Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 22 Issue 6

media-in the techno- traps. It is almost the same like the advertisements of fairness cream. In most of these advertisements, female characters are given the role to perform as a girl who has some problems with their physical colours according to the advertisements. Funnily, they show some girls who, before using the cream, looks blackish or they may have some pimples on their face. In many cases, they promote their cream by applying it on the girl character and make her very glowing and somewhat whitish by which they want to mean real beauty. The problem is, in some cases, they show a girl who, before using the cream has a somewhat greyish or blackish face and body, becomes whitish all through. This is bogus because a girl’s hand cannot become whitish by applying a cream on her face. Now, for many people, and they do it intentionally, the word Selfie now means an exhibition of their beauty. For example, Dove is a company known for campaigning to raise self-esteem among young women so that they don't get sucked into the objectification that media often bestows upon them. In one of their recent videos aptly titled "Selfie," they use the practice of silly self picture taking as a medium to help young women really see their beauty and self worth in a very honest way. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in an essay titled The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception , write, ‘The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them’. 15 This word is a linguistic distortion of the word ‘self’. This myth has been exploited to popularize the use of the front camera of a phone. It is well-known that the android phones or iPhones have a front camera. It first came as a help for the people to have photos of self but was not that much popularized. When this author was a student of Honors 2 nd year in his university, he saw a phone to one of his friends. He became amazed to see it first. At that time, the term Selfie was not that much popular. The front camera was mostly used as a mirror. It was/is mainly given for video calling facility although it helped people in some other ways. But now it is being used mainly as a medium of picking Selfie. In the past people used to have portraits/ sketches of themselves and hang those on walls. Now this has taken a new form by dint of different picture editing software applications such as Picasa, Photoshop, and so on. A report published in Business Wire on October 29, 2014, states that new smartphone releases and an increased emphasis on emerging markets drove global 15 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Dialectic of Enlightenment , Edmund Jephcott (trans), Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002, p 24. smartphone shipments above 300 million units for the second consecutive quarter. According to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC)Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 327.6 million units during the third quarter of 2014 (3Q14), resulting in 25.2% growth when compared to the 261.7 million units shipped in 3Q13 and 8.7% sequential growth above the 301.3 million units shipped in 2Q14 . 16 IV. E xistence of the O ther: A lienation through O thering the S elf The tendency of having selfie, in many cases, alienates people from the society. Theoretically, it can be said that a selfie is taken when the person/s who want/s to have a photo do/es not have anyone to take the photo for him/her/them (ideologically). It signifies the statement, ‘ I am enough for myself .’ It is a usual notion that human mind is full of urge of knowing and discovering the self more and more. This is an unquenchable quest. Jean Paul Sartre posits that as conscious beings, expectations of humans never end. They go on to want more and more because they are always aware of their self-esteem which is not perfect according to Sartre. Sartre, in his philosophical masterpiece, Being and Nothingness , postulates that two types of reality lie beyond our conscious experience: the being of the object of consciousness and that of consciousness itself. The object of consciousness exists as "in-itself," that is, in an independent and non-relational way. However, consciousness is always consciousness “of something,” so it is defined in relation to something else, and it is not possible to grasp it within a conscious experience: it exists as "for-itself." According to Sartre, in order to ground itself, the self needs projects which can be viewed as aspects of an individual’s fundamental project and motivated by a desire for "being" lying within the individual's consciousness. 17 In an article titled “Selfies Aren't Empowering, they're a Cry for Help”, Erin Gloria Ryan wrote, ‘Selfies aren't expressions of pride, but rather calls for affirmation’ . 18 16 ‘Worldwide Smartphone Shipments Increase 25.2% in the Third Quarter with Heightened Competition and Growth Beyond Samsung and Apple, Says IDC’, International Data Corporation (IDC) , 29 October 2014, For a full discussion, see http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?con tainerId=prUS25224914 (accessed 5 September 2022). 17 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel E. Barnes (trans), New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. This craving for affirmation is then justified 18 Erin Gloria Ryan, ‘Selfies aren’t Empowering. They’re a Cry for Help’, Jezebel , 21 November 2013, For a full discussion, see https://jezebel.com/selfies-arent-empowering-theyre-a-cry-for-help- 1468965365 ( accessed 5 September 2022). Volume XXII Issue VI Version I 74 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals C O ‘Selfie’! O Narcissus: The Mythologico-Cultural Imposition of Late-Capitalistic Tools in the Present Digital World