In 2013 a new addition was made in the Oxford English
Dictionary - selfie. While we had all studied and experimented with self
portraits as part of our curriculum in media school, this new word along with easy
social media access brought about a new found selfie culture.
What I really find interesting is the fact that today the
moment I step out of my house, I find these ladies and gentlemen pouting and
making funny faces on the front cameras of their mobile phones. I once
travelled almost 35km from my place on a metro and observed a certain lady sitting
next to me, who kept clicking selfies till I got off. What I didn’t realize was
that she was the first of many such specimens that I was to encounter.
At cafes, restaurants, malls and even movie theatres, I see
these men and women taking their own pictures while keeping company of their friends
and family. There’s a mother asking her daughter if she’d have a pizza or a
Sub, while the daughter is engrossed in taking selfies. There are couples
taking their individual selfies while spending together time.
A friend once borrowed my mobile phone for a “minute” and
returned that to me after almost half an hour and my memory card full of some
117 odd selfies. However, this is not even the trailer of what has now become a
selfie rage or selfie obsession.
I recently had to travel out of town for some work and had to
take an early morning flight. What began the moment I got out of my cab at 6.45
am was nothing less than a Selfie zombie
movie. So, I stepped inside the terminal and started locating the counter
of airlines I was travelling with. All of a sudden a young man who was walking
along pulling his luggage suddenly came to a halt. What happened next rendered
me numb for a while. This young man was posing against an airlines counter
holding his selfie stick.
Once recovered, I finally checked-in and proceeded towards
security check. On my way, I encountered several people taking selfies or dualfies or groupfies. But
again, this was just the beginning. Thankfully, security checks still demand
putting all devices on a tray, so this region had people walking straight, not tangling
in the feet of fellow travelers and for a change looking at each other like
human beings.
Out of the security and in the terminal mall, as I like to
call it, began another round of selfie-bombardment. People were not just taking
their pictures but also pictures with the merchandise in those stores. As a
site-merchandiser, my constant struggle is to improve footfalls on the website.
These stores are definitely in the footfall area if not conversions.
Finally, boarding was announced and for a moment I thought
that the now the focus would shift to the immediate task - “board the
bus-deboard the bus-board the aircraft”. But, oh so wrong was I.
What began now
was another series of selfie onslaught. So, there were selfies in the boarding
queue, selfies at the boarding gate, selfies while walking towards the bus,
selfies in the bus AND, selfies with the aircraft in the background. Phew!
While this went on amusing a larger part of me, a smaller
optimistic part of me still banked upon the faith in human intelligence. Well,
actually not faith in human intelligence but an evil, sadistic feeling that
what are these selfians going to do
inside the plane.
What began once we’d boarded and seated was an amazing
experience of my lifetime. That flight alone gave me a great perspective into
human psychology and behavior.
So, there was a middle aged man sitting next to me and two
men sitting in the front row. The guy next to me turned the flight mode on and as
the aircraft started taxing towards the runway he switched his front camera on.
In the next 150 minutes he took vertical selfies, horizontal selfies, diagonal
selfies, selfies with different filters, and selfies in different modes.
And the gentlemen sitting in the front row were even better.
They took their individual selfies - vertical, horizontal and diagonal. Then they
took dualfies, again - vertical,
horizontal and diagonal. And the middle of their precious photo-op, they turned
around once or twice to give me the dirtiest of the looks. I wondered what
really invited such as glance and then realized that being seated in the middle
of the row, I was unintentionally photo-bombing their dualfies.
I gave out a sigh of relief the moment this flight touched
down at my destination as I was glad that this was hopefully the climax of the Selfie Zombie movie that I was caught in.
What I really found curious in this entire selfie spree was
that none of these brilliant self photographers bothered to capture the
beautiful sunrise at Delhi airport nor did they bother about the view outside
of their windows. They didn’t even try to fix the camera angle to get a better composition
of light and shadows. It was just their selves that they sought to redeem in
some magical manner by consuming the potion of infinite selfies.
2 comments:
good one! we've become addicted to our phones and the ones that can take a pic of us, in better and greater details are becoming a rage...
as frenzied as the selfie-obsession is, I believe, selfie had its humble and quite sad beginning when someone who was travelling alone wanted to document his/her travel and out of sheer need resorted to the funny arm extension, when the good ol' camera with self-timer was not at hand... what do you think? :)
That's true... In fact, I find selfies really sad in that sense. How lonely would one be to capture themselves in their camera instead of enjoying the moment!
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