Lonely, Lonely

I saw one of these for the first time a few weekends ago. Some twentysomething dude was using it to capture a picture of himself standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Took me a minute to figure out what it was; for a brief moment I thought he was raising a sword in the air. Frankly, I was surprised that he didn't catch an FBI sniper bullet the minute he pulled it out and started pointing it at people.

Could there be any more timely, any more relevant of a product to the youth of 2014 than the Monopod Selfie Shooter? It lives at the unpleasant junction of our increasingly lonely in-real-life existence and the Challenger Deep pressure that young people feel to star as the shows of their own 24/7 movie, creating content that is both endless and valueless, grist for the mill of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

The selfie is everything bad about the way we live now. You're holding the camera yourself because you can't trust anyone to hold it for you, because the country is gradually becoming one giant New York City where you distrust, ignore, and avoid strangers, neighbors, friends, family. As I walked around the Mall that night, I volunteered time and again to take the photo for selfie-ing individuals and couples. Most of them said, "Oh, no, it's okay," choosing instead to contort themselves into various positions so they'd get their faces and the Washington Monument in the same shot.

It's interesting how the transition from physical to digital media created the selfie. Nearly every person in this country over forty has plenty of physical film pictures of various things they've seen --- places, events, people. The possession of the picture certified one's presence. A Kodak Disc photo of the Washington Monument implies the presence of the photographer. A blurry 110 of the Grand Canyon contains the unseen image of someone in polyester pants and a too-tight T-shirt pressing the button. But now high-quality photographs of everything are everywhere (because they are readily available) and nowhere (because you can't actually hold or touch them).

Putting one of those photos up on Facebook, of course, would lead to derision. It's no longer proof of anything. So you have the selfie, which exists for the sole purpose of proving to your friends that you exist and are doing something. You do this as a preemptive strike against your friends, who are out having epic meals and brilliant trips and enviable new acquisitions themselves.

The traditional thing for me to do at this point would be to rail against an electronic infrastructure that has replaced real human interaction and suggest that dropping out is the best thing. The problem is that if you drop out in 2014, you will be forgotten and the world will continue without you. The man or woman who suffers a fit of clarity and "deletes" --- I quote that because we all know Facebook never truly deletes anything, the same way Google retains all that correspondence with your ex-boyfriend, it's just not available to you anymore, the privileged Googlers looking for a vicarious thrill can still read about how hard he fucked you and how much you liked it when he choked you and that tender time when you told him about how you blew your older cousin behind the Little Tykes shed --- his or her Facebook account will find that doing so is equivalent to disconnecting from society. You will slip below the radar. You will be told nothing about how anyone is doing and no one will make any effort to find out how you are. Thoreau got more mail at his cabin than you'll get. Unless you're prepared to go to six social events a week and personally reconnect with everyone you know on a constant basis, you will simply disappear.

So, no, you aren't going to drop out of Facebook and Twitter and IG, not any time soon. Not unless you want to be completely alone, or stuck in the house with your children, which might be worse for some. You're going to keep posting and Liking and responding and sharing and photographing your dismal meals and checking in at parks and posting your air itinerary with the IATA codes. To do otherwise would be principled but being principled has always resulted in being lonely and this is never more true than today.

So here's a tip. Taking good photos of yourself can dramatically increase your number of friends, lovers, or nothing. Good lighting and angles can really change the way distant strangers feel about you. Remember that Tinder uses your FB photos as a default. The overhead selfie shot that stops at your chin is now taken as a universal sign that you are obese. It's time to take better shots of yourself, ones that increase your worth to yourself and others, ones that clearly show you having the life you'd like other people to watch you having.

The Pocket Xshot XP1 Monopod can make that happen for you. Be sure to purchase it by clicking on this link so I can receive absolutely nothing in return.