My extremely brief life as a Counter-selfie Activist

In Kyrgyzstan one seldom sees people taking selfies. One reason might be that Kyrgyzstan is tucked away in such a far corner of the Earth, that the armies of selfie takers have not yet located it on the map.  It could also be that those who visit Bishkek can find little that would warrant breaking out their selfie sticks for self-poses.  Or it could be that those who do come to Kyrgyzstan are busily engaged in action sports like Alpine mountain climbing or parasailing and simply don't have the time to sit still long enough to pose.  Whatever the reason, I had almost forgotten about Selfie-madness until I visited Istanbul and became re-exposed to hordes of Selfie-obsessed tourists.

The selfie is something I tolerate and don't really give much thought to, unless, as happened to me a couple of times in Istanbul, someone walks directly into me while taking a selfie, oblivious to my existence on the planet.

Perhaps it is my membership in a relatively older generation that keeps me from embracing the cult of Selfie-ness. When I was growing up, my peers and I avoided people who wanted to take pictures of us; our portraits were only taken at very special occasions like baptisms, first communions, state championship sporting competitions, graduations, and weddings. And we certainly didn't take self-portraits at our first communions or similar festivities, as we left that task of photography to kindly aunts or professionals hired to do this sort of work. In fact, in our minds, people who were obsessed with self-portraits, were tortured artists like Van Gogh. And look what happened to him, I mean what he did to his ear was just the beginning of his troubles.

I think there were other factors that kept Selfie-ing to a minimum back when I was in the prime Selfie-taking age of my life, the main one being the cost of technology. I used to teach photography...none of my students took Selfies with their 35mm film-devouring cameras.  Film cost money, lots of it.  And to develop your pictures...even taking the film to Walmart wasn't cheap. Only young Donald Trump, growing up in the lap of luxury could have afforded taking hundreds of selfies back in the day and, knowing him, I'm sure the heirloom photo albums in his bedroom closet are loaded with stacks of self-portraits. If you think about it though, only the advent of digitized photography made the Selfie possible.  Thank you, wonderful new technology.

The Walton Scholars I worked with always urged me to take selfies that I could transmit to them whenever I traveled, but I always resisted the urge: really, how much value does my disheveled, sweat-drenched image add to a photo of Hagia Sophia? This personal resistance occurred despite the fact that the King of Selfies, Little Viejo, was one of my students. I admire him tremendously...he's taken selfies to a whole new level. In fact, he's made an industry out of the selfie. His Little Viejo YouTube page has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and is filled with his self-created videos, many of which serve as the most marvelous and magnificent six-minute extended selfies; these videos complement his other selfie-filled social media sites--and from all of this Selfie-ness he has created a lucrative media empire and is a celebrity of some repute in Central America. Despite his personal urgings that I join the brigades of Selfie-ites, I have resisted, stubborn person that I am.

Today, though, not only didn't I become a Selfie-ite, it was the day when I began my life as a Counter-selfie Activist. It started on the boat trip along the Bosphorus, the stunning waterway of Istanbul that separates Europe and Asia, when one of the members of my group stepped on my foot as he took a selfie next to me as I sat, minding my own business, on my deck chair.  He didn't say "excuse me" or anything.  He then started to take more selfies, not even a meter from me, blocking my view of Istanbul.  I decided to retaliate by taking what I call a "Counter-selfie," which is a little less aggressive than a Photobomb.  A "Counter-selfie" is when you take a picture of the Selfie-taker in the act, and by doing that you are attempting to break the illusion of the Selfie-taker that he or she is the focus of the universe at that moment by publicly objectifying them and, in your counter-action, you are taking away the power of their selfie and colonizing that image they are creating for your own purposes. Yikes, has some blogger you know read (or misread?) too much Critical Theory in his life?

I don't think my Counter-selfie had any impact on "Standing-too-close-to-me-guy," because he continued to Selfie away while almost on top of me, still blocking my view.  But, I felt better that I had embraced my role as a newly-formed Counter-selfie Activist. 

