The Selfish Language

Selfish Language

"NORDnord Definition: A word that didn’t exist before it was created by a Vocab Journalist. Example: “If Vocab Journalism takes off, there’ll be more nords than words.”"	DEFINITION	CONTEXT

accident selfie	self-portrait in an accident or disaster setting – worse than rubbernecking, this is a sort of self-rubbernecking	"He's worse than an ambulance chaser – he’s always taking accident selfies."
angle selfie	a self-portrait taken from an extreme angle, usually done to exaggerate the size of the eyes and narrowness of the chin. See also out-of-selfie-experience	"I wish she would keep the angle selfies to a minimum because she’s starting to look like an avatar."
falsie	the gender-neutral way of referring to unlikeherselfies and unlikehimselfies	"There are more falsies than selfies in circulation these days."
food selfie	photo of my own food, mine, mine, mine	"She’s more interested in food selfies than the food itself. That’s how she keeps so thin."
food selflessie	photo of someone else’s food	"He didn’t just pay for everyone’s dinner – he took food selflessies throughout the meal."
herselfie	female self-portrait	"I only receive herselfies. That doesn’t mean my male friends don’t take them but they just don’t share them with me."
himselfie	male self-portrait	"That guy takes more himselfies than his sister takes herselfies."
inner selfie	a selfie that captures who you really are – the essence of your being in a single image	"I’m going to change my passport because I’ve finally managed to take an inner selfie."
itselfie	photo of an inanimate object owned by the photographer	"He’s starting taking itselfies of everything in his house."
leg selfie	photo of my legs from an angle that suggests I haven’t put on weight even if I have	"He liked her for her leg selfies but when they finally met he lost interest."
notmyselfie	a hypochondriacal disease suffered by, or excuse deployed by, falsie-takers to justify not looking as good as their selfies, when the truth in fact is that it's the selfie that isn’t quite itself	"I know I don’t look like my selfie but that’s because I’m feeling notmyselfie today."
ourselvie	group self-portrait	"Come on everyone, let’s do an ourselvie before the party’s over."
out-of-selfie experience	another word for an angle selfie which emphasises the variety of views of yourself that are possible assuming you could float above yourself in an out-of-body experience and then look back at yourself from strange angles until you find the perfect one	"She’s lost touch with reality and only engages in out-of-selfie experiences these days."
selfie shock	the shock you feel when everyone around you is taking selfies – at first you wonder if they are all from another planet and then you realise that you are in fact the alien	"I'm in total and utter selfie shock after spending time with those guys."
selfie surprise	the surprise you feel when you have got to know the way you look through your own falsies and then one day you look in the mirror and think there’s a stranger in your bathroom	"Serious case of selfie surprise this morning when I looked in the mirror."
selfie-advancement	see selfie-promotion
selfie-applause	the act of clapping or jumping up and down with joy after someone looks at their phone and sees the selfie they've just taken	"I think that was selfie-applause because he had just been looking at his smart phone."
selfie-assured	“mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”	"She’s so selfie-assured she sends them out to people she hardly knows."
selfie-aware	knowing full well how ridiculous you look when you’re taking a picture of yourself	"She's become quite selfie-aware after getting feedback on her last batch of pictures."
selfie-belief	see selfie-confidence
selfie-centred	more interested in your selfies than others’	"He’s so selfie-centred everyone has stopped sending him any of their own."
selfie-confidence	the feeling of certainty that broadcasting your self-portraits is a good idea	"She has a lot of selfie-confidence but her friends think it’s unfounded."
selfie-congratulatory	see selfie-applause
selfie-conscious	see selfie-aware
selfie-contradictory	the way two selfies of the same person often don’t look anything like each other	"They were so selfie-contradictory that I thought they were two different people."
selfie-control	the ability to resist photographing yourself	"Considering you were standing beside Obama, you showed a lot of selfie-control."
selfie-deceit	see selfie-denial
selfie-defence	when you refuse to let someone take your photo and tell them instead that you’ll take a selfie	"She wanted to take his photo but in selfie-defence he promised to take one himself."
