Iniobong Umoh: This Thing About Selfies… Who Are We Really Slaying?

You love taking selfies at every given opportunity. Your mobile phone is always with you at all times because you use the camera on the go to snap your cool pictures. You can truthfully admit to yourself that you are addicted to snapping pictures.

You upload your pictures on your social media pages. You share your pictures with your friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Whatspp, Instagram, Bbm, Badoo etc. You like it when the comments start dropping on your pictures. You like it when your friends compliment you on how good you look, on how nice your dress is, on how sleek your shoes are, etc. You love it when you have 200+ likes on the pictures. You are delighted because everybody knows that you are a hot guy/chick. It gives you a feeling of importance and of being loved, doesn’t it?

You have realized that taking a successful selfie is a process. There are steps to be taken. You do not just snap and post. To create the desired effect on your admirers, your pictures must undergo several processes of editing with photo editing apps and filters. A not-so-fine picture will be a dent on the image and reputation that you have carefully built up online over the years.

So you start by applying makeup on your face; you dare not snap with your natural face. You do not want your admirers to see the pimples, the warts, the wrinkles and all the imperfections on your face. A generous application of House of Tara powder, Mary Kay foundation, eyeliners, eye shadows, etc dolls up your face and gets you ready for the perfect selfie.

You then adopt a suitable posture. You must bend your legs and twist them like a disabled person otherwise the picture you are snapping will not be fine. You then make a variety of faces; duck-face, innocent face, pouting face, tongue hanging sideways out of mouth face, angry face and other spontaneous facial expressions.

You don’t have to worry about the background of the picture. Even if you live in a rundown shack in a God forsaken ghetto, you can always tush up the background with your photo editing skills. It is a crime for your friends to know where you live if the area isn’t a classy neighbourhood. If you are worried about the background, you can look for a posh place to take your selfie. The popular places are; your boyfriend’s car, the interior of a hotel, your boyfriend’s car or your neighbour’s big black gate.

You snap as many selfies as you can. Then you choose the finest ones and spend time to edit the pictures. You effect the transformational change that will give you the status of a beauty queen.

Camera 360, Camera 360 plus, Beauty Plus, Photowonder, Photogrid, picframes, Instagram filters etc are the apps you use for the editing work. When you are done with editing, you upload the pictures.

The caption on your picture must be totally unrelated to the picture. You search for a wise quote on Google search and use it as a caption. This must be adhered to strictly. You must not post any picture without a caption. When you are too lazy to copy and paste a wise quote, you hashtag any of the following as captions: ”’Self crush’, ‘I woke up like this’, ‘Jesus bae’, ‘Life of a hustler’, ‘boo of life’, ‘throwback Thursday’, ‘wcw’” etc. Don’t forget the fact that the wise quote captions must be unrelated to the picture.

You upload your picture with a smile. Your eyebrows are on fleek, your hair is dope, your swag is on point, your face is facebeat, you are slaying everything. You are a slayer, killing em softly.

But what use is a picture without comments and likes? You have to get people to see your picture and drop their comments. You quickly tag all your friends on the post. The minimum number that you tag on a single picture is 200 people. The comments pour in and you reply them with humility. It is not your fault that you are so beautiful, you give all the glory to God. You are happy. Your self esteem and ego is boosted. Your friends proclaim you to be the most beautiful thing ever created by God. The guys are falling in love with you.

You read the comments watching out for the bad ones. The bad comments come from the people who refuse to sing your praises. Anyone who tries to reprimand you or frowns on your skimpy sexy dressing is a hater. His/her comment must be deleted and he/she gets blocked by you. No one must spoil your picture for you.

Taking of selfies is your fundamental human right and you are not willing to negotiate this with anybody. You take your selfies at any time and in any place. No matter how solemn an occasion is, you must have a quick selfie. You snap inside the church while the pastor is preaching. You snap during the board meeting of the company you work in. You snap inside the lecture hall in school, while your lecturer is blabbing away. You hate distractions when you are snapping your selfies. A customer should not disturb when you are taking a quick selfie in the bank at your teller desk. Your major goal in life is to snap as many selfies as possible.

You snap with the corpse of the deceased person at a funeral service. At a wedding ceremony, you take more pictures than the bride with your long selfie stick.

Your Selfie addiction has made you become a citizen journalist. You take pictures of what is happening around you and upload it on your twitter page tagging the popular news media accounts. You get to the scene of a ghastly motor accident where the victims are lying on the ground bleeding and appealing for your help in seeking emergency medical treatment; you bring out your phone and begin snapping away. You upload the pictures onto your facebook and twitter with a cool hashtag. Life is ebbing away fast from the accident victims but you will not lend a helping hand by rushing them to a hospital for treatment, your duty is to snap and record their final moments on earth.

You have a minimum of 3000 pictures of your lovely face in your memory card. The number is too small for your liking. You are bent on snapping more because the more selfies you upload, the more popular you become, the greater the number of likes you get, the greater the attention you get from the opposite sex. You keep on snapping every day because your selfies defines who you are to the world. Your selfies portray you as rich, happy and successful in life even if you are sipping garri with cracked palm kernel nuts twice daily.

There are some people who think they can snap better pictures than you. They are in a competition with you for the spot of the Selfie king/queen. You must outdo them. You must show them that nobody can take the top spot from you. While they upload 5 selfies in a day, you upload 10 quality selfies. You are more alluring, you are more daring and your selfies are more sexy than theirs. Your upload have more likes and comments than theirs. You are the selfie queen/king. You are ahead of the competition and nobody can dethrone you.

Your greatest source of concern is that your battery will soon run down. So you are always with your power-bank to charge your phone. You walk around with your phone charger, looking for electric sockets to charge your battery which is always in a perpetual state of low voltage.

You love your selfies and your selfies love you. If your phone and all your camera gadgets gets stolen and you stay for a few days without taking a selfie, you will fall sick. If you are not treated with selfie pills and tablets, within few days, you will close your eyes. The last breath will slowly leave your nostrils, your body will become cold and stiff. And you will die.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime