I ask Fara what sort of “brand” people encounter if they search for her. “I tend to share what I’m doing in school, and it’s not provocative,” she explains. “It shows that I’m a responsible person and I do have connections.” Fara also has a heightened sense of audience—that she has one and that, just like a celebrity or a famous actor or writer, Fara must keep her public in mind when she posts. Like Ming, Fara worries about how many people you can reach through social media, and she wants to grow her audience as much as possible. She tries to expand the number of people that read her profile by posting only during “high-traffic times” as a way to attract attention but also to control the attention she attracts. “Again, I expect people to read [what I post], so I tend to post at a certain time during the day when I know the most number of people are online. I crave attention,” Fara admits. “And I want to elicit a response from someone, so that’s what motivates me [to post], knowing that somebody else is reading.” When someone “favorites” her tweet or “likes” her post, it’s an indication that she’s managing her “brand” well and protecting her reputation. Fara spends a lot of time deciding what to post, and she goes to her friends for advice because the stakes are so high, asking them which posts they think will get the most positive feedback. “I always worry about getting negative feedback, because sometimes it ruins your day and it’s discouraging. It’s disheartening.”
Maintaining the “name brand” that is Fara can be exhausting—so exhausting that Fara stopped posting on Instagram for a while. She was so caught up in making others believe she “has a fabulous life,” that “she went here, she went there,” that she had no time for anything else—though she worries that not posting there might damage her “name brand” too.
“Especially my generation, right now I’m looking at all my friends, they have personal websites where they’re posting their portfolios online, and whenever we meet someone, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re on social media? What social media?’ It’s not ‘Oh, what’s your number? It’s ‘What’s your social media handle name? Or what’s your Twitter handle name?’ ” Fara pauses a moment before continuing. “You know what I mean? I think [social media] is very important. It is a job.”
I’ve wondered what accounts for this language of “marketing” and “branding” of the self that so many students used during the interviews, and how much of it has to do with the seeming and widespread professionalization and commercialization of everything. Even colleges and universities consider themselves “brands” that must be maintained and protected, and students are regarded as consumers, so the educational institutions themselves promote such language. But there are also countless examples of bright, savvy young adults who’ve achieved widespread notoriety and celebrity by creating their own YouTube channels and Instagram pages with thousands, even millions, of viewers, using social media to turn their lives and lifestyles into money-making “brands,” and who are regarded as new and valuable tastemakers. Today there is such a thing as “Internet famous,” which comes with the kinds of perks that used to accrue only to Hollywood celebrities. Companies looking to sell clothing and other wares to the young and moneyed see these “name brands” on social media as potential gold mines.5
While the students I met did not seem interested in becoming Internet famous on any widespread level, they’d certainly internalized the notion that on social media you are always marketing, advertising, promoting, and producing a public persona that can make or break you, so you’d better proceed with caution, care, and a good deal of savvy. The “production” of self for one’s audience—both the immediate one and the potential future one—has become second nature.
It’s just how things are.
Perhaps most revealing of all is the answer students gave to a question in the online survey where they were asked to reply yes or no to the following statement:
I’m aware that my name is a brand and I need to cultivate it carefully.
A total of 727 students responded to this question, with 79 percent of them answering yes.
Even as young adults are crafting, curating, and cultivating a particular online image for their audiences, and engaging in so much people-pleasing and self-promoting behavior, they are also aware that it is not “real” in the way that reality TV isn’t “real.” They understand that much of the “happiness” they see displayed all around them is produced for a particular effect on the audience.
But the expectation on them to pay attention to and craft a particular image? That is real. And the “branding” of the self comes at a great cost to some.
Whether the students are ambivalent about the reality they perceive around social media and image, or frustrated by it, the overwhelming feeling they have is that online image is hugely important, and if you care at all about your future, you’d better start curating your image.
Sometimes that image is metaphorical—the sum total of all your online identities—but in some cases it is literal. Which brings us to the selfie.
4
THE SELFIE GENERATION
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS MORE OF A “GIRL THING”
I think our generation in general is just in love with themselves.
Abby, first-year, evangelical Christian university
I would say that the whole selfie thing is predominantly female. I actually do a lot of unfriending because of that… . It’s an image thing. It’s always wanting to look pretty, to be accepted.
Gray, junior, Catholic university
Fifty years later, when people look upon this generation and this time period, I’m sure they’re going to dub it “the Selfie Generation.”
Tanuja, senior, evangelical Christian university
THE GOAL OF A SELFIE
“I used to think that [selfies] were conceited,” says Tanuja, a senior at a Christian university in the West. “I used to think they were very, very conceited.” I ask her what changed. “Maybe it [hasn’t] changed, but just that they’re so prevalent, it’s just like ‘Okay, well, the world is doing it, you can’t really help it.’ … . Some selfies can be very fun, you know what I mean?”