selfie-delusion	see selfie-denial
selfie-denial	the belief that you look good in your photograph when you don’t	"We tried an intervention with her the other day about the way she looked but she's still in selfie-denial."
selfie-deprecating	purposefully broadcasting ugly self-portraits	"He's so selfie-deprecating that he sent out a picture of himself with a hangover with the caption 'Me, bright as a button, 8am'."
selfie-destructive	unwittingly broadcasting ugly self-portraits	"He has no idea how selfie-destructive he's being."
selfie-doubt	the healthy questioning of whether you should be taking so many pictures of yourself	"He’s been going through a lot of selfie-doubt recently. You hardly see any more posts."
selfie-esteem	see selfie-confidence
selfie-evident	anything that’s self-evident in the world of selfies	"She added a caption to her selfie saying “That’s me!” It was totally selfie-evident."
selfie-fulfilling prophecy	when the taking of a selfie is justified by circular or twisted logic	"She was reassured that she wasn’t taking too many selfies when she double-checked with her friends online who were doing precisely the same. That’s nothing less than a selfie-fulfilling prophecy."
selfie-gratification	the act of looking at your own selfies for your own enjoyment	"He's not social at all, and probably thinks selfie-gratification is a lot simpler."
selfie-help	the cure for lack of attention by taking self-portraits for yourself	"No one was commenting on her selfies so she tried some selfie-help."
selfie-important	see selfie-assured
selfie-indulgent	treating yourself to plenty of self-portraits	"She used to go to the spa every day but now she’s become selfie-indulgent instead."
selfie-perpetuating	trading selfies back and forth with a friend, often competitively, in a process of ‘selfie ping pong’ that goes on forever	"That relationship has become selfie-perpetuating."
selfie-pity	the emotion felt by dwelling on the ugliness of your own self-portraits or on the damage caused by their excessive publishing	"Once he had pressed the button he knew it was too late. He's been feeling a lot of selfie-pity ever since."
selfie-promotion	the technique of self-promotion through self-portraits	"His selfie-promotion didn't work. People just ignored him."
selfie-redundant	headshot, taken in the mirror (a noun despite its adjectival origin)	"I’ve never understood why people take selfie-redundants when they have a perfectly good reverse lens button."
selfie-regulatory system	the current system where there are no laws limiting the amount of time society wastes taking and posting selfies	"In a selfie-regulatory system, we’ve got to respect people’s rights to take as many as they like."
selfie-respect	the pride you derive by not taking too many self-portraits	"I have more selfie-respect for you than any of our other friends."
selfie-sacrifice	the damage to your image of broadcasting ugly self-portraits	"The result of that series of posts was nothing short of selfie-sacrifice."
selfie-satisfied	see selfie-assured
selfie-sufficient	not needing others to see your self-portraits	"He's totally selfie-sufficient - he loves taking them but never shows them around."
selfie-worth	see selfie-confidence
selfishie	a more honest word for a selfie	"She has no interest in others, only in her own selfishies."
selflessie	another word for an unselfie, to emphasise its virtue	"He's a good guy really. He takes many more selflessies than anyone I know."
someonelsie	the resulting photo when you erroneously pose for a camera that’s pointed in the direction of someone else	"I thought she was going to take a picture of me but it was a someonelsie."
unlikeherselfie	female self-portrait intended to make someone look very different from herself, usually achieved by the application of countless layers of foundation make-up upon which a new face is painted as in traditional Chinese opera	"When he finally met her she didn’t look like her unlikeherselfies in Instagram."
unlikehimselfie	male self-portrait intended to make someone look very different from himself, currently rarer than unlikeherselfies	"He used to take fairly honest selfies but recently he’s been posting only unlikehimselfies."
unselfie	photo of someone else	"I know it’s a bit radical but I took some unselfies last night of the sunset."
your good selfie	an old-fashioned and formal way of referring to someone’s selfie	"I was so pleased to see your good selfie this morning but would prefer to see you face-to-face."
yourselfie	what someone else’s selfie is to you	"Those yourselfies were better than the ones I saw last week."

