Whatever you might think of people who are obsessed with taking selfies, something in the culture is really changing.
Selfie is defined as “An image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks”. And a whole generation has been born out of this word, the selfie generation.
Much has been said and written about this generation. The major concern being obsession with self. So what if the obsession is deeper than you think? And what if it’s harming you more and the people around you more than you think?
I met this gorgeous lady called Makena at the 2015 Concour D’Elegance classical motor-sport event in Nairobi. Makena is not only an extremely attractive young lady with voluptuous physique and bubbly personality but what attracted me to her even more is the fact that she is barely in her early 20s and already doing a Masters degree in one of the prestigious universities in the country.
Makena is the kind of a lady you meet once and you want to get hooked to! “Wow, nice tattoo you have there…” That was my first line to her, pointing to a nicely done cross tattoo with a Catholic rosary intertwined on it on her left shoulder. I was cautious not to offend a young guy who was in her company. “Aaww…thanks”, she replied with a glowing smile written all over her pretty face. I later learned the young guy was her young brother… Perfect! She later explained to me the inspiration behind the tattoo as being her religion. She is a Catholic. We developed a friendship and hanged out together the rest of that afternoon, the three of us. And we had fun.
I wanted to see Makena again, well, any man would. I wanted to get to know her more. Three days after our meeting, I asked her for a date out. “How is your schedule this weekend…Can we grab a drink? Saturday or Sunday whichever works for you.” In reply she said she’s always not very busy during weekends and that she’ll confirm the day with me. But there was a disclaimer, “Am always very choosy on the places I go for a drink,” she added. I said that won’t be a problem.
I took her to a fancy place that I knew of in town with a serene environment with not much noise. A perfect environment to have a conversation. I arrived first and waited for a couple of minutes before she came. I went to pick her from the entrance door and after the greetings and all, she asked that we take some selfies which we did.
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When we got to our table she was still busy uploading and sharing them on her social media platforms. I gave her time but this was not ending…She was taking and sharing more and more pictures and videos and basically being on her phone all along. She took pictures of the drinks to food to just pictures of the place.
She could realize I was getting bored. By the time I thought she had had enough time with her phone and now we could talk, she told me her friend had come to meet her and that she was already at the entrance! The friend, I gathered, had had a fight with the boyfriend and needed some sort of consolation from a friend.
Makena warmly introduced me to her friend as her “boyfriend”… She narrated to her how we met but thereafter I had to take a back seat as they engaged in their girl-talk. It took like forever.
By the time we were leaving, nearly after four hours of our date out, we had hardly had any constructive dialogue. According to Makena, she had a really good time and she enjoyed the date. But she forgot about me, she forgot I was part of the date. I wanted to spend time with her, to chat and basically get to know her more, but I felt like she unconsciously denied me that opportunity. She spent nearly all the time we were together on the phone taking selfies and sharing with friends on social media. That was satisfying to her, but to me it was selfish of her.