
Selfie: new book explores how we became so self-obsessed - prostoalex
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/19/17518086/selfie-will-storr-book-psychology-west
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corv
> America has a narcissism problem.

It's not just America

> If you want to be happy and find fulfillment, don’t try to be Beyoncé or
> Elon Musk; instead, find the thing you’re good at and become even better at
> it, and try to help the people around you as much as possible. It’s really
> that simple.

This really is the key takeaway of an excellent infomercial.

~~~
camillomiller
> It's not just America

America is not even the worst offender. Check out China and SE Asia. Only
places in the world where it's completely normal to center the marketing of
every single phone around how good it is at taking selfies. China is single-
handedly responsible for the introduction of the beautify non-sense in
smartphone cameras.

~~~
simplicio
Yea, I don't particularly have anything for or against selfies, but its kind
of bizarre to look around nightspots in Vietnam and notice literally every
other person taking selfies. Far more than in similar places in the States.

Though to be fair "X is true in the US" isn't really saying it isn't true
elsewhere. Just that the writer is familiar with the US, and isn't making a
statement one way or another about places they aren't familiar with.

(Though in anycase, the article isn't really about selfies, despite the title)

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JudasGoat
As an older person that has never really forgiven the commercialization of the
Internet, I remember thinking sarcasticly when Facebook was becoming popular,
"What a great idea, lets grow everyone's egos supersize and see what happens."

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devmunchies
As a married man with 4 sisters (and I just asked my wife and she agrees) it’s
my experience that women, on the whole, take an order of magnitude more
selfies than men. I don’t think it would be uncommonn to look on a phone and
see that there will be hundreds of photos in front of a mirror. That doesn’t
mean that a whole lot of men aren’t taking selfies.

~~~
extralego
And does that mean women are more self-obsessed? No. Definitely not. This
article is BS.

~~~
culot
It's probably safe to say that females are culturally programmed to spend more
time on their looks, to be spend more time looking at themselves. That indeed
would fit with being more self-obsessed.

It's just the cultural prerogative, though, that a woman gleam every non-scalp
hair from their body, masterfully paint her face at least once a day, to
basically perform all the maintenance necessary to widen the sexual
differences between male and female.

Largely done to fit into what a woman is supposed to look like -- color
outside those lines and society will scorn, no doubt! Also, of course, to
cater to male gaze. A woman who doesn't spend all that effort on herself is
not even really a woman, they'd hear. Odd how femininity is tied to cultural
practices of beauty in most peoples' minds.

So, yeah, it's safe to say women are more self-obsessed, and it's safe to say
that the pressure to remain that way must be intense.

~~~
qubax
> It's probably safe to say that females are culturally programmed to spend
> more time on their looks, to be spend more time looking at themselves.

Or naturally programmed.

> Also, of course, to cater to male gaze.

So naturally programmed? Also, women "paint their face" not just for the male
gaze but also to establish their place within the female hierarchy. Generally,
the prettier and healthier females tend to have higher status within the
female hierarchy.

> So, yeah, it's safe to say women are more self-obsessed, and it's safe to
> say that the pressure to remain that way must be intense.

Just as men are pressured into earning money, being strong and maintaining
status. Or is it natural internal pressure rather than societal pressure?

Is it society that's pressuring women or is it that women naturally gravitate
towards it? Not sure where you live but in the US, society and media are
pressuring women not towards femininity but masculinity. I just saw an army ad
and there was a lot of female representation in it when females make up a tiny
portion of the army. Even in the army, where you don't wear much makeup, I bet
women take more selfies and share them.

Could it be that females in general are just more naturally programmed into
sharing and communicating with people?

~~~
filleduchaos
What is this female hierarchy you speak of? No-one has inducted me into it
yet, but you seem to know what you're talking about so maybe you can point me
in the right direction.

~~~
devmunchies
You never heard of social hierarchies? It’s definitely a thing. It’s abstract.

~~~
filleduchaos
Oh, you can tell me more about them then! I'm just curious because in my
admittedly short experience as an adult I haven't yet encountered this
hierarchy of pretty/healthy females and certainly haven't established my place
in it via makeup or lack thereof.

~~~
abricot
They prefer to be called women. This is an important detail if you want to
know more of them.

~~~
filleduchaos
Is that so? I certainly would have thought that "pretty and healthy females"
is a perfectly normal phrase that often comes up in women's
conversations/thoughts if you hadn't informed me otherwise. Thank you!

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CM30
Is it purely cultural? Or is it possible that the actual number of narcissists
has gone up in recent years? Controversial I know, but perhaps narcissists are
simply more likely to succeed in modern society, and whatever genetic factors
affect that are being passed down more.