Me, my selfie and I
by Mark Dixon

I never liked selfies, neither taking them, nor seeing them being taken, nor receiving them.

The true vanity of human beings is exposed by the pictures they take – it has become all about me, myself and I. Or rather: me, my selfie and I. Indeed, a selfie should really be called a selfishie.

Fed up with this increasingly selfish environment in Europe, I took a trip to Shanghai. There I discovered the selfie has been taken to further extremes. What is a disease in Europe has become an epidemic in China.

No one at all is taking pictures of others. The smartphone hardly needs the button that switches from front to back lens – it should just point inwards.

I went to a cafe. Three young women sat down for tea. Not a word passed between them. They ordered their cakes and started communicating on their smartphones. Each was taking herselfies. Not a single picture of one another, and no shame whatsoever.

They then started taking pictures of the cakes – but their own cakes, not each others’. They were taking food selfies. These were then posted on WeChat, their version of WhatsApp. Still no conversation, but herselfies and itselfies were flying around the internet.

A simple photograph of someone else has become a collector’s item. We now need a new word for it, the unselfie – because what was formerly normal has become a deviate form of the new standard. It’s a sad day indeed when society’s behaviour forces language to be turned inside out like the lens of a camera.

Things got worse. I was soon sitting around a dinner table when a Chinese friend opposite held up her smartphone to take a picture. In turn, I put my arm around my neighbour and pulled her closer. Only then did we notice that the people on the other side were also pulling closer.

“Why on earth are you posing?” the photographer asked. “We’re taking a selfie!”

It was in that moment that I realised there’s one thing more vain than posing for your own selfie, and that is posing for a someonelsie.

Stung with embarrassment, I hit back: “It seems you’ve forgotten how to take a selflessie.” But, because she was in fact taking an ourselvie, I wasn’t on the strongest ground.

WeChat seems to be the only way people communicate now in Shanghai – they don’t look at each other, don’t talk to each other, and don’t even phone each other. I’ve been a late-adopter too often lately, so I signed up for WeChat. The language is often pictorial and if you join friends into a group anything someone posts gets broadcast to the rest. I finally wrote back to the whole gang, “Guys, please, I really can’t look at one more yourselfie today.”

Indeed, the problem is selfie-perpetuating because someone posts her herselfie in a competitive sort of way feeling she’s the prettiest in the land – no doubt with a round of selfie-applause – only to find her ‘friend’ has replied within a nanosecond with an image prettier than the last, which of course is interpreted as nothing less than throwing down the gauntlet.

I even received a selfie which a woman had taken of her face in the mirror, having had to turn the lens inside out to its old-fashioned position, probably for the first time in her life. I call this type of photo a selfie-redundant, even though I realise it’s an adjective.

Selfies also create confusion in the ability of human beings to recognise each other. There are so many unlikeherselfies out there that I wonder if the cosmetics industry is behind the trend, and if it’s not make-up that momentarily makes a person look like her unlikeherselfie then it’s probably the angle selfie technique. Some images are totally selfie-contradictory. My complaint is not just that people are having these virtual relationships but that, if they ever meet, they probably won’t recognise each other.

Selfies even confuse the photographer. The distortion of reality caused by the combined deployment of unlikeherselfies and angle selfies can result in a case of selfie surprise when you’re so used to the way your selfies look that one day you look in the mirror and think there’s a stranger in your bathroom.

The recent change in the one-child policy may reduce the level of selfishness in the next generation in China, but for now the selfie looks set to stay.

Not everyone taking a selfie is equally to blame, but to understand the moral hierarchy it’s necessary to dip into the psychology of selfies.

Some know how ridiculous they look when they take a photo of themselves – these are the selfie-aware. They are selfie-conscious or even exhibit selfie-doubt. These are the ones I most respect, or, at least, least disrespect. They have selfie-control and so manage to hang onto a modicum of selfie-respect.

By contrast there are those who are totally selfie-assured, selfie-satisfied and selfie-important. They exude selfie-confidence, selfie-belief, and selfie-esteem, and have far too much selfie-worth for their own good.

Then there are those who use selfies as a tool for selfie-promotion and selfie-advancement. They’re usually in selfie-denial, selfie-delusion and selfie-deceit about their own unattractiveness and I find myself wanting to tell them, “Just keep your selfies to yourself.”

Some are so selfie-destructive about what they post that it becomes an act of selfie-sacrifice, but who’s got the guts to tell them the truth? And if anyone does, they’d just bury themselves in selfie-pity as they contemplate the images they’ve broadcast and wonder how that has helped their shallow lives.

Then there are those who get selfie-help. They take pictures of themselves for only personal consumption, and it does seem to make them feel better. Granted this is selfie-indulgent and selfie-centred but I do respect them at least for being selfie-sufficient. True, these people don’t force their selfies on others, but they are in fact being narcissistic on top of being vain.

Finally comes my favourite category, the selfie-deprecating. At least these have a sense of humour as they try to take bad photographs of themselves and then broadcast them to their friends. I need to meet more people like them.

In a state of total selfie shock from this selfie-regulatory system which clearly isn’t working, I returned to Europe, relieved to be out of ‘selfie city’ and hoping I would never hear the s-word again.

Walking down the street in London, WeChat kicked in on my iPhone. My new virtual world was still with me, chatting away, sharing images, and for a moment I almost forgot where I was.

"Are you back in London?" someone asked.

It seemed so natural to do what I then did. I pressed the little plus sign beside the reply box, clicked on the camera symbol, flipped the lens towards myself standing in a London street, and two clicks later I had answered the question with a thousand words. I had in that instant taken and broadcast my first selfie.

And, it felt...

...so, so good!

Published in Shanghai Daily and Shanghai Daily Online

The Selfish Language was developed as part of a movement in literature called Vocab Journalism.

Mark@SelfishLanguage.com