Selfie

Mr. Selfie

Over the last year I have pretty much shut down my interaction with Facebook, slowed the number of postings to Instagram, and Twitter, and I am trying to wean myself off of social media. (yes I am aware that each of these posts shares to Twitter, which shares to Facebook, Tumblr and LinkedIn) Call it a backlash to the overshare world we now live in. One thing I rarely do, is take selfies. I actually hate them. Not just mine, but any selfie. The whole narcissistic idea of them just puts me off, especially when there is so much more interesting stuff to look at besides a picture of yourself making a pouty face. That brings me to the video below from weareseventeen, a fun little send up to our smartphone obsessed world set to a bouncy electronica soundtrack. I think it sums things up quite well.

“Something we have all no doubt noticed is the increasing fixation with what is going on our smartphones – if it’s not ourselves, then we regularly see other people walking down the street pre-occupied with their phones, we see buses and trains full of commuters fixated on their little screens desperate for some information fix and it’s not uncommon to see friends in restaurants interacting with their phones rather than each other – all missing what is going on around them and reducing their quality of life as a result.

This short animation is a playful tale of this modern phenomenon…”

The Selfie Obsessed Olympus EPL7.

In a selfie obsessed world where even the spirit of Narcissus is tired of seeing people pop photos of themselves , Olympus has announced the EPL-7 camera with all the selfie shooters in mind. The tech spec on the camera are all over the internet, and as a camera goes, this looks like a pretty solid micro 4/3 system. What is cracking me up though is the marketing materials on YouTube that they have created. Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s just me being grumpy, but these videos make me say “Get a life. Get some friends and take pictures of them instead of narcissistic yourself. It makes for far more interesting images.” Watching this woman snap shots of her own mug, by herself, while making kissy faces at the camera, just makes me want to laugh. The thing is though, this angle might actually work, with those people that are selfie obsessed and want more than what their smartphone has to offer. For the complete EPL7 selfie channel, click here.

What’s in a selfie?

I’m not a “Selfie” person. The whole act just seems so narcissistic to me. I’m not judging you if you are a selfie shooter, it’s just not my thing. The act of taking selfies is nothing new, although with the advent of front facing cameras on your smartphone it has definitely become more common place in the last few years. So much so that “Selfie” was 2013’s word of the year.

Latching onto the selfie craze and hoping to promote their new phone, HTC gave London photographer Dan Rubin their new HTC One Mini and asked him to not only “play with it”, but put his own spin on the selfie with it. So Rubin took to the streets of London and created a very funny and somewhat telling ad campaign for the phone. Instead of shooting selfies, or asking others to take them, he took existing selfies of celebrities, loaded them to the phone and then cleverly photographed them in front of others faces.

“HTC gave me a new HTC One Mini to play with and asked if I could put my own spin on the selfie — so I headed to Carnaby St yesterday and had a quick play at the expense of celebrities, especially a few with a penchant for selfies ;)” Dan Rubin