selfies

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Why do people in a group take selfies?

What do you mean? I enjoy taking selfies because I can see what my face is doing and avoid stupid expressions.

A question that will likely confound researchers for centuries to come.

What's a selfie?

A picture of yourself.

As for the original post, maybe to remember the occasion? I have no idea.

I think that is correct, though some people also do it to create visible evidence to reassure themselves about their social status and as propaganda to convince others that they are socially successful.

These people place such group images in prominent locations in their public environments, e.g on the partition around their desk or cubicle or on their FaceBook wall or in their instagram stream.

by definition, it is just a picture of yourself. so really there shouldn't be anything wrong with them.

however, they have a negative reputation because they are part of all this "social media pop-culture" garbage.

mostly by vain teenagers who cannot get enough of themselves. so they have to constantly take pictures of themselves and spam them on their social networking sites.

As the original poster, I would like to clarify my question. I view the selfie phenomenon as a social norm or custom or stereotype or whatever that confuses me. That is why I posted this in the general autism discussion thread. I am on the autism spectrum and I get confused when I see people doing things that seem to me that there is no logical or obvious reason to do it besides the fact that everyone else is doing it. It is my understanding that everyone on the spectrum has trouble with certain social phenomena that others take for granted. And personally I get agitated when people try to make me conform to these social standards when I clearly have no idea what is going on.

It does not confuse me to see a person ALONE to take a selfie. A person alone taking a selfie makes sense if there is no trustworthy person to take the picture. I am specifically referring to two or more friends and\or family members still doing selfies. Why can't they just set a timer or take turns taking pictures? Why are they with these people if they cannot trust them to take a picture? It seems to me that a selfie being taken in a group setting is a subtle sign that something else is going on within the group like trust issues. It could also be seen as an obvious example of real world people being programmed. I am sure that I am not the only highly observant person on this forum. Take a look around, in real life, on the internet or TV.

If someone leaves the group to take the picture, then the group is incomplete. The goal is a photo of the group. Why not use a timer? Technical incompetence is the probable answer, along with not wanting to walk away from your $600 phone while it is awkwardly propped in a public space.

This is possible but I think that's over thinking it in most cases.


Programmed? In what sense?

I think more social people want to project an image of social success and they take pictures of themselves with others in groups to create illustrations of that. Do you mean that kind of cultural program or more the "push, pop, mov" sort of thing?

Two links you might find interesting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... es/359556/

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/photo ... stinction/

I don't think group pictures are anything new, really...even going back to the 80s or 70s, people used to get together in those little photo booths and take pictures...I think people want to make memories of the friends they've had and the times they've had. This is probably more true for young people overall.

I admit I'm kind of over the duck face and peace sign...but then again every generation has its "fall into lock-step and mimic" stuff...that's not really anything new either. It's sort of like a generational "identity" thing, I think.

One word diamonds. You will probably not take my word for it, so I copied this from BBC, and only edited it a little. The De Beers company was one of the pioneers of people programming. This programming has even been passed on to generation after generation, not to mention that it has gone global before globalization was even an idea. If this is not a clear case of programming then what would you call it?

De Beers article from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27371208
Prior to the 1930s, presenting a woman with a diamond engagement ring was not the norm. Even on the eve of World War Two, a mere 10% of engagement rings contained diamonds. By the end of the 20th Century, 80% did. In the 1930s, at the start of the De Beers campaign, a single month's salary was the suggested ring spend. In the 1980s in the US, it became two months. One advert featured a pouting woman, a scarf, a finger, a diamond ring and the words: "Two months' salary showed the future "Mrs Smith" what the future would be like." Another did away with the woman, the pout and the finger, leaving only a diamond ring against a black background and the question: "How can you make two months' salary last forever?" As well as establishing the salary calculation, years of De Beers marketing inextricably linked the diamond to the concept of an engagement ring. The real breakthrough was created by a team at the advertising firm NW Ayer and Son. The tagline "A Diamond is Forever" was written in 1947 by Frances Gerety. The slogan worked.
These two achievements - making the diamond ring an essential part of getting married and dictating how much a man should pay - make it one of the most successful bits of marketing ever undertaken, says Dr TC Melewar, professor of marketing and strategy at Middlesex University. "They invented a tradition which captured some latent desire to mark this celebration of love," he says. Once the tradition had been created, they could put a price on it - such as a month or two's salary. And men, says Melewar, would pay whatever was expected because it was a "highly emotive" purchase.

It was not just in the US where demand for diamond engagement rings rocketed. The marketing campaign is credited with conquering Japan, where diamond rings were unheard of before World War Two. But the salary calculation was different. In the UK, writes Rebecca Ross Russell in Gender and Jewellery: A Feminist Analysis, the advertisements kept the single month's pay suggestion. But Japanese men were urged to spend three months' salary. "The salary rules were a stroke of genius," writes Russell, who believes De Beers managed to entwine western values with the Japanese sense of honour. "A diamond engagement ring: worth three months' salary," ran one of the adverts in the 1970s. Japan remains one of the leading markets for diamond jewellery.

With the West largely hooked on the diamond engagement ring, attention is now on China and India, according to Bain and Company, which produces an annual report on the industry. There has been a gradual rise in Indian couples "adopting the Western engagement ring practice".