I Don't Like Selfies
Kayfabe
Kayfabe is not a very complicated concept, but I think in the digital age it is particularly important. For anyone on the internet, it is known intuitively, but widely not recognized. Kayfabe is essentially a stage presence and persona that treats its own existence as real, not crafted. It is a persona created by an actor, but that is not allowed to be acknowledged. The extent of this can vary, from existing purely on stage and the actor letting up offstage, to the actor completely indulging themselves in their character at all times.
This came to dominance in the world of professional wrestling (The WWE kind). Wrestling is first and foremost a show. These actors go up on stage and perform their characters for spectators, and the result of the match is planned to create drama or a larger story. The entirety of the show, however, isn't strictly limited to what happens during the match. There is backstage drama of the fighters threatening each other. There are interviews with the wrestlers where they hype up the crowd. There is a persona that does not let up. The wrestler is their own person before us completely different from the actor that plays them. These legendary wrestler personas are a result of kayfabe. To say the actor is putting on a performance does not cover the extent of it; Hulk Hogan is not Terry Bollea, he is Hulk Hogan.
Now, just about everyone engages in kayfabe. Everyone crafts some form of digital persona of themselves on social media that others can see. For most people, it does reflect some aspect of their reality, those who travel may depict a lot of their travels, and those who go out to clubs a lot may often depict them at clubs. Still, it is not a true representation of the real them, but a crafted representation of an aspect of the real them. I already noted this in Digital Reflections That Can Never Come To Be, so I won't dwell here too long. For others still, this kayfabe is a completely and necessarily crafted image. A hustler can only hustle on social media if they appear rich. They must appear as if their hustle is working. They can only appear rich to others if they always appear rich, even if they aren't. If the kayfabe lets up at any point, everyone can recognize the grift, and the hustle comes apart.
The Selfie Itself
The selfie is one of the most popular art forms in circulation. It is effectively the result of an absolute deskilling of art. Getting a portrait used to take a highly skilled artist. Technology like cameras meant that the person making the portrait needed less skill, but the technology was still rare. Advancements in cameras like digital cameras and portability made the technology more common. Other technology like computers and the internet made it easier to copy photos, learn how to take better photos, and share photos, creating a social necessity. The supply of selfies was enough to generate a social demand for further selfies as a form of self expression. This trend continues until smartphones, which create a seamless integration between high-quality photos, immediate processing, and instant sharing. It is no longer a form of creative art, but a basic human action that can be done trivially.
Selfies have become the lowest form of art possible. It is the same, it is dead simple, it requires minimal interaction, and the result is something not really notable in any moment, just something you see briefly and move on from. Even bad artworks are an unskilled or undirected attempt at making something interesting, a signifier that is a bad reflection of a signified. Selfies are nothing more than their exact form. A selfie may be taken of you somewhere, and the only purpose is to show that you are there. There is no further challenge or depth.
It would seem there are effectively two types of selfies: those taken and kept, and those taken and shared. I think that the artifacts of these two goals have a much greater overlap than people give them credit for. Firstly I think that almost all selfies are taken to be shared, then later may not be. Even when sharing with others isn't the explicit goal, I believe that selfies are part of a digital kayfabe meant to be shared with oneself. If you want to see where you are, you can just look around and appreciate where you are. What people seem to want instead is to be able to look at their crafted persona, seeing what their digital expression of themselves is. In this way, even selfies taken and not shared are shared, just with a future you instead of publicly.
This also makes it a narcissistic art. It is a picture of yourself with some form of changing background. This self-placement means that you are the center of the image, but the actual merit of the image is in the place you are. You could simply take a picture of a place you were to show it off. Everyone would know you were at that place, but it then wouldn't have you, so it wouldn't add to your digital image. This makes the selfie almost a self-contradictory art form, where you are the least notable part but you can't not be in it or else it ruins the ability to show yourself. It is a narcissistic art form to add to a digital kayfabe that reflects an optimized version of yourself to others. It is shared to draw further attention to oneself, or at least a representation of oneself which one has control over, and share it in a digital marketplace crafted by oneself in which one can get the most praise without drawing on any negativity. To create something genuinely challenging is to create something that would get ignored by people who don't like it or removed if it continues.
