The Selfie is the Root of All Evil
Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. - Walt Whitman -
In terms of the selfie, I believe, as it relates to the Whitman quote, people mentally replace the sun with their smartphone camera. The shadows symbolize people who are not with you. It's disturbing when you think of it that way.
Maybe it's a little overblown to call the selfie the root of all evil. However, think about the purpose of a selfie. Are you taking the picture of yourself for yourself? No, you're not. You take the picture of yourself to share and show others for what reason? To show them where you are and they are not. To show them how good you think you look. To show them the people you're with that they are not with.
It's this superficial showing off that creates an undercurrent of you versus others. The purpose of the selfie is to look at me, I am looking good! Look at who I am with, we are having so much fun! Look at where I am, isn't this place wonderful! Look at how happy I am, I've never been this happy before! The subtext of each and every selfie is me, me, me ... over and over and over again.
I say the selfie is the root of all evil because it is entirely self-centered combined with being superficial. The net-net is to make yourself feel good and make other people feel bad and excluded. There is no substance in a selfie. It's a point in time, point and click moment. That's the selfie in a nutshell.
Now we are starting an anti-selfie movement with BabbleStash. The linchpin of the movement is the replacement of the photo of you with the voice of you. With your voice and your recordings, we are creating an intimate network of family and close friends sharing thoughts, feelings, and memories. Photos are not allowed. Selfies are not allowed. BabbleStash is entirely audio and text-based. Zero images. Nada. Zip!
People who use BabbleStash find it uniquely liberating to be freed from the vicious cycle of the selfie culture and join the connection culture of creating true connections with others by sharing feelings, thoughts, fears, desires, memories, and goals.
BabbleStash is a critically acclaimed iPhone app that captures the essence of people and lets them share it. Selfies, Snapchats, only express the visual moment; but not what people are truly thinking or feeling. BabbleStash uses scientifically tested questions to elicit feelings, memories, ideas, goals, and dreams and easily records the responses to either be kept secret or shared.