#Selfie. Hashtag. Selfie. Even typing the word makes me want to projectile vomit all over my computer screen. Selfie. It makes me positively shudder. Worse still - #ShamelessSelfie. When did our society become so self-orientated? I’ll tell you when - when social networking shat all over us, that’s when. I defy anyone to check their Newsfeed now and not find a #selfie posted by one of their 876 friends within the last 24 hours - 24 minutes even - most likely in their toilet, pouting at a ridiculous angle with the bog-roll dangling in the background…WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT YOUR TOILET AND DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE, YOU TWAT! And if you are one of the culprits hitting the ‘like’ button and encouraging such behaviour then WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP HITTING THE ‘LIKE‘ BUTTON AND DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE, YOU TWAT! Seriously, what are you doing? What are WE doing? When did it become ok to repeatedly take photo’s of ourselves and whore them across social networking sites? And often on a daily basis! Have we seriously got nothing better to do? Have we become so insecure in ourselves that we need other people to reassure us that our face looks ok today? Here’s the thing - it looks the same as it did yesterday and the day before that and the day before that - it hasn't changed, your face HASN'T changed, so please, stop clogging up my Newsfeed with intense close-ups of your pores and go do something productive with your life. Incidentally, who actually has 876 friends? Who are half these people? Who are 860 of these people?!
Newsfeed. Pah! ‘Newsfeed’ can we rename it ‘Bollocksfeed’? I don’t care what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I don’t care how many miles you ran on your “cheeky morning jog” (why was it ’cheeky’? were your balls out?) I don’t care how shit-faced you are or how hungover you’re going to be tomorrow and I certainly don’t care what exciting news you have but can’t yet announce (yes, Actors, I’m talking to you). How about we stop posting childish, cryptic statuses and actually confront the problems and people in our life head-on? “Can’t believe a certain someone could be so vindictive”…here’s an idea: get off your computer, phone the vindictive prick and have an adult conversation with them. Makes a lot more sense than playing silly games with yourself and writing childish bullshit they’ll probably never read because you've ‘de-friended’ them anyway, doesn't it? The only cage you’re rattling is mine and I don’t even know who you are! In-fact have we even met before? Why are we ‘friends’ on Facebook? Who wanted to stalk who? Why are we all stalking each other? WHAT IS GOING ON? WHAT PARALLEL UNIVERSE HAVE WE ENTERED? Speaking of ‘de-friending’…“I can’t believe Adam de-friended me” Oh lord above, the end of the world is most certainly nigh then, isn’t it? Adam probably de-friended you because you haven’t spoken in twelve years, you've never actually met OR you’re the culprit clogging up his Newsfeed with bloody #Selfie’s! Tell me, what is so scary about confronting the people or problems that are upsetting us face to face? If anything these social networking sites have just made it easier for us emotionally crippled Brits to avoid confrontation further by never having to actually talk to a real human being in the flesh. Facebook and Twitter have made it so easy to avoid human contact altogether that we can actually maintain relationships on an entirely virtual basis…now there’s a scary thought.
I watch kids today on the tube (not in a perv way) and often see them absolutely engrossed in the newest iPhone or iPad. It scares me. Three year olds can type…I repeat, THREE. YEAR. OLDS. CAN. TYPE. I’d barely figured out which body part to put my knickers on at that age never mind work a technical devise to any sort of standard. It took at least another two years before I could even tie my shoelaces competently! The point here is not my three year old self’s inability to operate ones garments but rather our newest generations over-exposure to this self-obsessed bullshit. In 2011 the BBC reported that in the UK, 43% of 9 to 12-year-olds, along with 88% of 13 to 16-year-olds maintained a social networking profile. The research, carried out by the London School of Economics for the European Commission, based this on a survey of 25,000 young people - aged between nine and 16 - from across Europe. Children as young as nine are logging onto social networking sites. NINE. Why aren't they in the garden building a fort? What happened to childhood? Suddenly children are thrown into this pit of insecurity called Facebook and left to fend for themselves. How do we protect children and ourselves from the insanity that is social networking? We live in a day and age where people consider it ‘strange’ to not have an online profile…why is it ‘strange’? You don’t find it ‘strange’ at all that someone you know doesn't have an online profile - you find it frustrating - because you can’t stalk them. Oh dear, better start forming a relationship the old-fashioned way via face to face contact then, hadn't you?
This year, German researchers, led by Dr. Hanna Krasnova, conducted two studies with 600 Facebook users. The results demonstrated that Facebook can stir up intense envy and can also negatively impact life satisfaction, particularly for passive users. It was said that people who communicate relatively infrequently but read the posts of friends and click through their pictures tend to be less satisfied with their own life, according to the researchers. They asked their subjects to cite possible reasons for this – why using Facebook could awaken a sense of frustration. The result? Envy.
"Envy" was the answer in nearly 30% of cases, followed by 20% of those who deplored “lack of feedback” to their posts by other users. In 36% of cases, subjects said they “sometimes to very often” felt frustrated by Facebook. Most envied were the vacations or leisure activities of others, followed by social interactions such as seeing a friend receiving more virtual happy birthday wishes than one had received for one’s own birthday. This is different than face-to-face relations, where envy is fuelled by the success, talent and possessions of others. Frustration at a friend receiving more birthday wishes than oneself. First world problems, huh?
On social networks everybody aims to come across at their very best, often embellishing their profiles. According to researchers, Facebook “friends” become a reference group against which one starts to compare one’s own popularity and success – and this easily leads to glorifying others and putting them above oneself, i.e. the perfect recipe for feelings of envy. Researchers coined the phrase “envy spiral” to describe this phenomenon.
"Envy can proliferate on social networks and become even more intense in the case of passive users," the researchers write. "Considering the fact that Facebook use is a worldwide phenomenon and envy is a universal feeling, a lot of people are subject to these painful consequences," said the study. Social Networking is, essentially, a platform for us all to boast upon. A platform where we can shout “Hey guys, look how totally awesome my life is right now, look at all the cool shit I've been doing!” Why can’t we just enjoy the cool shit instead of documenting it to the world like the 6 o’clock news?
Something that truly dumbfounds me is why people take the time out of their day to post statuses such as “absolutely loving life right now”- who are you telling this to? Yourself? Do you need other people to validate your happiness? Everything ever posted on social networking is done so to rally some sort of response. Don’t get me wrong, often my friends post articles that have me howling with laughter, or just howling in general…and these are the posts that I enjoy reading. However, thanks to #Selfie, I rarely, if ever, scroll through my Newsfeed to find these little gems in fear of punching myself in the face out of sheer rage. Facebook affects me, of course it does, otherwise I wouldn't be sat here typing this rant. I have been the one to post a #Selfie (oh yes), to post a status aimed at getting a response, to feel envious that my life seemed way less interesting than everyone else’s but through years of trawling through my Newsfeed it hit me - I don’t have to look. I don’t have to taste the Sugar-coat on people’s lives because I choose not to. I choose to meet my friends face to face, drink copious amounts of caffeine and set the world to right the ‘old fashioned’ way. If the crowd’s going South, go East! (unless you need to go South, in which case, go South) but, get off Facebook, enjoy your life and God forbid get out your fucking toilet and stop taking #Selfie’s!
