Today’s society has become somewhat vain, crowded with people taking selfies at every waking opportunity. If there’s a landmark, there will be someone taking a selfie of them in front of it. If there’s a celebrity passing by, there will be someone attempting to take a selfie either with the celebrity themselves, or with the celebrity situated somewhere in the background, all with the purpose of posting it on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to gain some kind of social status. Gone are the days that meeting a celebrity meant actually interacting with them rather than using them as a prop for a picture. Not so long ago, Kirsten Dunst published a video alongside Matthew Frost displaying the true reality of the ‘selfie culture’, revealing just how weird and disturbing it is for those unfortunate celebrities who have been victimised by it.
Another vanity scam is the phenomenon of the dating app, Tinder. Tinder expresses the true vanity of the younger generation, simply deciding on whether you ‘like’ someone or not by swiping right if you like the look of them. Who needs personal qualities anyway, as long as they look good, right? Wrong. Tinder has been dubbed the most popular ‘hook-up’ app of 2014. It actively encourages youths to jump into bed with each other, whether it says it does or not – it does. The owners of Tinder constantly brag about how many marriages their app has created, yet fail to acknowledge how many rapes have occurred. There have been a significant number of allegations that have arisen from both women and men claiming to have met up with their ‘match’ to then have been abused.
This is the problem with the vanity of society; it’s getting people into serious problems. People care more about having a good picture of themselves posted somewhere on social networking sites than they do about their own safety.
The biggest annoyance of this vain society is the ‘Facebook culture’. According to Facebook statistics published in October, there are over 1.35 billion monthly active Facebook users, which is a 14% increase from the previous year. The statistic that annoyed me the most was the fact that there are over 1.12 billion users signing into the mobile app every day, which is a 29% increase from 2013. There is no face to face interaction between people anymore, it’s all over Facebook, and even if you’re out for the day with someone, they’ll be too interested in their phone – most likely on Facebook – to pay attention to you. Say you’re going for a nice lunch somewhere to have a good catch-up with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. As you’re talking, they’re tapping away at their phone, updating their Facebook with their whereabouts alongside pictures of it. They haven’t paid any attention to whatever you just said. I find it rude and ignorant, and matter-of-factly irritating.
The vanity of society has reached an all-time high across 2014, and it is taking away from face to face interaction and personal safety, as well as manners and common courtesy. It’s safe to say that 2014 has become a very technologically dominated, vain year.
(originally posted 29th January 2015 www.luna-llena.co.uk)
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