I tend to believe the negatives of selfies when associated with social media tend to outweigh the positives, especially the outward reliance on self-worth from others. A selfie can be harmless, funny, or a way to document a moment, but the culture surrounding them turns identity into something that has to be approved through likes, comments, and attention. I think selfies are some of the highest used forms of narcissism in our modern age. You can see that with celebrities, but also all the way back to kings and queens. They were often the only people in society who could afford to have portraits made of them, and those portraits were not always representative of their true identity. Instead, they focused on wealth, beauty, power, clothing, and a figure that they may or may not have actually had. In that way, the selfie is not completely new. Jerry Saltz describes it as “an instant visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing, who we think we are, and who we think is watching”. That last part of who we think is watching being often the biggest component. Selfies are usually made with an specific audience in mind. Even when someone says they are “just taking a picture,” they still decide which image is worth posting and where. They carefully choose the angle, pose, lighting, background, expression, filter, and sometimes edit the image until it represents the version of themselves they want others to see. Saltz points out that selfies are never really accidental or truly representative of oneself because the person taking one has to approve it before sharing it, which makes the image a form of control and performance. And that selfies are the farthest thing from who we really are when they are carefully adjusted to show only the best parts of us or our lives. I think you could even say that “most” selfies are probably the closest thing to AI slop. fabricated perspectives meant to show off only the best of someone’s appearance, the biggest difference about selfies however, is that you can't tell that it's not real, and that's the danger. Thats why social media makes people (especially teens and young adults) constantly compare themselves to idealized versions of others. I myself do not take selfies of myself with the exception of photos with other people. I do not use Snapchat. I frankly hate taking selfies because they do not feel representative of who I am, and it feels wrong whenever I do. I also feel like I take terrible pictures of myself compared to the pictures people take of me and it's probably because of me being a photographer, which makes me hypercritical of my own appearance when I take pictures of myself. I do not even post pictures of myself on social media because I first do not need that validation and also I don't like the idea of having to see myself over and over again every time I open up social media and think about how I could have taken the picture better. Yet, I understand why people take them. A selfie can make a celebrity feel more human, let friends share a memory, or give someone control over how they are represented instead of having someone else photograph them. I do not think every selfie is narcissistic or bad. And the images themselves are not the problem. It's the intent. The problem begins when the purpose / use of the image becomes more about showing off then to remember the actual experience or appreciate one's self image instead of looking externally for that validation.