As I wordlessly scroll down through my not so ‘happening’ Facebook wall, sifting through the contents on the basis of relevance becomes a bit tough. Cropping up one after another are endless stories of people doing something or the other with a dire need to quickly inform the waiting world about their latest dinner dates, pacifying treks or just randomly clicked ‘Me’s‘.
I struggle to find someone who wants to fill me up with some real in-the-world-news – well barring marriage announcements, which surprisingly have seemed to increase around me all of sudden. God only knows how! People seem to be drowned in their own self created universes. Yes there are many such universes. And each little universe claims to be unique. But alas! I am left with nothing more than a generation or must I say an entire creed of self obsessed people.
Even As I use the word ‘Creed’, nothing stops me from owning up and saying that I myself belong to this same group. But yet futile as it might seem, I have this one question for all of us!!! What is the degree of self-obsessedness that we will reach before we stop doing this! Social media truly endeavours to create, foster and cherish this new found psychology of self centredness to such an extent, that I dread that these duck-faces and pouts and all other sorts of crazy wacky faces will someday somehow, find a way into human DNA… (Even the thought of it makes me shiver.)
The standard agenda of a weekend party or a hangout or a trip nowadays seems to be to click an array of variedly itemised pictures. Acutely surprising it as it seems, (more to me than most of us) a hungry group of friends wait patiently till the most annoying yet footage-hungry friend clicks the pic of the overly delicious waiting-to-be-eaten dish and posts it on Facebook. (Oh! I almost forgot, he/she would have already ‘checked in’ and announced the fact of entering the restaurant to the unsuspecting world out there quite in advance.) Similarly a normal looking trip starts and ultimately ends with the one of the most avid of photographer friends clicking a DP or a profile pic for you!!! This unquenchable desire to hog the walls and covers of every social networking app available in the store is a bit far-fetched.
A slight serious aspect to this entire fabled photography era is the art of clicking photos with one’s own camera/phone, that too while featuring in it. Yes I am talking about the notion of selfie. I call it a notion simply due to the fact that, although necessity is the mother of invention, convenience is the ‘girlfriend’ and nothing gives more comfort than the idea of gratifying one’s own being even without anyone being there to help!! Taking a selfie with a group is even acceptable to some extent (notwithstanding the fact that a true photographer is seldom seen in his collection), but posting ‘random pics’ of oneself under the same heading, might be a little extravagant.
People these days are known to change their DPs, profile pictures and other images almost thrice or four times in a single week. And no biases enter here, Girls and boys (and women and men) continue to have a burning desire of self portrayal with various captions and faces and backgrounds to go with. We (I again stress on we), are increasingly getting so deeply affected by the likes and views that our profiles get, that we go on doing so till we get the desired number( which is often very pretty close to infinity.)
At this point, let me tell you about – a Greek Mythical character called Narcissus who was known for his beauty. Yes! Being a man, he was known for his beautiful physique. On the banks of a river, once, he accidentally saw his own reflection in the clear water. He was so enchanted by the sheer elegance of what he saw that he instantly fell in love with his own reflection. Unable to attain the object of his desire he died at the same place – Later he was transformed into a flower which still grows around river banks……
Now let’s head to a more serious part of this write up – Researchers are led to believe that this self-centered attitude of our techno savvy gen-next is leading them to a medical terminology called Narcissism. Yes you read it perfectly right! The dictionary entry for it goes as – ‘excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance.’ This ‘disorder’ is said to have symptoms of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others. True that this won’t occur very freely, yet minor symptoms of this syndrome that we get to see among and around us, cannot be ignored. People are known to have losing their minds and sleep over the number of likes and views they get. They are known to grow apprehensive if they are unable to find a perfect background or a motif for creating a DP of their own. The word selfie is known to affect so huge a crowd, that it gave sleepless nights to compilers of dictionaries around the world unless the word was quickly added to the list.
I am not against people clicking selfies of their own. But my simple point here is that there should be some point upto which the craziness affects us. How engrossed are you in your own self that you simply can’t resist the temptation to click a random pic of your own and then post it somewhere? How crazy is this desire in you to show this façade of your being to the waiting world? (Is it actually waiting?)Those days are long past when you at least required a friend to capture your image.We are done with that now. The world is surely going to be lonely place one day. And those not into this selfie fever are the ones who will really survive that day!! We have come to thinking of ‘I me and myself’ over the last couple of years (Yes! just a couple of years.)
Another bother about this never ending spree of our generation these days is the amount of pics we produce and reproduce (yes we have this uncanny ability to edit the pics too….!) that we literally crowd storage devices – Pictures have gone past music in storage space – From Smart phone storages to computer hard disks to portable hard disks to cloud storage – Many of you might be unaware but, cloud storage too comes with huge costs….But alas today’s crowd!!! We don’t think much about sustainability, do we? Half the readers would already have closed this winding post long back, and some might just do it in a couple of moments considering the series of accusations I am levelling…..
Please consider once the next time you think of taking a selfie out of nowhere! Nothing much happens if you don’t click this one picture. No castle except that of your self-centredness will fall if you don’t change your DP in less than 3 days!!!! Yes people might wonder for few days whether you suddenly met your match somewhere. But yes! That too will be forgotten in 2-3 days (Trust me people don’t have time these days, even a Facebook ‘like’ is more of an acknowledgment than a serious and heartfelt ‘like’); unless of course you are willing to die like poor old Narcissus, by the river – gazing at your own reflection…….
I can only write and point out some facts though, curing the quorum, of habits so acute might need a larger impact. Even as I keep jabbering away at my smartphone writing this blog, my younger cousin sister has just come out of nowhere demanding that I click a pic of hers for her WhatsApp DP! I oblige – after all the only thing I need to do is push the camera button and that too – Self’less’ly…….
The Rivulet of Thoughts 