The Selfie Post

When I was about 11 or 12 years old, I decided to create my first social media account through Facebook. Everyone was doing it in elementary school, all that stood in anyone’s way was the, “Must be 13 years-old or older,” restriction. This was easy overcome, considering all you had to do was change the year you were born. After a few years, I deactivated this account and created a new one, and I felt like I had a fresh start. A couple days ago, I logged into my old Facebook account and reactivated it, and I’ve never wished to not have lied about my age more in my life. I cringed reading through my old status updates, watched in horror as my profile pictures just got worse, and hated myself for thinking, “Wow, I should share this!” So instead of deleting the account once again, I decided to analyze and compare why my old Facebook causes my skin to crawl.

When I viewed my very first social media account, I didn’t quite understand how to justify my feelings toward it, except by saying, “It’s cringy.” Between the terrible status updates and the posts I’d share, I was the definition of, “awkward middle-schooler.” Yet, the very worst of my entire account are my pictures. On one of my current accounts, I have pictures that look more like this. Then, there’s my old Facebook account that obtains my elementary school self. Looking at photos like this, all I want to do is tear them out of the internet, but they are now apart of my digital footprint. It’s like what Rettburg discusses in chapter two of, “Seeing Ourselves Through Technology.” Rettburg states, “You can tear out pages or glue photographs over prompts you don’t want to use, but the journal does provide very clear rules for how you should represent your baby’s first year”(Rettburg 22). Facebook provided two ways to express myself, either through pictures or status updates. Yet, I strayed from society’s way of posting pictures and added things like lame photoshop or took pictures at the worst angle possible. Compared to how I am supposed to take pictures today, then looking at my old photographs, I hate them because they aren’t edited how they are supposed to be. Not only did this aspect affect how I now view my old account, but even the lack of selfies replaced by status updates even bothers me. Rettburg justifies my emotions on this when she mentions Montaigne, “In the late sixteenth century, Montaigne noted that drawing yourself was more acceptable than writing about yourself” (Rettburg). Currently, it is common to represent yourself through pictures and selfies, hence the popularity of Instagram over Facebook among my peers. Yet, on my old Facebook, my status updates out weigh my embarrassing photographs, because it’s still not as acceptable as posting photographs. On my current social media profiles, I’m constantly updating and posting selfies, like Szucs does in chapter 3 of Rettburg’s book. Unlike Szucs, I don’t have repetition in my old Facebook profile, especially compared to my current. Finally, the last reason that made me realize why I hate my old profile, especially due to my pictures, is because of who my selfies consist of. Currently, I still take selfies of just myself, but more often then not I have at least one other person in my selfies. On my old profile, all the pictures are selfies that just consist of myself, there isn’t anyone else in them to draw attention away from myself. Especially with my old photos, I wish that the attention wasn’t so focused on myself and my face.

I can’t change how I looked in elementary school, and I can’t necessarily delete the damage my old profile has done, but it’s still me. Overall, my old profile bothers me so much because I didn’t hide anything, I didn’t filter myself in anyway. Even though I posted status updates, had the wrong angles, didn’t post enough and didn’t try to deviate attention from myself, I’m kinda glad I have that old profile. My old account shows a younger, embarrassing part of my self that I can laugh about today, and even if it’s not up to society’s standards, I’m going to embrace it.