The Ellen Selfie: what it tells us about #selfie culture

“Can you guys help me pick a filter? / I don’t know if I should go with XX Pro or Valencia / I wanna look tan / What should my caption be? / I want it to be clever / How about ‘Livin’ with my bitches, #LIVE’?”

While this piece of music entitled #SELFIE by legendary musicians, The Chainsmokers, may be so overwhelmingly beautiful that it is difficult to listen to without quietly weeping at its perfectness, the lyrics above do encapsulate the vanity that comes with self-documentation.

We all know what a selfie is – in fact, the majority of us have taken a selfie – but we are always quick to condemn those who take them for how vain they seem. But there is more to the mere selfie than meets the eye – for a selfie is not just a “visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing” but it is also communication of “who we think we are, and who we think is watching.” (Saltz, 2014). It is a representation of oneself that we want people to see.

There is a growing obsession for sousveillence. Actor James Franco wrote that selfies are more than vanity and are “little visual diaries that magnify, reduce, dramatize–that say, ‘I’m here; look at me.'” In a society where people’s actions can often be overlooked, a need for these actions to be validated exists – and this can be simply solved by self-documentation (Andrejevic, 2004, pp.110).

What’s really interesting is that selfies are a “social comment on the erosion between public and private spheres in daily life” (Aufderheide, 1997). Posted publicly online, you can see into the personal lives of people you don’t even know.

Why was The Ellen Selfie so popular? Everyone is used to seeing these celebrities appearing in films, but it is always a novelty to see them appear in a selfie being themselves and showing you their own lives. With the selfie taken at the Oscars, you end up with a photo that somehow shows a ‘private’ side to a public event.

While the selfie-taking was televised, it almost feels like you’re looking at an ‘intimate’ moment with the actors. The Ellen Selfie tells us that while selfie culture is the norm, it does bring up much conversation on public and private spheres, as it is difficult to distinguish what is public and what is private when it comes to self-documentation.

(But really, the question we should be asking is this.)

REFERENCES

Andrejevic, M 2004, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.