

The Selfies are Coming. The Selfies are Here (Part 2) - joshuanguyen
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/af5a7e59ed40

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teek
Me today: I don't get social networking. Me as a teenager: social interactions
on the internet--so cool and interesting.

My hypothesis: social networks create a _virtual_ world where we can construct
the identity we hoped to construct. However as these networks age, mistakes in
that identity come more often and suddenly that identity isn't so pristine.
You can extrapolate this to anything that is on the internet and social from a
simple forum to facebook.

Now recent attempts are "hey, let's just delete stuff and that will model
reality a bit better" but it doesn't. You've just changed the rules to an
alternate virtual world, not necessarily made the virtual _reality_.

My conclusion is therefore in order for you to experience life as _reality_
you should stop trying to rely on a virtual copy to emulate those same
experiences.

When my friends get on their phones and computers and are so intent and focus
on their digital identity, they can't experience what is real. The
conversation is boring. The conversation exists in a digital virtual world
that I'm not part of because I (now) refuse to export all of my time and
experiences to that virtual world.

I was lucky to learn these lessons as a child as the internet had just taken
off and I (being a teenager) took advantage of everything it had to offer from
online gaming to working internationally with others around the world. When
meeting in real life, however, things felt a bit strange. It was like two
strangers that were previously friends had finally had a real-world
interaction. The awkwardness now became how to do we reconcile are real-world-
selves with the virtual-selves we've known. The sad truth was that we couldn't
easily. The internet allowed us to only focus on what we found important and
ignore the rest of reality. I feel that more and more people are falling into
this trap and it will be a rude awakening for them when they are much older.

So is there a desire for such virtual worlds? Obviously yes. But the real
question we should be asking ourselves is should we continuously be trying to
feed that desire?

~~~
joshuanguyen
good points here.. one tangential and very undeveloped thought I had was w
selfie/expirations and how it fills in the gaps of real life activity. you
should go live in the 3d world and taking precious time away to brag about
things on FB et al is maybe not where we should be.. but as a quick gesture
for the in between times, maybe there are products for this moments of
nothingness.

------
jfarmer
This seems backwards. "Authenticity" and "identity" aren't monolithic. To
steal from Walt Whitman, we all contain multitudes.

What I express on IG is no more or less authentic than what I express here or
on Quora or at a quiet meal with friends. They all express a sometimes-
idealized aspect of myself. The goal is not a quest for "real identity." The
idea itself is incoherent.

~~~
joshuanguyen
this is true if you consider cases where sometimes your online interactions
seem more real or authentic than anything you do offline and identity comprise
both. I prob should bifurcate my idea that "real" here means where you spend
the majority of your life, for me i'd rather be offline, and it feels like
we're caught trying to one up each other talking about our offline lives on
these social networks that may not be the most accurate representation of what
really goes on. I guess I'm interested in the "multitudes" too, just see a
very edited version on FB, Instagram, etc (they serve their purposes)

~~~
jfarmer
Just some thoughts! Feel free to ignore. None of this is personal, just things
I've spent time thinking about in the context of building social software. I
could be entirely wrong or confused and unjustified in my opinions.

We edit ourselves "offline," too. The "self" we present to our co-workers is
different than the "self" we present to our family, friends, or lovers. Do you
think people "edit" themselves more or less on Facebook or Instagram than they
do when they're, say, at a job interview or on a first date?

And, sure, how we present ourselves online may not be the "most accurate
representation of what really goes on," but is this more or less editing than
you hiding your professional struggles from your closest friends because they
act and talk as if you're more successful than you really are? Consider, for
example, a husband and father who is close to losing his job. "Hey Sam, how's
work going?" "Hey honey, how was work today?" "Hey daddy, do you love your
job? Will you be the boss one day? I think you'd make a great boss."

And this isn't even to talk about the stories we tell ourselves about our own
lives. We delude ourselves in a million ways, big and small, every day. This
is normal and necessary.

I don't think it's about "more" or "less" editing, as if we decide what
percentage of ourselves to reveal to other people or as if there's some
indivisible, Platonic "identity" that I possess. It's more like an actor
putting on a show. It depends on the actor, the play, the stage, and the
audience. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in _X-Men_ is no more or less authentic
than Hugh Jackman as Curly in _Oklahoma!_. Maybe the part of him in Wolverine
isn't brought out anywhere else in his life, in which case there's a way in
which Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is both more _and_ less authentic than Hugh
Jackman as his everyday self (whatever that means).

I don't think it's that "we're caught trying to one up each other talking
about our offline lives on these social networks." We do that offline plenty.
What online social networks _do_ provide is a discrete and, until now,
unparalleled measure of control over how I express myself. I can invent a
whole new self on Instagram if I want and I can delete it when I'm done with
it. I can't do that with my friends, at least not without risking my
friendship or becoming known as "that guy who reinvents himself all the time."
This opens up whole new fields of expression and play.

For example, in your product your photos expire. Yes, this lowers the "cost to
my identity." One consequence of this might be that folks reveal more of their
"authentic self," whatever that means. Another consequence might be that they
ham it up in ways they'd consider inappropriate in a more permanent or serious
context. Another consequence might be that people turn it into a game where,
because you know every photo has an expiration date, you try to see how much
attention you can get in that timeframe. This will naturally lead to crazier,
more extreme, and more controversial forms of expression.

This isn't a product critique, BTW. I think what you're doing is interesting,
but I think you're fooling yourself if you believe that somehow folks will be
more "authentic" on your service, in part because I think the idea of the
"authentic self" is a bit of a fiction. If folks find that your service lets
them express part of themselves that they couldn't before or were afraid to
before, that's great! If you get a critical density of people doing that you
have a successful social network! But I think "authenticity" isn't the axis
along which those expressions will fall.

I actually think if you over-focus on "authenticity" you run the risk of
making bad product decisions. What happens if folks start using your service
to do things you consider inauthentic? Do you ban them? Do you try to curtail
the behavior through product design and other feedback mechanisms? If you do,
you run the risk of squashing the kinds of activity that can lead to a robust
network. Those unexpected expressions are exactly what a community or tribe
building a sense of identity look like, even if you disagree with that
conception of identity or consider it inauthentic.

