Hello everyone, today I will be discussing the way in which selfies serve as an appropriate form of autobiography within our current technological context. Autobiographies can be defined as life narratives written about oneself, however they can take various forms. Traditional forms of autobiographies (e.g. books) are told retrospectively and in chronological order by people who have led noteworthy or extraordinary lives. In this way, the selfie genre is able to transform and broaden our definition of autobiography as it encourages the general population to take part.
Social media has been extremely influential in regards to the way in which we document our lives. The evolution of social media has moved away from text based platforms seen through Facebook and Twitter to photography based platforms seen through Instagram and Snapchat. It has encouraged people to share their day to day experiences with their friends, family, acquaintances and the public, in real time. In this way, selfies may be deemed the most accurate form of memorialisation as they are recorded as they are happening rather than being recounted. In addition, the selfie is able to place the autobiographer within the story rather than seeing it directly from their perspective, potentially making it less subjective. Both selfies and traditional forms of autobiography are selective and strategic in what they choose to document, as they are attempting to be as interesting and unique as possible. For this reason the author leaves out the generic events that make up the majority of their ‘real lives.’
On the other hand, selfies don’t comply entirely with the typical and potentially necessary elements of an autobiography. Due to the pressures that surround social media, people often partake in or even stage activities for the sole purpose of posting a selfie on Instagram. The common phrase “do it for the gram,” (recognised by Urban Dictionary) highlights the commonality of this. The stigma attached to this approach to social media is discussed in Kate Douglas’ article as she explains the common belief that selfies are “motivated by vanity, narcissism and fakery or from insecurity and conformity” (Douglas 2). In this way, selfies deviate from the traditional template of autobiographies as people are doing things for the purpose of documenting them, rather than documenting something that happened organically.
In conclusion, I think that selfies can be considered a form of autobiography, as they provide documentation of where you were, what you did and when you did it. Although selfies don’t include the ‘full picture’ of one’s life, I think that that trait is uniform to all autobiographies and therefore cannot be used to denounce its individual validity. That being said, I do believe that selfies are a less authentic form of documentation because of the social pressures that influence them.
Work Cited:
Douglas , Kate. “Youth, Trauma and Memorialisation: The Selfie as Witnessing.” Memory Studies , 2017, pp. 2–15.
Do+It+for+the+Gram.” Urban Dictionary, 12 Oct. 2013, www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do%2Bit%2Bfor%2Bthe%2Bgram.
