#Selfie Lover? This is for you

#Selfie Lover? This is for you

 April 2, 2014      Patricia Ferreria

On January 27th 2011 the infamous #selfie was born and brought to centre stage in the social media spotlight. Just over three years later, there are over 75 million Instagram photos that have tagged selfie as part of their caption. Oxford dictionary has made “selfie” its 2013 word of the year after it was officially added to the dictionary in August.

Unfortunately, not all of this attention has been good for the famous hashtag. Selfies, we love them, some people hate them, but if you hate selfies, why do you hate them so much?  Is it because the people who are taking them are vain? Sure it is. Or maybe you’re jealous of their confidence and your lack of it. For some people it is a narcissistic way of showing yourself off to the world and some complain about the obnoxious duck faces that most girls make when taking a selfie (I, myself am not a fan of the duck face). #Selfie

The truth is people actually “like” selfies. Contrary to popular belief, people that are following you want to see you on social media. Social media becomes interesting when we insert ourselves in it, and it makes your content more interesting, In the ever expanding digital space, human faces are mini breaks that we get from being constantly bombarded with links, text, and graphics. It’s something real and raw (most of the time) and it reinforces the “social” in social media.

Selfies are also a great way to exercise your self-esteem and confidence, because when you think you’re looking good you want everyone else to think so too.

James Franco (also known as my future husband) says that he is actually turned off when he looks at accounts without any selfies, because he wants to know whom he’s dealing with. He states “ In our age of social networking, the selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, ‘Hello, this is me’.” So all you ladies out there make sure you get your beautiful faces out there because Franco is watching!

Patricia Ferreira, Raven5 Ltd, Oakville, Ontario April 2014.

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