me alone.”
The life of the selfie is no match for the life with Jesus.
But even if we are, like the rich man in the story, not yet at the point of following Jesus, isn’t it time to stop and ask:
- “Who is the real me?” How would you describe yourself to a stranger?
- “Is Facebook (etc) the real me?” Make a list of times and places you wouldn’t want to be caught on camera!
- “What is good?” What are the things about myself that, if I could change them, would really improve my life?
*Private Eye No.1389, p18
Bible Quotes from The New Living Translation
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