VietNamNet Bridge – Selfie - a portrait that one has taken of oneself – is getting ever popular in the rise of technology and explosion of social networks. People can take selfies everywhere as long as they have a smartphone and they like it. However, if regardless of social ethics and humanity, the selfie culture can become an issue provoking controversies.

In 2013 Oxford Dictionaries anointed “selfie” its word of the year, to mark the exploding popularity of this novel term for a self-portrait, usually one taken by a smartphone and posted on a social network. To make a selfie, people just flip the view on their phone and hold it at a high angle, making their faces in tones of wanted emotions, position their thumb over the button and click.

Selfie by itself is never a bad word. It not only honors the development of high technologies of smart phones, a wide range of applications which help people beautify themselves in selfies but also records unforgettable moments of events, parties, memories and beautiful places. Moreover, with selfies, it also helps people to enhance their self-esteem and discover what the most beautiful figure in their faces and what the best angle of themselves are.

On social networks such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, people see selfies of the Pope, of presidents, stars, celebrities and many people of all ages and many of them are good snapshots that attract millions of views and thousands of comments. In that case, selfie takers have become selfie artists who inspire positive feelings to the community.

However, the selfie culture contains more important things that a selfie taker needs to know. Recently, in both international and local media, controversies have emerged and captured much public attention when people take selfies at funerals, with homeless people or at accidents and natural disasters. In such cases, selfie becomes a shameful trend of thoughtless people.

Recently on Facebook, one has seen selfies of two girls with white mourning headband at a funeral ceremony of their grandfather in Vung Tau City, of a girl at a collapsed construction in a monsoon in Danang City in May, or of local singer Angela Phuong Trinh in her bikini and her tweet citing that her beauty has no rival, all showing ruthless and delusional lives of some youngsters.

Le Kim Bach Khoa, a photographer in Danang City, commented that “Many girls are abusing selfie to promote themselves. But I find them not pretty at all when in a café, they selfie too much that annoys people around. I can’t stand that.”

Meanwhile, Kieu Nguyen, a local girl living in Lam Dong Province, said: “I am addicted to selfie taking and I can’t stop loving myself. I make up and change styles to update new selfies everyday to Facebook friends, but I do not know why they criticize me and talk less to me,” adding that ‘Maybe I need some treatment.”

When people look in the lens preparing for a selfie, often they are seeing not what they are, but what they want to be. And it is that aspiration that they share with others, with the full intention to deceive.

“I think without applications such as Camera 360, Perfect365, PhotoWonder, SnapChat, Face Tune, girls may not rush too much into selfies. Such apps make their eyes bigger, their dark spots and acnes disappear, their lips sexier and their skin perfect, and finally make them more beautiful and cuter than they really are,” said Vu Nguyen, a Facebooker in HCMC.

In conclusion, selfie can help people to promote themselves positively, record good memories and moments. However, selfie can become narcissism when many youngsters live a delusional life on social networks, post unreal photos with ridiculous tweets without interaction with their real life with families and friends.

SGT/VNN