Is the Selfie Self-Defeating?

I use to look in the mirror to shave, comb my hair, check for zits and nose hairs or just to have a look-see. Looking in the mirror, from an early age, is fundamentally about identifying oneself. About knowing the person in the mirror is the person standing in front of it. Mirror, mirror on the wall — that's me, right? We see ourselves in the mirror as no one else does. A photograph, a portrait, is a potentially shared version of that mirror image, righted of course.When my mother, suffering Alzheimer's Disease, slipped into the stage where past memory was lost, her sense of self disappeared. That sense of self will remain as long as one can track past events, at least key ones. The self is recreated again and again just like memories. The brain recreates a memory each time retrieval is activated; in that way our sense of self is reinvented according to the accumulated memories of self in times past. Take away the memories of the past and the self vanishes. My mother died three years after she herself, the person, had ceased to exist.The selfie has transformed the incidental, personal photograph, expanding and extending that visual sense of self into a potential broadcast of oneself, replete not just with one's face but with a specific time, location, cultural context, and even social meaning. The selfie may not be just a quick check in the mirror or a memento to save or to share. The selfie has a broader potential use able to create a new reality, a new identity. The selfie extends the moment of its capture to become celebratory or ultra-communicative. It may include others—a  special other or a group. The intent is not only to memorialize but to be placed into an ever-attending universe. It can become a proclamation. Here I am (or here we are) and I/we are special in this place, this time, this unique identity. To quote (out of context): "Attention must be paid."Humans are not unique in the animal kingdom for the ability to recognize the self in a mirror. Chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants do. Dogs do not,  but that is because dog brains are not wired for symbolic representation. The semantic parts of a dog's brain are organized around actions rather than objects. A dog certainly has a sense of self but cannot represent that self abstractly, either by name or by a visual image..

"...the selfie can become a weaponized image of the self"

.Mirrors are the forme fruste of self-regard. Over time we return to it to make our identity known to ourselves once and always again. Jacques Lacan, taking off from Freud, developed the idea of a mirror stage: "infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body reflected in a mirror...produces a psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an 'I'. The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood...this image is established as an 'Ideal-I' toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life."That ideal-I is what the selfie is prepared to evoke and perpetuate and propagate. That ideal-I, when placed in the aggrandizing context of the selfie, threatens to explode the person represented, to re-shape them into an almost monstrous enlargement of who that person is and how that person is viewed by others.In effect, the selfie can become a weaponized image of the self. The result will be a sense of self beyond the sustaining ideal. It's what has already happened to many celebrities. They acquire a public persona that may invade their own sense of self, exaggerating their importance or beauty or talent and even reducing their regard for others. Sycophants and fans, like moths, gather around a celebrity's flame. Self-evaluation pales in that powerful, external light. And some celebrities burn so hotly that their sense of private self will burn away truth, validity and personal esteem.The selfie now threatens to do the same for anyone who propels that little pic into social media. The selfie is a spark ready to be kindled into a firestorm. Young singles use the selfie to track friends and potential dates and exes, while also advertising their own adventures and purchases and indulgences and praiseworthy social connections. It's personal public relations on a perch ready to run amok.Once released into the internet void, the selfie attaches itself to one's curriculum vitae, a résumé that will float by future employers, partners, spouses, and perhaps even credit raters.  Once out there will a way back be possible?Just ask: selfie—where have I gone?