What have you learned about academic culture or writing that has been surprising? What have you found inspiring or challenging about your introduction into this new culture and its attendant “genre”?

Academic readings are stereotypically  considered to be long essays written about a research or a sensitive topic. This being said an essay written by Douglas Kate named “Youth, Trauma and Memorialisation: The Selfie as Witnessing.” challenges the norms, this essay touches on the topic of a viral trend on social media; selfies. Selfies are a new phenomena that have become a crucial part of the new social media culture in recent years. Typically, “Selfies commonly describe the act of taking a selfie as motivated by vanity, narcissism and fakery or from insecurity and conformity (Gabriel, 2014: 104)”, but selfies have taken another step and have arisen the following questions: Is it ever inappropriate to take a selfie ? and if so, how far can we go for a selfie ?

In her academic essay, Douglas Kate touches on the topic of the recent selfie phenomenon that is the one of taking selfies at places of memorial; she describes this as the “dark” selfie. A surprising example that is used is the “Auschwitz selfie”, the controversial and infamous concentration camp that hosted some of the world’s worst atrocities is now a prop for a picture.

Although Douglas Kate doesn’t condone this selfie culture she does understand it and normalises the selfie. I was personally surprised that an academic would write a research paper on a trend and could have such a surprising outcome off the situation. The trend is still a fairly new one and it is therefore very interesting to be aware of the reasons behind the selfie culture and gives the reader new perspectives on the current situation.