{"id":69244,"date":"2016-12-26T12:57:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T17:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69244"},"modified":"2016-12-26T13:45:46","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T18:45:46","slug":"the-presentation-of-selfies-in-everyday-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/12\/26\/the-presentation-of-selfies-in-everyday-high-school\/","title":{"rendered":"The Presentation of Selfies in Everyday High School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-69627\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/07\/1.png\" alt=\"1\" width=\"603\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/07\/1.png 603w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/07\/1-500x135.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 603px) 100vw, 603px\" \/>Originally posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2016\/07\/the-presentation-of-selfies-in-everyday.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair Socioblog<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A girl takes a selfie, posts it to Instagram, and waits. She doesn\u2019t have to wait long \u2013 a minute or two &#8211; before the likes and comments start rolling in. \u201cGorgeous,\u201d \u201cSo pretty OMG,\u201d \u201cStunning,\u201d \u201cCutest.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 509px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/498491052\" target=\"_blank\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.601179% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/498491052?et=g5bdaWSYQf1v9qTRT0EECg&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=5CdVmmI4FnNREQ7SiJRiEC58qOW-zeiWy0Q47djhhu8=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"509\" height=\"339\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><br \/>\nYou can see why people might look at this and think: narcissism. You can see why they might think that new technologies \u2013 Instagram, cell phones (self-phones?) \u2013 have made kids today the most narcissistic generation in history.\u00a0 In an earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2016\/07\/an-epidemic-of-narcissism.html\" target=\"_blank\">post<\/a>, I expressed my skepticism about that claim. And, if we can generalize from an episode of This American Life last November, the selfie-Instagram-comments syndrome is not about narcissism \u2013 seeing yourself as standing shiningly above everyone else. It\u2019s about fitting in \u2013 reading the social map, finding where you stand, and maybe changing that place.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisamericanlife.org\/radio-archives\/episode\/573\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a> is a slightly edited-down excerpt of the first part of the show. As Ira Glass says, if you have teenage girls in your life, you\u2019re probably familiar with this. I don\u2019t and I\u2019m not, so I found it fascinating listening. (When the girls were reading their comments, I thought one of the girls, Jane, was saying \u201cHard eyes,\u201d and I couldn\u2019t imagine why that was a compliment. Turns out, she was saying \u201cHeart eyes.\u201d) Here&#8217;s\u00a0Ira Glass\u2019s distillation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They want comments from other girls. This is not about sex. It\u2019s not about boys. It\u2019s about girls, and friendship. And it\u2019s very repetitive \u2013 the same phrases, over and over.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/274567176&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"80%\" height=\"70\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>All these moves \u2013 the posting, the commenting and liking \u2013 have a meaning that girls know intuitively but that must be decoded for outsiders like me and Ira.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/274567313&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"80%\" height=\"70\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Transcript:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>Ira Glass<\/b>: These comments are a very specific language that tells the girls all kinds of things.\u00a0 And a lot of the meaning in the comments has nothing to do with the actual words. . .\u00a0 It\u2019s about who is doing the commenting . . .\u00a0 Liking a photo means something totally different from commenting. You comment with someone you\u2019re close to or someone you want to get close to.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ella: <\/b>It\u2019s definitely a social obligation, because you want to let them know, and also let people who are seeing those, that I have a close relationship with this person, so close that I can comment on their pictures, like, this is so cute, or, you look so great here.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:<\/b>\u00a0 Especially because we, like, just started high school, so we\u2019re meeting a lot of new people. So you would comment on someone\u2019s photo who you\u2019re not really super close with or that you don\u2019t know really well. And it\u2019s sort of a statement, like, I want to be friends with you, or I want to get to know you, or like, I think you&#8217;re cool.<\/p>\n<p>If someone that you don&#8217;t know very well commented on your photo, you \u2013 it\u2019s sort of like an unspoken agreement that you have to comment back on their photo. Like when you\u2019re making new friends, if they comment on your photo, you comment on their photo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to find narcissism or vanity in any of this. The girls are not preening, not basking in their triumphs, not nursing an ego wounded from some social slight. They are reading a constantly changing sociogram or network model of their world.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/274567369&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"80%\" height=\"70\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nTranscript:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>Ira Glass:\u00a0<\/b> They\u2019re only three months into high school, so there is a lot at stake right now.<\/p>\n<p><b>Julia:\u00a0<\/b> One of my, like, best friends posts a selfie. Maybe this isn&#8217;t, like, healthy. But I might go through the comments and see who she\u2019s, like, really good friends with, just \u2019cause we\u2019re in high school and there&#8217;\u2019s that sense of jealousy between everyone.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ira Glass:\u00a0 <\/b>Do you have people who you\u2019re jealous of?<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:<\/b> Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Julia:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah. I definitely would. I go through, like, the comments that people see&#8211; like that people say, and like, I see what other people have said to other people.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:\u00a0<\/b> Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Julia:\u00a0<\/b> Just to see, like, the whole&#8211; like, the whole social like map.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:\u00a0<\/b> Looking, mapping out your social world, seeing who&#8217;s with who, who&#8217;s hanging out with who, who is best friends with who.<\/p>\n<p><b>Julia:\u00a0<\/b> If you didn\u2019t have it, like, I feel like I\u2019d be missing so much. And it would just \u2013<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0 Because you wouldn\u2019t see what other people were saying. A lot goes on.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ira Glass:\u00a0<\/b> Well, no, that\u2019s, I feel like, the thing that I&#8217;m understanding from this conversation, is like \u2013 it\u2019s actually like, you\u2019re getting a picture of your entire social world and who\u2019s up and who\u2019s down and who&#8217;s close to who, and it\u2019s like you\u2019re getting a diagram of where everybody stands with everybody else.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ella<\/b>:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:\u00a0<\/b> Definitely. Definitely.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ira Glass: <\/b>As it changes in real time, every day, every 10 minutes.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ella:<\/b> Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Jane:\u00a0 <\/b>Yeah. Everyone can see it.<\/p>\n<p><b>Julia:\u00a0<\/b> It\u2019s crazy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you look at the individual \u2013a girl posting a selfie and reading the laudatory comments \u2013 you see a personality trait, narcissism. But the behavior that looks like narcissism is really an aspect of the social structure (girls\u2019 friendships networks) and the institution those networks are embedded in (school).<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally posted at Montclair Socioblog. A girl takes a selfie, posts it to Instagram, and waits. She doesn\u2019t have to wait long \u2013 a minute or two &#8211; before the likes and comments start rolling in. \u201cGorgeous,\u201d \u201cSo pretty OMG,\u201d \u201cStunning,\u201d \u201cCutest.\u201d Embed from Getty Images . You can see why people might look at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":69648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,106,129,20059,675,290,140,295,37],"class_list":["post-69244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-friendship","tag-media","tag-media-social-media","tag-psychology","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-internet","tag-social-networks","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/12\/3-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69244"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69637,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244\/revisions\/69637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}