Selfie consumerism in a narcissistic age

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the recent debate about the selfie – or spontaneous self-portraits taken with smart phones or other consumer-based devices – in terms of its connection to narcissism. Selfies have become ubiquitous visual forms of self-expression in the twenty-first century and proliferate on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Popular discourses have largely characterized the selfie as a symptom of a narcissistic society. Journalistic responses have been derisive, but little attention has been given to the visual culture accompanying popular writing on the subject. Often presented as mere stock images, the visual dimension of the selfie debate has produced an ideologically skewed and largely pejorative representational schema with troublingly gendered connotations. Through an engagement with the ever-evolving discourse on narcissism, this paper explores inconsistencies in journalistic, clinical, and ideological understandings of this apparent personality disorder – as they relate to our cultural understanding of the selfie.

KEYWORDS:

• Selfie
• narcissism
• photography
• social media
• consumption
• confidence gap
• self-portrait
• gender

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jonathan Schroeder for his support of this research, as well as Soraya Murray for her critical feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Derek Conrad Murray is an interdisciplinary theorist specializing in the history, theory and criticism of contemporary art and visual culture. He works in contemporary aesthetic and cultural theory with a particular attention to technocultural engagements with identity and representation. He is currently Associate Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.