At this point, Tanuja starts parsing out a selfie hierarchy: “I think the people who only post selfies of themselves without anybody else in them are still a little conceited,” she says. “And there are definitely people and pages where it’s just of their face and nobody else in it. Those are the ones I definitely still question a little bit.” Tanuja is not alone in feeling that, if you are going to take a selfie, you should make sure you’re with other people. I heard that from many students, though plenty of them are still disposed to pucker up for the camera when they’re alone. But Tanuja pushes deeper. She begins to wonder how these supposedly self-indulgent snapshots will be seen in the future. “Fifty years later, when people look upon this generation and this time period, I’m sure they’re going to dub it ‘the Selfie Generation.’ … . But when people look back on this, I hope, it’s not going to be so much at how conceited these people were, it’s going to be [more] like, look at the types of funny pictures that they took, and how they took them.”
It’s noteworthy that Tanuja worries about her generation being labeled “conceited,” which speaks to the reality that her generation has already been labeled as self-obsessed on an historic level. The work of Jean Twenge in Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before argues this, and the rise of selfies as emblematic of this narcissism and entitlement isn’t helping thwart the label. Though Tanuja is aware of her generation’s reputation (as are many other students I interviewed), she would prefer everyone to be remembered as fun and creative. There is a defeatist quality to Tanuja’s sense of the negative label wider society has applied to her generation—she knows that she can explain through our interview that selfies (and all that goes along with them) are simply her generation’s way of playing around, but has little faith that those who are in a position to judge will take
her claim seriously (because the judgment has already been handed down).
But selfie culture also seems closely tied to the pressure students feel to appear happy—and popular—online. Selfies are usually about showing your best face, your prettiest look, your most amazing outfit, the day when your hair looks just perfect. They are literally all about appearance but also about with whom you are appearing. You don’t want all of your selfies to be solo, lest those perusing your social media profiles think you are completely self-centered. For the selfie aficionado, it’s a delicate balance.
Elise, a sophomore at a Catholic university, shares Tanuja’s feelings about selfies. “It’s funny, I used to hate them,” she tells me. But then, like Tanuja, she began to distinguish between different kinds of selfies: what makes a selfie good or bad is in the intention of the person taking it. A selfie should not be for gratification of your own ego.
“I used to think the goal of a selfie was to get people to ‘like’ a picture, and if you got ‘likes,’ then that meant that a girl was really, really pretty,” Elise explains. “And if another selfie hardly got any ‘likes,’ then that meant nobody thought the girl was pretty. And I hated that whole concept. I thought that was awful.” Elise seems not to even ponder the possibility that guys might take selfies, or that anyone would associate taking selfies as a guy thing. At least initially, she understood them as exclusively for the purpose of other people evaluating a girl or woman’s appearance, and this disgusted her.
But then Elise had a change of heart about what a selfie can do for its taker in a positive way. A selfie can be good for you if you go into it with the right attitude—and attire. To Elise, “It all depends honestly, [on] what you’re wearing. If you’re wearing a low-cut shirt or you do your makeup really, really elaborate, then you’re calling attention to yourself. And I think that’s your sole purpose for putting that photo up.” If your intention is to get “likes,” the selfie is impure. Selfies should not be about getting “likes,” and you should not wear a certain outfit or do your makeup a certain way solely for the purpose of taking a selfie. Yet this is a fine distinction that is difficult to discern from an image on a screen. “But, you know, if you just have a pretty day, like all girls have,” Elise says, “and you take a picture, … .I think that is a perfectly acceptable selfie, and I’m guilty of that too.” If the selfie is incidental to the outfit, the hairstyle, the makeup, then it’s acceptable. For Elise, selfies offer a way to capture a moment when you are feeling attractive and good about yourself—it’s about the taker of the selfie making this judgment and acting accordingly by snapping the picture. The caption plays a role as well. As Elise tells me, “It all depends on the purpose of putting that picture up and the title. If the title’s something like, you know, ‘Look at me!’ If that’s the main purpose, then I don’t think you should be posting that.”
A selfie is never just a selfie, for Elise. It is an expression of who you are. You may look pretty, but if you are too eager to show that off, you might unwittingly reveal an ugly side of yourself.
THE SELFIE LOVERS AND THE SELFIE HATERS
Not everyone gave selfies as much thought as Tanuja and Elise, but everyone had an opinion about them—usually a strong one. When I asked about selfies, students tended to have one of two reactions. They would either roll their eyes and say, “I hate selfies!” or would light up and say, “I love selfies!” This held true in the online survey as well. A total of 364 students chose to give their opinion on selfies and our seemingly bottomless need to document our lives, and the question garnered some of the lengthiest answers across the entire survey. It was common to have one student start off his or her answer with “I love selfies!” or “Selfies are wonderful!” while the very next student began with “I hate selfies!” Students used more exclamation points in their answers here than anywhere else in the survey. Even those students with mixed feelings about selfies could swing from “Well the great thing about selfies is …” straight to “But then again, I loathe the way that selfies …” in the very next sentence.
