By Mordechai Schmutter
Today we’re discussing the prevalent opinion that selfies are signaling the decline of civilization. We’re going to use the simple Q&A format, because the decline has already started.
What are selfies? A selfie is a picture that you take of yourself, using a handheld device, of you holding that device and looking at it. Also, sometimes there’s stuff going on behind you.
Is this normal? Sure! In a world where people talk to themselves, why not take pictures of yourself?
People talk to themselves? Yeah. What do you think this article is?
Whoa. I just blew my mind. True, phones don’t take the best pictures, but at least people always have their phones on them. When I was growing up, if you wanted to take a picture—like if your kid was doing something cute—you almost never had your phone on you, because it was attached to your house. And if somehow you did have your phone, it probably wouldn’t have helped. You had to remember where your camera was, and then you had to put in film, and batteries, and by the time you were done, your kid was in high school.
What do we do with these pictures? I already know what I look like. You send them to your friends, who never see your face in real life because you’re always looking down at your device, and they’re like, “Who’s that?” Many selfies also feature your arm coming toward the corner of the screen, as if the photographer couldn’t wait to take the picture of you until you finished shaking his hand.
Why can’t other people take pictures of us? People take selfies because they can’t find anyone else to take pictures of them. In my day, if you were on vacation and you wanted a picture of yourself partially blocking whatever it is you were looking at it, you would hand someone a camera and then try your best to smile while praying that they had no interest in stealing the camera. Like these people hang out at landmarks all day, paying admission fees, hoping some nice family will hand them a huge camera they can steal. It was not the best system.
Yes, but that’s how we always took them. Also, your friends could never figure out how to use your camera. They always asked, “Which button do I press?”
“The big button. It’s right on top. How does your camera work?”
So, what’s the problem with selfies? First of all, we take way too may pictures altogether. Selfies are apparently for when someone wants to make a flipbook of their lives.
What about the old days? In the old days, people didn’t take 50 pictures of themselves at once, because they had to get film developed at the pharmacy 24 pictures at a time, and the pharmacist saw every single one of them. If you handed him an entire roll of you making duck faces, he’d probably hook you up with some pills for it.
Let’s put it this way: Everyone has hung up pictures of their beloved grandparents, and if you happen to glance at their walls, even by accident, they say things like, “This was the only picture my grandfather brought with him when he came to America.”
“Wow! How long ago did he come?”
“Oh, he was just here last week.”
But what are our grandchildren going to hang on their walls? Even you will never have a chance to go through all the pictures you’ve taken.
Yeah, but memories! Nobody looks at most digital pictures more than a couple of months after they take them. It’s never like, “Remember that thing that happened eight years ago?” It’s more like, “Remember what happened last week?” People can’t remember what happened last week without the picture. We’ve lost our ability to remember things. My nine-year-old son, Heshy, for example, has somehow lost the ability to remember to bring his homework home every night. So usually I call my sister, whose son is in my son’s class, and ask her to fax it over, and instead she takes a picture of her son’s paper and sends it to us. And it’s not even a good picture. She takes it at an angle, possibly from across the room while she’s making supper. She doesn’t have time for my kid’s meshugas. And then Heshy has to hand in his homework done on a crooked picture of his cousin’s homework. But imagine doing that 20 years ago. My sister would take a picture of the homework, and then we’d have to get it developed. And then we’d get a little glossy card two days later.
“Can I get this in an 8½ by 11?”
“You want to frame this? It’s a math page.”
“No, I want to use it as a math page.”
“Again?”
But my point is that, thanks to small electronic devices, I no longer remember where I was going with this.
Do you take selfies? Not really, except once, for an article I wrote on identity theft. I thought it would be important to have my picture in there so no one else would take credit for it, and my wife wasn’t home.
Currently, here’s what I have on my device:
• Blurry pictures of my kids
• Videos of the times I thought I was taking a picture but I actually took a video
• A screenshot of an autocorrect of me texting my wife, “Baton Schneider yasmin la’omer.” (Autocorrect for: “Ha’yom shnei yamim la’omer.”)
• Blurry pictures of students who came into my classroom in the middle of the period (so I can report them without knowing their names). All the kids in my class are trying to get out, and these kids are coming in.
• A picture of what size my pants are for when I go to the store, so I don’t have to open them up in the middle of a circular rack and peek.
• An advertisement on the side of a car for a repair business called “The Patch Man,” which I snapped a picture of so I could threaten my kids. (“If you don’t behave, I’m going to call The Patch Man!”)
Aren’t there any good uses for selfies? Yes:
1. To find out if things are stuck in your teeth
2. To check out the back of a haircut
And on the other side of the coin . . .
Selfies are an affront to nature. Take the AP article about a teen vacationing in Florida who saw a squirrel sitting on a handrail. Naturally, he walked up to it, leaned right down, and took a selfie with it.
So what happened? The squirrel got scared by the flash and went . . . um . . . nuts. It jumped onto the teen, climbed into his shirt, and hung onto his back.
“He was just in that spot where my arm couldn’t reach him,” the teen said later, after he stopped shrieking and flailing awkwardly.
OMG, LOL! Is he OK? Yes. Luckily, his mother was there too, and thanks to her quick thinking, she managed to snap pictures of her son flailing around, thus documenting the moments of his life that he could not. This is what mothers are for.
I heard about something called a “selfie stick.” What’s that? The “selfie stick,” or the “narcissis-stick,” is a big stick that you lug around in addition to your cell phone that lets you get a wider shot when taking a picture of yourself.
Why a stick? Everything’s better on a stick—meat, candy, ice cream, herring, brooms, Holofernes’ head, glue, deodorant, margarine, and anything that you have to hold under chocolate at a simcha. Also, Hashem apparently created our arms too short for good selfies. You want to take the picture from further away, and your arms aren’t long enough because you’re not Basya.
It seems weird to be walking around all day with a stick designed mainly so I can better take pictures of myself, doesn’t it? Well, it has other uses too:
• You can tap people with it to get them to take a picture of you.
• It makes it easier to pass your phone to other people without getting up.
• It’s great for seeing over crowds, like at your kid’s Siddur play, where the entire front row is parents holding up their phones, either to get a better angle of their kids or to get better reception.
• You can use it to fight off squirrels.
So it solves a lot of problems! Yes, but it’s creating new ones. Now people are ending up with half the selfie stick in their photo, and their grandchildren are going to wonder why they have 8,000 pictures of Zaidie smiling and pointing a stick at the photographer.
Would you say there’s hope for humanity? Probably not. So let’s at least take a few last pictures of ourselves while we’re still somewhat coherent.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of four books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.