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Selfie: Why Do We Do This?: Way of Self-Expression

Selfies have become popular as a way for people to share themselves and important life events with others on social media and get feedback. Some see selfies as a form of self-expression and creativity, allowing them to share their inner world. However, others argue that an overemphasis on curating one's image through selfies can form a "fake I" focused more on how one wants to appear than who they truly are. Frequent selfies may also be a way to seek confirmation of one's existence from likes and comments, becoming dependent on external validation and lacking real experiences and deep relationships.

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Regina Apsalyamova
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53 views3 pages

Selfie: Why Do We Do This?: Way of Self-Expression

Selfies have become popular as a way for people to share themselves and important life events with others on social media and get feedback. Some see selfies as a form of self-expression and creativity, allowing them to share their inner world. However, others argue that an overemphasis on curating one's image through selfies can form a "fake I" focused more on how one wants to appear than who they truly are. Frequent selfies may also be a way to seek confirmation of one's existence from likes and comments, becoming dependent on external validation and lacking real experiences and deep relationships.

Uploaded by

Regina Apsalyamova
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Selfie: why do we do this?

Don't tell that you've never done a selfie. And you don't even know what it is? Amazing. Because this is
one of the main attributes of life on the Web today. We asked psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin to explain why
selfies have become so popular.
Perhaps the main feature is orientation to other people. Those who actively take photos of themselves do so
in order to share these portraits on social networks, send them to each other, and collect feedback from friends.
They shoot themselves in different poses, mimic their mood, and share important events. And all of this – using
the camera of a smartphone. Someone takes pictures of themselves in the company of friends, someone-during an
important event or meeting. Some admit that selfies are just a daily ritual for them, without any meaning. Although
it certainly makes sense. It is the habit of constantly measuring the course of one's life in such visual units that is
of particular interest.

Way of self-expression

Selfie at the Academy awards 2014. In the first hour after its publication, it was viewed almost one and a
half million times. In the frame of Ellen DeGeneres, Bradley Cooper, brad pitt, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts,
Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin spacey and Angelina Jolie.
For those of us who, for some reason in ordinary life, do not dare to show others their inner world in its
entirety, selfie gives a chance. The phone camera becomes a safe intermediary through which they can open up,
show all the richness of their emotional life. You don't have to have a specific reaction – attention or approval.
What matters is the idea itself, the fantasy: I was understood, I was appreciated. All of us, in one way or another,
live in the space of our inner world. The real world seems to us more multifaceted and multidimensional. By
sending our photos, we include ourselves in this world and expand our inner world at the expense of the outside.
There are also elements of creativity. Finding a theme, a good expression, a perspective-it requires creative effort
in any case. Those who photograph themselves try to create something new with this image. Even if it is a
question of fitting into a certain trend or supporting a network flashmob.
«Selfie in orbit» performed by Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide
Fake «I»
But contact with others, the desire to share yourself-not always the goal that is pursued by those who are
fond of selfies. In the word itself (from the English I – «Я») there is a certain parody, a game in itself. This parody
can expand the space of images of the «I», but it can also form a fallacious «I ». We are no longer presenting
ourselves to the world, but the image that we would like to show. Even when we shoot ourselves in an unattractive
way (without makeup, with disheveled hair, with a grimace on our face), we want it to fit into a certain trend, look
relevant, even stylish in its own way. We begin to build our image based on our ideas of what our environment
expects us to look like. The selfie turns into an analog of the child's fake «I», which was written by the
psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. In contrast to the true «I», the child creates the secondary structure of the
personality in order to please his mother. But the development of the true «I» stops here.
Confirmation of your existence
By sharing photos of ourselves in different situations, we are saying to the world, « I am. I exist» We need
the world to respond to us, to reflect our presence in it. «Likes» and comments are just confirmations. A small
child is aware of its existence through a connection with its mother. For him, she is the whole world. If she doesn't
talk to him, doesn't touch him, he begins to think that the world rejects him, he is not needed. And this is an
alarming moment when such a scheme begins to play out at a fairly old age. In fact, by obsessively sending out
selfies, we are trying to reach the world. And the more we depend on the response, the more we begin to doubt our
own self-sufficiency, we become dependent on «likes».

One of the first selfies of Pope Francis


Lack of real experiences
Let's conduct a thought experiment. Let's imagine a person who actively takes pictures and posts them.
And now he has not just a relationship, but a deep relationship. He begins to communicate actively, openly. Will it
then pay as much attention to its network image? After all, you can't say that the selfie itself is bad. The only
question is why we do it ourselves. If you are able to creatively realize yourself and love another person, you can
afford to play with your «I» without becoming dependent. Many creative people use selfies more as a tool. Let's
remember the recent photos with the Pope. This is an attempt to attract young people, to show that Christianity is
more open and modern. It is important to clearly understand the boundaries where the demonstrative selfie ends
and the real self begins.

Andrey Rossokhin, doctor of psychology, head of the master's program «Psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytic business consulting» at the NRU HSE

http://www.psychologies.ru/self-knowledge/behavior/selfi-pochemu-myi-delaem-eto/

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