Looking At Me? Looking At Me
Sharing selfies may be a driving force behind them as a cultural art form, but it doesn't explain why people immediately take selfies at the moments that something notable is happening. We have the largest catalogue of images available to us in human history, and through computers and the internet, it is constantly available to anyone (at least anyone taking selfies). If we see something, we are almost certainly able to find a properly taken image of that same thing that we can hold to remind ourselves of being somewhere. We could similarly show it to people and describe our personal experiences to others. Despite having that option, people seem more inclined than ever to get specifically an image of themselves in the given context. Given every opportunity to live in the moment and not have to worry about capturing it, people feel compelled to capture the moment without living it more than ever. It would seem that a digital representation of oneself is the only way for us to trust our real experiences and memories. The fleeting is scary, so we must reflect ourselves into a permanent representation of that fleeting moment.
Mark Fisher noted in Capitalist Realism that it seems young people are in constant need of being connected to the internet and become anxious if they are disconnected from it. They will check their phones even if there is nothing to check or listen to music even if just extremely quietly so they don't actually hear it enough to pay attention to it. If people are already effectively cyborgs, as I noted in Short Form Content, The Algorithm, and Us, this makes perfect sense. Being deprived of the ability to instantly communicate, look things up, or find directions using our phones is to get ripped away from a core function of our modern humanity. It makes sense that disconnection from our core abilities would be stressful, like a temporary loss of ability to use a limb. In this aspect, selfies are a way to immediately connect ourselves back to the comfort of the digital matrix, ensuring that no matter where we are, the connection is still there. If a place is challenging and difficult, we can retreat to comfort of our phones. If it is sterile or boring, the digital matrix can add another dimension, entertainment or narcissistic image creation, to make it more exciting for us again.
This is a phenomenon that I frequently notice in my life and is noted in a movie I rather like: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller. There is a cameraman in the mountains who has worked a long time to get a photo of a leopard, and when a perfect shot comes across his camera, he takes his eye out of the camera. He doesn't take the picture, instead saying “If I like a moment, me, personally, I don't like the distraction of the camera.” It is a very boomer-core scene that I hold dear. The cameraman decides not to look through the camera, but instead straight at the leopard, because the camera “gets in the way.” The real experience of looking at the leopard would be impeded, the experience diminished, by looking through a piece of technology at a real-time image of the same thing. It acts as an extra step in the process of experiencing, a barrier between us and the real experience. The experience which can only be perceived by us at that moment through our qualia.
Being so inundated with curated digital experiences, the real world turns to the foreign. Instead of being something to be experienced, it is something that can be digitally captured and turned into a digital experience. This action removes people from the real experience, putting up a comfort barrier, and placing them back into the realm of the digital matrix-reality where things get experienced through a screen. On the other side of a screen, nothing can really hurt you. There is a common trope of people getting into extremely dangerous scenarios to take selfies, like being around wild animals or performing dangerous activities. Many blame clout chasing, which may be true, but I think it doesn't describe the extent of it.The real world entails strong emotions and reflexes now mostly obsolete in daily life. The natural world, free from our sanitized and safer version, can be incredibly violent, undetermined, and stressful. When confronted with this, people who are not used to it and do not need to grow used to it are able to use selfies as a means to retreat back into their normal. Tourist settings are similar yet opposite, moving from an external threat to an internal crisis. When confronted with something mystical seen online and planned for, when things become real they are often underwhelming. The real does not abide by the rapid pace of the digital, and selfies are able to maintain a cultural kayfabe that these places are indeed experienced that way. People are able to dress up a snapshot to appear as exciting as they had seen online, and thus, allow themselves the illusion that it is how they also experienced it, just as the others all do, even when it is not the real experience had by any of them. Confronted with the bland pace of reality when compared to the digital, selfies give them a retreat into constructing their digital image to experience it for them.
Taking a selfie is also inherently strange in its process. You look into the camera, and in the camera, an image of you is you looking back at you. You are in a place watching an image of you there looking back at you in that place. The act of taking a selfie doesn't exist in you existing, but only in response to you taking yourself out of existing solely in real space. It is taking a piece of your existence out of the real world to help you further recognize your existence in the real world from the perspective of your being outside of yourself. To take a selfie is to put yourself into the gaze of an other. It is an appeal to another you which does not exist, it is an imagination created by you in that instant. The act, thought of as personal and real, is made inherently impersonal and outside of the real through its own existence of trying to create a version of self-existence digitally, outside of the self. It is its own contradiction.
It's gonna feel real good I'm starting with the man in the mirror Could it be really me pretending
Oncle Spencer
Scrap bin
Extra content if you want. I didn't feel like it fit and didn't feel like it was complete enough but didn't immediately know how to complete it. I don't think I'll be revisiting selfies soon, so I figured I'd just keep it here. It tries to visit how selfies came to be so popular and what purpose that serves, but I liked my article just sticking to the act of selfies more.
