https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=cjMsl18D6Jg
Look at these fkkn bitches taking pictures… OF THEMSELVES! What, did they want to savor a moment in life or something?? What, did they think this was supposed to be a social event of some kind? Something fun that they might want to re-live in some capacity with visual reminders of themselves in that moment? Um. No, bishes – y’all r spose to look straight ahead and that’s it.
Guess we gotta Life-splain to these twits that when you’re in a sports arena you’re supposed to exclusively watch the event area in front of you and partake in nothing else at any time.
A group of selfie-obsessed Arizona sorority girls were shamed at a baseball game by two MLB announcers for snapping photos of themselves for at least two minutes straight.
About a dozen unsuspecting Alpha Chi Omega sorority girls were caught on camera putting on their best duck faces as they posed with hot dogs, churros, and just about anything near them.
“Oh, hold on! Take a selfie with a hot dog. Selfie with a churro. Selfie just of a selfie!” one announcer teases.
As I’ve noted many times before, Selfie-shaming is for Losers. It’s a transparent attempted bludgeon used by weak minds to drag down others they perceive as a threat to their own low self esteem.
Here are 8 or so reasons why this is entirely the wrong angle for this story:
TURNING PHOTOGRAPHY INTO PATHOLOGY
The girls are described as “selfie-obsessed” for snapping pictures of themselves at the game. This is stupid. Doing something more than once does not create an obsession. That label is only being applied here to create a mocking narrative that is illegitimate – which you can easily verify by trying to apply it to any other strive for excellence. What if there was open-seating at the stadium and the group was observed to take several minutes surveying the available options of areas to sit? Would they be “perfect view obsessed” girls? or just normal people trying to achieve something. What about people who stop watching the field and leave the stands to go to the snack bar and purchase food and drinks? They can’t go an hour without munching and slurping something instead of just watching the game in front of them? Is anyone called “food obsessed” for doing this? They very well could have been when this was new territory for game-watchers in 1905 or whatever* when there was a peanut & popcorn stand behind the bleachers and not much else (*precise moment in history when concessions became a mainstay in sporting arenas was not researched for this article). Some people, who were used to not leaving the stands to go eat, could easily view that unnecessary action to be eye-roll worthy. “Just watch the friggin game. You don’t need a cup of salty snack right now. geez” is no different than the attempted shaming of these girls taking photographs and no more stupid than it either.
THE ACCUSERS ARE THE DRAMA QUEENS
The commentary on social media and critical reporting of the instance frames the girls as dramatic clowns but in reality it’s the commentary that is being unduly hysterical. As noted above, in an attempt to paint the act as excessive, the description above from Melissa Chan in the NY Daily News calls the girls “selfie obsessed” for taking pictures of themselves for “two minutes straight”. I assure you all: 2 minutes is the shortest photoshoot in history. Definitely not an “obsession”. They also didn’t pose with “just about anything near them” – they took pictures of themselves and their friends and included the food they were eating… For Christ sake, they didn’t pick up debris off the floor and pose with it or go overboard in any way whatsoever. They commemorated an event in their lives with photographs. Could we stop pretending that that’s a big deal?
THEY WERE LITERALLY ASKED TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING…
Taking photos of yourself is not a shameful thing to do, but there is a wrinkle in this story that makes the attempted shaming of these girls 10 times as horrible: they were invited to do exactly what they were doing…
The commentary from the announcers making fun of the girls taking the pictures comes literally directly after those same announcers read a promo asking attendees of the game to tweet their fan photos… What in the actual fkk kind of scam is this? “Hey everyone! Please join in the fun and do this thing! [wait 1.5 seconds] – Hey everyone! Look at these friggin ridiculous monkeys doing that thing we asked them to do! LOL! What a buncha maroons!”. This is like when a magician invites an audience member up on stage to “be a part of a trick” but really just ends up making an ass out of the participant because they’re not a talented enough performer to actually make them a part of the act so instead have to rely on them being the butt of their joke. Not cool. Step up your game, fools.
HEY LOSERS: THIS ISN’T 1865. PICTURES ARE FUN AND FREE.
“Loogit the one on the right” and the other guy adds “do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”. Well no, bro – you don’t HAVE to do anything while engaging in self photography. I get that you guys are old as balls but are you really dating yourself to bygone era’s where you have to pose for a photo stonefaced because it takes several minutes for the exposure of the picture to imprint on the film? Are all your family albums recreations of American Gothic, you boring hack? Then they mock the volume of pictures being taken with a bit voicing the girls alleged internal monologues with comments like “uhp – better angle”, “check it” when one of them verifies the quality of the photo just taken, and “that’s the best one of the 300 pictures I’ve taken myself today!”. Maybe y’all haven’t heard the news but: digital photographs are free, bro. If they were $10 a shot, there might be validity to some astonishment in the opulent waste of a crowd frittering this limited commodity away, but nope – it’s just tapping a pane of glass and capturing a moment in your life. What you’re mocking is attention to detail and strives for excellence, not any kind of spoiled entitlement or abuse of excess. There is no virtue in limiting the moments you capture of yourself at no expense to anyone. You’re a friggin idiot if you don’t take a half dozen snaps of the same photo with minor nuances, not a hero.
