O

f all social media-related shenanigans, selfies to me are one thing that I cannot wrap my head around. I mean, what is the point of taking pictures of your mostly average-looking complexion and showing it to the world?

You should only get photos of your face taken at the immigration office, at your wedding or at the police station, when they take your mug shot, for obvious reasons.

Today, people take selfies apparently for no reason. If you are not old enough to have a social media account, chances are that you have seen one of them.

The formal definition of a selfie is a photograph that one takes of oneself, typically using a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media. The results are mostly typical, with the head tilted to one side and usually elongated, an effect of having your face too close to the camera.

But it appears that the last problem has been solved by some business-savvy types who invented a thing called a monopod, or more popularly known as a '€œselfie stick'€ (yes, there is such a thing).

With the discovery of the stick there has emerged a new trend for what is called a group selfie or groupie (which should not be mistaken with groupies), which takes meaninglessness to a whole new level. What is the point of taking selfies, let alone one that requires a monopod, when you can have one of the people in your group just step out and take that goddamn photo for you?

Yet, in spite of the pointlessness, everyone from state leaders to your babysitter at home loves taking selfies. US President Barack Obama probably spent a week sleeping alone in his bedroom after taking a selfie with Denmark'€™s prime minister during the memorial service for former South African leader Nelson Mandela.

And if you consider that to be a selfish selfie, now there'€™s the '€œselfless'€ selfie variant (I made this up), where you can take selfies and still contribute to fighting for a good cause like ending hunger in Africa or curing tropical diseases.

Earlier this year, the World Bank started a campaign calling for an end to poverty by the year 2030 by staging a selfie, in which World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other bigwigs took part.

But let me be clear about one thing. I have nothing against people taking pictures of themselves. Photography is one, if not the most potent, piece of proof of our existence and if I am to believe French semiotician Roland Barthes, taking pictures of ourselves, members of our families or perfect strangers on the street is in fact the most existentialist act that humans can do.

'€œWhat the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially,'€ he said in his book Camera Lucida.

Taking photos, like art in general, may not serve any evolutionary purpose, but it validates our presence here on earth (although the recent controversy over who should own the copyright of a selfie taken by a Sulawesi monkey got me thinking about our claims of superiority).

Selfies are not always pointless though. For centuries people have taken selfies. The first was taken in 1839 by a guy named Robert Cornelius from Philadelphia. And before the arrival of photography, Spanish painter Fransisco Goya drew a picture of himself in the late 1770s, while that legendary self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh with a bandaged ear was made in 1889. For all I know, the 40,000-year-old cave painting recently found in South Sulawesi could have been a prehistoric selfie.

But the point about Goya and Van Gogh brings me to my closing argument. It used to be that selfies only belonged to great artists. You had to be either disturbed or gifted enough to flaunt your face for the whole world to see.

Until recently, before the arrival of social media, we could only display pictures of ourselves, mostly in our living rooms, when we were in the same photo frame as a rock star, government official or anybody of good repute. Such photos were to boost our sense of worth and self-importance (or in the case of business-savvy Warung Tegal owners who proudly hang up photos taken with local military commanders, it could boost security around the neighborhood and drive up sales).

Today, thanks to social media, everybody thinks they are special and they want people to know they are special. But when 1 billion people, with little importance but to themselves and their small clique of friends and family, scream for attention with selfies, we are worse off as a result. So just lay off the annoying habit, lest we think you are not important enough to demand such constant attention.

'€“ Bambang Widodo