One selfie-hater I interviewed, a young man, simply tells me, “They’re stupid.” When I ask why, he elaborates: “I don’t need to see what you’re wearing every day. I don’t need to see a picture of your face every single day when I’m going to see you in ten minutes. I mean, if you’re going out on a date or something and you’re like, ‘Oh, I look real nice today,’ yeah, okay, it’s a selfie. I’ve done that. I mean, if I look good, I’m dressed up for something, I’ll take a picture of it and I’ll post it on Instagram. That’s different. But an everyday selfie? Come on. Like, come on! Let’s be real. You have a little picture of your face up in the corner. If I want to see your face, I’ll click on that. I don’t need to see a different picture of your face every day.”
This young man is not alone in feeling this way. Nearly twice as many students in the online survey were anti-selfie as were pro-selfie.
Many argued that selfies were “not good for people’s self-esteem” or body image and that they contribute to the very problematic trend of “everyone constantly comparing themselves to everyone else” and driving people to compete against each other. Many students commented on how it was “very hard not to see it as narcissistic”; in fact, “narcissistic” was one of the most popular adjectives anti-selfie students used to describe the trend. A number of students chose this topic to express complaints about how, because of selfies, “we’re no longer living in the moment,” and this is a tragic loss. Selfies were called arrogant, self-absorbed, disgusting, degrading, ridiculous, vapid, useless, selfish, shameless, vain, and hedonistic. The general feeling seemed to be that the whole selfie trend has gotten “out of control” and people have “taken it too far.”1
Several students were particularly harsh about what selfies say about their generation. A first-year student at an evangelical Christian college wrote, “I think what is driving our selfie culture is the millennial self-entitlement. We believe the world revolves around us and everyone cares about what we are doing. But the reality is, everyone is too busy caring about themselves to remember what someone posts for more than an hour or two.”
Yet for many, the selfie is harmless and fun, a high-tech version of the glamour shots for which those of us who grew up in the 1980s had to pay good money in shopping malls.
One of the young men who lights up when I ask about selfies is a first-year at a Catholic university. “Selfies,” he says with a sigh. “I’m a big selfie person. I love selfies!” When I ask why, he replies, “Everywhere I go I take selfies. Like I could be sitting in my dorm studying, and I get on my phone, and I have a Mac, so that’s where I take my selfies. They’re just funny. Especially if you’re in class.”
Attention professors and teachers: lots of students take selfies in class.
Another thing I learn from selfie-lovers is that there is a difference between selfies for Facebook and selfies for Snapchat. The difference is permanence, and it is huge. A “disappearing post” can be so much more fun than the ones that stick around and might haunt you for the rest of your life.
Jackson, a senior, loves selfies because “I get to see myself,” he says simply, with a big laugh. He doesn’t always share his selfies, though. “Sometimes I could be just looking at myself in the phone,” he says. “Not really taking the selfie. And then I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I look nice today.’ ” Jackson likes using the selfie camera like a mirror, he tells me.
But when he does take a selfie, he has to decide where it goes: Snapchat? Instagram? Facebook? “I really don’t care what I put on Snapchat,” Jackson says. I could wake up one morning, upload that selfie, and I wouldn’t put that on Instagram compared to my Snapchat, because [the morning selfie] is really more personal.” The same goes for “sleek photos,” which go up on Jackson’s Instagram but not Snapchat. On Facebook or Instagram, Jackson also posts selfies of him doing positive things. Jackson works as a tutor, and this is something he wants to share with people in
a more permanent way. “I might have a selfie doing some type of work with my students, some type of tutoring,” he explains. If you got to Jackson’s Facebook, you’ll see that he’s involved in community service. “But on my Snapchat,” Jackson tells me, “you wouldn’t even notice that I’m actually involved in community service because I’ll be doing something funny.”
The students I interviewed and surveyed constantly differentiated between permanent platforms and more temporary ones. Many self-proclaimed selfie-haters would later tell me how much they love Snapchat, using it to send seven or eight photos a day of themselves doing silly things. They didn’t count these photos as selfies—maybe because the more “classic” understanding of the selfie, the one everyone likes to roll their eyes about, is that perfect vanity shot, the one that took a bunch of tries to get just right and is meant to go on your permanent Facebook or Instagram record. The Snapchat selfie is quite literally the “throwaway selfie” that isn’t intended to last more than a few seconds. The Snapchat selfie is so fleeting it doesn’t count.
Maybe Elise is right, and selfies really are all about intention.
THE SELFIE CONVERTS
Elise, like Tanuja, was once a selfie skeptic, but she had come around. There seemed to be a lot more of what I’ve come to think of as “selfie converts” out there among the other students I interviewed, too.
“I didn’t like them at first, but now I’ve grown rather fond of them,” one young woman told me. “At first it seemed very, very vain in a way. You would never catch me taking one. If I was in a public setting, on a train or in the middle of a crowd, I would never take a selfie. I would feel so judged. Now, it’s fine. I don’t know what changed. I guess I started doing it a lot more. I got acclimated. A lot more people who I thought were normal were doing them.”
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