Still, there's definitely a cultural aspect to it, and that's definitely
increased worldwide in recent years. Social media sites and the modern
internet as a whole definitely rewards being egotistical and those who succeed
there are often those who are better at marketing themselves in general.

Heck, perhaps there's even an economic reason for it. With the job market
going the way it is and things like AI getting more powerful, the route to
success for many people now seems to be 'build a brand around yourself and
market the hell out of it'. Eventually it may be difficult to get employed in
general if you don't already have a brand and an existing audience.

~~~
yks
Yes, I, for instance, don’t care about photos of myself and now can’t even
assemble an attractive (and recent) Tinder profile, definitely not likely to
succeed in the current market!

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jnsaff2
My friend also did some serious science and wrote a book on selfies:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selfies-Love-Hate-Them-
SocietyNow/d...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selfies-Love-Hate-Them-
SocietyNow/dp/1787437175)

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jacquesm
The selfie stick is the stem from which a narcissist blooms.

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jevgeni
So the article deliberately confuses "self-obsessed" with "individualist
culture".

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extralego
Nonsense. Americans thing America is the center of the world because that’s
what they were taught. The Great Generation was proud of what they
accomplished, the baby-boomers interpreted it in a superficial and media-
induced context, and we’re now trying to make sense of it all. But these numb
interpretations are not helping. Capitalism is the ultimate driver at this
point because it incentivizes an avoidance of critique.

~~~
vixen99
Ultimate driver? How does that work? When there's a choice, people part with
their money for a product or service following a personal value judgement (a
critique, if you prefer) and act accordingly. Offer a dud product or service
and see how that goes down! The incentive then becomes that of giving up or
meeting the customer's needs.

~~~
posting2fast
> Ultimate driver? How does that work?

By a 1000$ being 1000$ to many people regardless of how the person offering it
came by it, money destroys information that way. Because many decisions are
excused as making "business sense", as opposed to making sense.

> Offer a dud product or service and see how that goes down!

Usually, a dud is something that's not successful, not something that sucks.
Because financial success _determines_ the quality of something for many. If
people want to drink Coca-Cola because they made a judgement to be influenced
by short erotic films, then that's that, and Coca-Cola is objectively the best
subjective choice for most people.

> The incentive then becomes that of giving up or meeting the customer's
> needs.

Yeah, because if you don't like Apple, you can use Microsoft, and that keeps
both of them just so in line. Because we don't constantly jump through new
hoops designed to game our attention and empty our wallets just a bit more by
all sorts of companies. Computing, gaming, entertainment, it's all working out
really well and just keeps getting better. Remember how YouTube made it easier
to find and filter the content of channels you subscribed to, how they just
flat out stopped fucking around with video makers and their viewers? Remember
how Facebook stopped second-guessing what their users want to see because of
that whole backlash about manipulating them? That emperor is rocking some
mighty fine threads, pity the fools that can't see them.

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Hasknewbie
On a side note: if you're in the EU, have you checked Vox News' GDPR
notification? If you click 'No' it brings you to a choose-your-own-adventure
style 'info' page where, once you reach the 'correct' section, it points you
to a 3rd party Web site telling you how to manually search for and delete
cookies from your browser (that Vox page also show they will share your info
with basically everyone and their mom). For Vox News, the opt-out is no opt-
out. What a bunch of douchebags.

~~~
SamUK96
I'm thinking of how the particularly douchebag-y programmer titled their git
commit for that feature. When coding this kind of crap, shouldn't people
realise what they're doing?

~~~
machiavelli1024
The commit message was probably “Implement GDPR compliance”.

You’d be surprised how oblivious layprogrammers are to the privacy
implications of their work. They slurp up the kool-aid from management about
“learning from data” and merrily implement whatever they’re told to.

~~~
ljm
You can't put it all down to kissing the boss' ass or them being
inexperienced. There are plenty of well meaning and talented developers out
there pushing code out as if it were on a production line, because they
weren't paid for their insight. They don't have the agency to push back. There
are plenty of other devs who couldn't care less as long as their salary comes
in at the end of the month.

And there are of course those who know exactly what they're doing and they're
doing the best they can given their constraints. Isn't it better to assume
everyone's doing their best here?

The thing is, you don't know either way so it's just projecting a bunch of
mean assumptions upon them. It says more about your perspective on your fellow
programmers than it does about the people who did GDPR this way, because your
feeling of this being a shit implementation has turned into a judgment on
those who did it.

