The Ellen DeGeneres selfie at the Oscars last year went totally viral: some 37 million people viewed it worldwide. When Obama took a selfie along with David Cameron and the very pretty Helle Thorning at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, the social media sites went wild again. Back home, more recently, there was Ranveer Singh, Instagramming from the operation theatre moments before the anaesthesia overpowered him for his surgery. There’s even a Tamil song, ‘Let’s take a selfie’, that became a rage last year.
I think my tipping point was a few weeks back, when I was at a friend's baby shower. Everyone was so busy taking selfies that not only didn’t they have time to enjoy the games that were organised, but the poor woman, whose baby shower it was, was hardly part of most of the pictures. The Whatsapp group that we were a part of had over 250 pictures by the end of the evening. It seemed like they had taken a selfie every minute. I told the selflie queens of the evening that I was going to rant about it. I think they didn’t take me quite seriously. One of them went on to tell me that she was in the court recently for a hearing and almost went up to the judge to pose with him for a selfie. A part of me swore that I would not take a selfie ever again.
What’s wrong in taking a selfie? Nothing at all, if you ask me. I can be a selfie queen too. But there’s a fine line between enjoying the moment and making a fool of yourself. And a selfie-a-minute is definitely a no-no. I suddenly imagine a wedding ceremony where the bride tells the priest to linger on the rituals so that selfies can be taken. I am sure there have been such cases, though I haven’t been invited to such a wedding yet. The selfie has been in vogue for a while now. The first selfie was taken way back in 1914 by the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna when she was barely 13 years old. The word ‘selfie’ itself came to be used much later, around 2002, on an Australian internet forum. We've all been taking selfies for a while now, turning the camera around and posing, hoping that everyone would fit into the frame. Then came the phone that allowed us to look into that tiny convex ball next to the camera lens and be rest assured that all of us were in the picture. And now we have the smartphone and even the selfie stick.
Sometimes I wonder if the selfie has outsmarted us, making us slaves — vain slaves. Are we looking for constant endorsements of every moment that we live? We are too busy trying to capture the moment rather than living it?
An adventurous friend of mine was out partying last night and this morning my phone had a dozen selfies of her and her friends. All pretty girls — and all of them with duck faces. What a waste of pretty faces, I thought. My lovely girls, please smile for a selfie. No duck faces please — that’s rule number one.
Rule no. 2: Never take a selfie at a time of bereavement. Spare a thought for the grieving family.
Rule no. 3: Never take a selfie while driving: it could only cause an accident. You would rather stop by the side of the road before turning the camera on you.
Rule no. 4: Never take a compromising selfie just to show off or prove a point. It will definitely come back to haunt you at a later date.
Click away — but carefully.
(A weekly column in which Sulakshana Badani will answer your queries related to etiquette. Write to her at staystylish24x7 @gmail.com)
