Selfies
This first picture was taken on Saturday with my two friends from the club cross country team. They had a race earlier in the morning, but I was unable to attend. We had decided to go to Grottos during the day after the race. While we were there the sophomore girls from the team started sending photos of their class from the race. I took this selfie in the moment and sent it to the GroupMe with the message “senior pic :).” This is a great example of “writing in the moment” because I did not put too much though into the filter of the picture or the caption like I do on Instagram.
I chose to use a landscape orientation in the picture so I could better fit all three of us in the selfie. As I looked though my photos to find selfies I realized I normally don’t take group selfies, I often pass my phone to someone with longer arms.
GroupMe may not always be considered as social media, but it is a good example of how social media can contribute to communities. Although it is a closed group, I still don’t know everyone in the messages and people on it still work to construct the identity they wish to have and in that way I am considering it a form of social media. By sending this photo I showed that I am not only a member of the female distance running community, but also a member of the senior female distance running group. I took this picture while we were at Grottos. Grottos is a popular hangout spot for UD college students (as if you didn’t already know) and in the picture you can clearly see that we had been drinking. I am connecting with the UD culture and showing to the yonger girls on the team that we are older and can drink in bars separating my group from the younger group.
This selfie was taken in the bathroom of Grottos during the night of my friends 21st. This picture was also a good example of epideictic discourse. I felt confident about how I looked in my then boyfriends shirt and snapped a pic. I thought I looked surprisingly good and decided to use a filter with slightly high contrast to emphasis my freshly highlighted hair. I posted it within minutes of taking the picture and did not bother to ask what others thought.
On the post my close friend Destiny made the comment “Also I love you I’m sorry you know you’re pretty” I find this funny because she is clearly calling me vain. In Jacob Babb’s article he talks about why we do not have full control of our digital identity. Destiny is contributing to my identiy by bringing to people’s attention that I may be vain.
Although the identity I’ve be creating can be inturpreted as vain by some I have always intrepreted it as confident. A song by Sylvan Esso is a good example. In the song she sings “And I know I’m projecting the light I’m lacking, but oh you look like a morning star.” This means that she is not really as confidnent as she may be presived to be, but she will contiue to tell herself that she is untill she believes it. She says how the song is what she will say to herself in the mirror to boost her confidence. This is similar to what I do on Instagram becasause I post pictures that I like. I’d be lying if I said I don’t care what people think, but I keep notifications off so I can’t watch how many likes it gets. This way it stays as a picture I posted to show who I want to be rather than a picture I posted because of what others want me to be. Of course, the line between the two can be very thin.
Yet again in this picture I was relating to the college/ young adult bar culture. The selfie also performs female sexuality. I purposely positioned my arm and face so they apeared thinner. The picture makes me look good and I wanted to be seen as desirable. Then, by asking the audience “guess who’s shirt” while wearing my then boyfriends shirt I was saying that although I look good, I was loyal to him.
This last picture was taken one morning at my house. Earlier I used a song quote to help me explain why I post so many pictures of myself on my Instagram. I have always loved music and often feel a lyric from a song can better explain how I’m feeling than my own words can. When postig this selfie I had the lyric picked out way before I knew what image I wanted. This post was very thought out to describe who I am in the moment. The lyric is from the song “You” by the band Valley. At the time I posted this selfie I had been really into the band and loved the way he sang this lyric. I was trying to create my own digital identiy as someone who loved music.
I deliberately wore a flufy cozy top with my glasses and messy hair. The filter I used has more of a warm tone and high contrast to make it seem warm like the coffee in hand. I used a landscape orientation because I wanted the cup to be close to the camera and large, but didn’t want to be directly center.