THE [FAKE] TECHNOLOGICAL MENACE STEALING OUR YOUTHS!
In a delightfully goofy case of the old trope that dictates “technology I grew up with is okay but technology kids are growing up with is SCARY”, the commentary on the girls takes an unintentionally hypocritical turn. Referring to the girls looking at the screens of their picture taking devices, the announcer says “welcome to parenting in 2015. they’re just completely transfixed by the technology” – ignoring that he is broadcasting those comments onto a screen in which millions of viewers are “completely transfixed” themselves… We are all watching screens, bro. You’re spying on teenage girls through screens, they’re taking photos through screens, people at home are watching you watch them through screens – on screens. Shaming someone for being transfixed by technology while you are doing the exact same transfixation of technology – just with a different subject through the lens – is an insane level of lack of self awareness.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MESSAGE HERE, AGAIN?
While using a camera to record a bunch of girls, the commentary we are supposed to accept is that girls using cameras to record themselves is a ridiculous mock-worthy event. There’s just nothing that makes sense about what they’re saying – which reveals that they’re not saying the things they’re saying for the reasons alleged, and rather are just using those alleged reasons as excuses to take down a target due to ulterior internal issues.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THE GAME!” is a stupid comment all over a large percentage of the social media reposts of people justifying the shaming. First of all: you’re supposed to pay attention to whatever is interesting. You have no obligation to watch a sporting match that is boring – but there is zero evidence that a game was even going on. As far as I can tell, this is all taking place during a break or downtime of some kind, having just come back from a commercial break apparently. That’s the whole reason the video even exists, you dummies – the announcers had nothing on the field to announce on, so the cameras trolled the stands for commentary fodder. Anyone criticizing these girls for not being fully engrossed in the sport allegedly happening in front of them should be quintuply criticizing the announcers for ignoring the same game at the same moment in time. It’s the announcers job to talk about the game, and it is sorority girls’ job to take pictures of themselves in everything they do before they aren’t cute in pictures anymore. The girls did their jobs here – the chauvinist announcers did not.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER” is the other criticism of these silly chicks who thought they were attending this event to enjoy in ways that came natural them instead of following the Code of Baseball or something. NOPE – baseball is for conversations, apparently as one of the announcers says that “the beauty of baseball is you can sit next to your neighbor and have a conversation. OR you could completely ignore them”. Because evidently taking pictures with people, laughing with them, and talking to them, is “completely ignoring” them. The brief moments any of the girls are not engaging with each other by doing something on their personal screens are frequently broken up by the group activities of laughing and chatting during photographing of themselves. And remember that this is not a 2 minute montage of time lapse video from the entire game showing these girls doing nothing but taking pictures of themselves and not saying a word to each other – this is only a 2 minute span of linear time during a nothing-of-note-happening-on-field segment of the stupid baseball game. If you can’t take 2 minutes to disengage from the non-action on the field or the lulls in conversation with your neighbor, then attending a game isn’t fun – it’s punishment. What crime are these young women accused of that they would deserve such a sentence?
CONFISCATE THE PHONES!
The last comment the announcers make is to jokingly advocate banning phones from the stadium to prevent people from taking pictures of themselves. Wtf is that about? Why should the stadium have a monopoly on recording media of fans that – don’t forget – it solicits to record media themselves? What is the joke here? There isn’t one. It feels like there’s one because of the underlying feeling but when the surface of that feeling is breached even to the slightest degree, the facade fails. The real reason for scorn is not “I don’t want people to take breaks from watching baseball” – it’s – “I don’t want people doing things that make me uncomfortable about the fact that no one wants to look at pictures of me and/or that I don’t have the confidence that would make me want to save images of myself having fun.”
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The truth is that all this is just misdirected jealousy. Selfie shaming is a retaliation to specious feelings of inadequacy brought on by the public display of people having enough self worth to think pictures of themselves have some kind of value and thus should be taken. People who have no such value in their image feel shamed by those who do and seek to tear them down publicly so that the public learns to devalue self-image in general, thereby protecting those who don’t have it.
In reality, there’s obviously nothing wrong with photographing yourself and it doesn’t inherently speak to any poor character traits, which means that it deserves no scorn or ridicule on its own.
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UPDATE: In response for being unjustly mocked on tv for no good reason, the girls were offered free tickets to a game. Their response is so boss that it made this entire post worth it just for that alone. Basically they said “thank you but we would like to donate those tickets to a charity instead”. Boom. Here’s the full statement:
Alpha Chi Omega at Arizona State University would like to thank the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fox Sports for reaching out to the chapter after last night’s game and subsequent media frenzy. We appreciate their generous offer of tickets to tonight’s game. However, instead of chapter members attending the game, we have asked the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.
Today, October 1, marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If everyone who viewed this statement took the time to make a donation in recognition of domestic violence awareness, which is Alpha Chi Omega’s national philanthropy, we would be so grateful! We are happy to have the opportunity to shed some positive light on such a sensitive subject. All proceeds will go directly to A New Leaf to help struggling Arizona families get back on their feet by providing housing, food, childcare and more. You can donate using the link below. We appreciate your support!
http://donate.billhighway.com/DVAwareness