Selfies are incredibly handy as a tool for capital. Everyone can create their own personal likeness commodity that they can have (most) control over. Being their own entrepreneurial self in charge of their own self-commodity, they are engaged in the wonderful marketplace where everyone is on even footing. Their likeness commodity included with all those surrounding in all their locations count as cultural capital too, a new economic idea where we pitch our history and cultural practices as their own source of value. By its nature of being exactly all the self commodities, it is perfectly representative, allowing engagement with like-mindedness and giving as much expression to any person as any person is willing to engage with and invest in it. If one so desires, they can exploit their digital likeness-commodity and aim to become an influencer to make money off of their image, where they can now be free and do whatever they want and make an earning from it.
This falls perfectly under the psychopolitical model of the achievement-subject. The repressive state apparatus is able to eliminate those who are deviant, threaten those who may become deviant to stop it, and kill political dissidents without real repercussions. Now, it became necessary to optimize the people who were not on the “wrong side”, stirring them into action to become as productive as possible to stimulate further growth. Every person must be actively enthusiastic in exploiting themselves. Everyone can make anything they want of themselves through crafting and optimizing their likeness-commodities to be what they want to be. They can infinitely consume an internet's worth of everyone else's likeness-commodities too, giving them more ideas on what they can do themselves. We create a romantic obsession with our own self exploitation that makes us think it is not only normal, but the best. Emotional value is raised through our consumption to drive more consumption, and to help reduce crises of over-accumulation, constantly cheaper and faster consumption generated more inefficiency in consumption. We work for a company by day, and we self exploit to generate more consumption by night. Massive velocity of online data can be used to target people in their consumption, their data bundled and sold to draw better advertisement and targeting, and the cycle continues. The selfie is not the cause of this, but rather a natural by-product of its massive scale and manipulation. Its simplicity and non-existent barrier of entry make it the perfect delivery device for psychopolitical emotional capitalist self exploitation and surveillance capitalism.
This message can be similarly be applied to new models of capitalism as a whole. Workers already work in a labour marketplace. During the turn of the neoliberal era, there was a deliberate re-framing the narrative for success, moving from giving people tools and helping those who are down towards giving incredible opportunities around people for them to find. Instead of having a welfare state with job training out of school, now there could be investment fairs where students could pitch ideas to get investment and get bought up by capitalists looking to invest in ideas they think could be profitable. This occurs at many levels. High schools have some exposure to clubs and fairs as well as opportunities (mostly for incredibly gifted students) to do more outside of school to gain interest. It can be seen in the pipeline to universities, but also does occur in some cases outside of that. It is very clear in universities. Hackathons, investment clubs, and guest lecturers for private corporations happen near daily. All of these are designed to help optimize people for their role in selling themselves for higher opportunities to whatever companies are aiming for one goal or another to hire young talent. These are opportunities that students can take if they are highly motivated and willing to work hard to get them. The hard workers will succeed, and their value as hard workers who sought out the opportunity will reap a reward.
This fails on three fronts. Firstly, it undermines the universal application of benefit to people who need it. Those struggling or in a spot where they are unable to properly focus on ideas that are profitable get left behind completely. Where a welfare state means that they can find their footing when they can, this no longer happens. The rising tide no longer raises all boats, it just raises select boats much more. Secondly, it leaves investment and procurement of investment exposed to capitalists who have reason to not give certain ideas investment. A mining firm that decides to open a mining branch of a university may not invest so heavily into ideas that question immoral practices that the firm uses. The interests of the capital class will never be fundamentally challenged by its own investment.
It does succeed massively in another angle. It puts the burden of failure not on those with the most ability, those with the most capital, but instead on the individual. Failure simply means that you did not work hard enough, allocate your personal resources and attention properly, or take advantage of the opportunities that exist around you. Constantly self-optimizing and hustling are a recipe for burnout. How do you get around this? Simply by using your digital likeness-commodity as the image you put towards those who may have investment. To show your success, you must publicly show yourself as successful. When in the field of the capitalist, you must constantly maintain a kayfabe of being a hardworking and successful person with the best ideas. An image that shows you achieving in some way is the perfect tool for this, and thus the constant selfie taking is just an optimization of becoming a perfect achievement-subject for exploitation. Again, the selfie is not the cause of this, but rather a natural by-product of its massive scale and manipulation. Its simplicity and non-existent barrier of entry make it the perfect delivery device for creating images of self-optimization to attempt to achieve better opportunities under a more unequal system.
Look at me Look at me Look at me now
Oncle Spencer