2013: The year of the selfie

I live for the applause.

I live for that moment when I walk onto the stage, look into the blinding lights and then 500, 1,000, 2,000 people rise to their feet, screaming and cheering for me.

That’s why I perform.

That’s why I post selfies.

Oxford Dictionaries, one of the undisputed institutions of the English language, named “selfie” their 2013 word of the year.

A few weeks ago, I published a column entitled, “Anti-social media.” In the column, I described how social media serves two basic human needs: communication and validation.

On the communication-validation spectrum, selfies are literally entirely for validation.
Selfies are just the user walking up to the Instagram stage, and letting an audience of a few hundred followers applaud for them.

It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. Selfies are innocent, and their intentions are pure.

Most of us performers know the true intentions behind our performing — we love and crave the attention we get. That’s sort of fundamentally what performing is.

Selfies are the same way. As long as the selfie-taker knows that what they’re doing is self-centered and validation seeking, it’s not that big of a deal.

“Here’s a picture of my face. I spent a really long time making it perfect. Double-tap the image. Like it. Like me. Love me.”

Some will try to mask the fact that it’s just a picture of his or her face by adding some song lyrics as the caption that have absolutely nothing to do with their face or their lives.

It’s OK, though, because it’s all good fun.

For most people.

Some people take it too far. They don’t just enjoy the occasional validation from posting a selfie on Instagram and getting 50 likes on it.

They post one every other day. Every day. Multiple times a day. They seemingly can’t live without everyone liking their face all the time.

These are our times.

What does Oxford Dictionaries’ selection say about how we’ve progressed as a society?

“Selfie,” a cute-sounding, diminutive word representing egotism and narcissism in its purest form, is our word of the year.

Look, I’m almost always for the hedonistic, practical, modern route. But I think declaring “selfie” word of the year may be going too far.

The English language is something I hold so very dear.

I study journalism and theatre, two fields fundamentally based on fine-combing the English language and pulling the sweet nectar of its verbose goodness from the dregs of its barrels.

Selfies are fine. Selfies are great.

But “selfie” is not the word of the year.  

Maybe I’m just being naïve, but I refuse to believe that this silly, six-letter word that represents the online validation-seeking we’ve come to hold so dear is the word that defines this year.

Fire up Instagram. Take a selfie. Take a hundred selfies. I really don’t care.

But please keep your hands off my language. Don’t diminish it by naming “selfie” word of the year.

Oxford Dictionary, don’t define 2013 with the word “selfie.”

The most important moment of the show shouldn’t be the curtain call.

— ihajinaz@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Ike Hajinazarian on Twitter @_IkeHaji.