I decided to Counter-selfie all the Selfie-ites on the deck of the ship.  Strangely enough, no one seemed to recognize that I was Counter-selfying them, or else they really didn't care.  I could simply walk up to them, a total stranger, and photograph them, while they were "Selfie-ing" and it didn't seem to matter to them.  I thought about taking a Selfie of myself in front of those taking Selfies in order to make a "Double-Selfie," but I felt that it would be against the purposes of being a Counter-selfie Activist and would somehow be legitimizing the act of Selfie-ing, which was something I really didn't feel like I should be doing in my new role.

After a few minutes, though, I realized that the only thing less personally satisfying to me than taking a selfie, was taking Counter-selfies. Interest in one's self is something even the most-humble of us can relate to at some level, but taking an interest in someone else's intense interest in their Self isn't interesting at all--if you could follow that sentence. So, I gave up and ended my life as a Counter-selfie Activist and simply walked to the lower deck and found a lovely secluded spot at the back of the ship where I could take pictures of the scenery, minus myself in the image, and without having any other Self nearby and, better yet, where I could just take in the wonderful, salty, marine air and, best of all, capture images with the most extraordinary camera that's ever been devised: the eye.

And so tonight, I sit in the Istanbul Airport, ready to head back to Kyrgyzstan, where the selfie seems to be in its proper perspective, my Counter-selfie Activist days (make that "day") having ended. No definite proof will exist that I have ever visited Istanbul, as I took no Selfies, but only useless Counter-selfies of strangers. Nevertheless, I think I enjoyed my trip as much as those people whom I Counter-selfied even though the part of self I retained from my travel experience didn't consist of Selfies, but instead was formed of intensely personal thoughts, perceptions, tastes, insights, and feelings that are intangible, yet somehow these intangibles represent a more-valuable and meaningful record of places visited, at least for me.

My first Counter-selfie, my attempt at cultural comment by appropriating the Selfies of others:  "Standing-too-close-to-me-guy" taking one of several dozens selfies.  A question that comes to mind: are the images being created a representation of this person's authentic self or is he struggling to construct an idealized "Selfie-self" that he is hoping to transmit to the world?

Imagine if you saw this picture and you didn't know he was taking a Selfie.  When you can't see the photographic device and you don't know the context of the picture, "Standing-too-close-to-me-guy" looks even more absurd.  Without knowledge of the context you could easily come to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with a person who stands less than a meter from a total stranger while holding this particular pose for several minutes.  Or what if I told you the man in the picture was standing in front of me for several minutes while holding a mirror.  Again, you might conclude that "Standing-too-close-to-me-guy" has a problem.  Yet, if you think about it, his phone is serving as a very fancy mirror that is recording his real image so that it can serve as a permanent record of himself that he can enjoy for years to come, but that can also be broadcast around the world, so perhaps our attitude toward "Standing-too-close-to-me-guy" should be the same as the attitude we would take toward someone standing next to us holding a mirror. 

I took this Counter-selfie after this gentleman elbowed, what appeared to be his girlfriend or wife, out of the picture because he wanted a "True Selfie," not a "Shared Selfie."  This Counter-selfie shows how the act of Selfie-ing can detract from our human impulse toward mutuality.  Actually, I hope the woman is his cousin, because if she is his wife, this doesn't bode well for her future happiness.

This is a Counter-selfie of the woman who was elbowed out of the previous picture.  She doesn't have the enthusiastic posture or expression of a real, genuine "Selfie-ite."  I just think she is going along with this Selfie business because it's what she's expected to do as her duty.  Hmm.  Unfortunately, I don't believe she is his cousin, the more I think about it.

Now, you can even take Selfies with just about any kind of electronic device as this woman demonstrates.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if toasters will soon have cameras installed in them so you can take an action Selfie while burning your English muffins.  Shhhhh.  Don't want to give anybody any brilliant ideas.

This Counter-selfie was taken with great caution as the woman pictured had just snarled at her traveling companion for bringing her the wrong beverage from the galley and I felt that my Counter-selfie activities might draw a similar response.  I don't think the Selfie-stick left her hands during the time period I was watching her.  I wonder if her obsession with her Selfie-ing contributed to the impersonal and unpleasant response she gave to her traveling companion, or if that behavior was simply typical of her general disposition.