~~~
joshuanguyen
Yeah, I think the "authentic" and "real" stuff is one direction that we
gravitated towards after seeing early usage; we purposefully made it really
simple with a few constraints to see how people would use it. We thought it
was going to be a side project, but so far the lessons have been unexpected
and fun. I don't know where the product exactly goes, and we're not going to
try to push it into any preconceived box, but there is something interesting
going on about how people see themselves and what they're willing to share.
For me, authenticity = diversity. And weirdly, there's a lot of diversity to
be found in just our faces! Appreciate the thoughts on this - I like thinking
about this stuff.

------
27percent
Tangential question: Dailybooth used to do pretty much what Selfie.im does
now, but failed and shut down a couple of years back - Do you think Dailybooth
would be more successful if they launched now?

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kposehn
Fascinating article. I like their perspective and that the app is getting some
traction. The whole notion of romanticism vs. realism is an interesting one.

------
nether
The world totally needs this.

~~~
mjolk
I agree, indulging narcissism is perhaps _the_ most important issue of our
day.

~~~
joshuanguyen
narcissism is getting love from people about your "awesome" life - it applies
to selfies too .. but I also think taking photos of yourself gives you control
over how you want the photo framed, the face you make, etc.. think control
might be a bigger factor?

------
colbyh
"you like that Miley Cyrus is twerking or you aspire to be a photographer"

Or I aspire to be Miley Cyrus's twerk photographer.

~~~
joshuanguyen
maybe there should be a network for twerking

~~~
christinasta415
twerkagram, or maybe instatwerk?

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danso
Why does the service impose a mandatory expiration date on selfies? There are
candid photos of me that I didn't like at the time but now (and some of this
is just plain old bei familiar with them) are amusing and valuable to me.

This is a cool side project and I hate to do a serious critique of it...but
since the OP decided to go the pithy Medium essay route, I'll take it he's
sincere about thinking these this through. Here's my critique: the world
doesn't need a constant stream of the ordinary. Ignoring the damage of
enviousness, many FB users suffer from just spending too much time being
interested in other people's lives...and that's just the highlights. What
mental appetite or capacity do we have to consume all the mundane moments too?

~~~
alariccole
This is discussed at length in the article. It was found that having an
expiration lets people worry less about getting the photo "right". Also, it's
not about having another place to waste time living vicariously. Quite the
opposite, as it's becoming a vibrant community where you can actually interact
in a surprising way.

That said, it is worth experimenting with the dates and/or ways of saving
certain images of yourself for posterity.

~~~
sp332
That's an argument for an optional timeout, but it doesn't explain having a
mandatory one.

~~~
vbl
Mandatory timeout means that even the best photos go away. No proliferation of
the beautiful and perfect, no buildup of the quick and dirty.

Every one dies.

