This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Check out this "selfie" I took yesterday afternoon. It's my official entrance into the "look at me" trend/obsession/mental illness currently gripping the world.
This picture best reflects the real me. I took it in the middle of writing this column, half an hour into a lecture from my wife about safety, and a day after something very loud and ill-planned happened in the backyard.
What you're seeing is me in my natural working state. I am not drunk or hung over. I am in full possession of my faculties to write this column.
Note: I took off my shirt to add a little gratuitous bare shoulder sex appeal to the selfie. It's the best I could do. Any lower and it looks less like a man's chest than it does the map of a train yard.
A selfie — for those of you fortunate enough to live outside the social media craze — is a picture taken of oneself, usually with a cellphone or some other small device.
The intent is to show everyone what the taker is currently up to including, in some cases, using the restroom, having sex, committing a crime, or, worse, posing with a beloved pet.
A selfie is not a picture taken by someone else with the possible intent of exposing you as a self-absorbed loser. No, it's a picture you take of yourself to prove the same thing. See mine.
The truth is I'm hoping my selfie — which my wife insists is horribly unflattering — will slow down the social media narcissists who insist on posting pictures of themselves that end up in my email, on my "Facebroke" page, and sent to my cellphone.
Send me one of those and you'll get this one (or another of me trying to bite the ear off a cat) in return. Those are the only selfies I've ever taken. I look a lot worse in the cat picture.
The only selfies I appreciate getting are the ones from my grandkids, my wife, and the pictures a former coworker once sent me of his two gunshot wounds.
Other people's selfies are taken in bathrooms, exotic places, with celebrities, inside bars and at historical landmarks. Every event — including many that are only imaginary — needs to be documented with selfies. It's crazy. Literally.
According to scientists, a fixation with selfies could — and often is — a manifestation of a form of Body Display Disorder (BDD).
For example, if someone takes an unusual number of photos of their butt — commonly understood to be any number more than zero — he or she could be suffering from Butt Disclosure Disorder.
Wait, I meant Body Display Disorder. It's a mental problem wherein people obsess over trying to show a part of their body in the most positive way possible.
Apparently it's a way of making themselves feel better about the insecurity they have over a part of themselves they perceive as unattractive.
For me, it's always been the part that sticks above the collar on my shirt. The two selfies I took of it didn't make me feel any better. But then there's not a lot to work with.
OK, how about a truce. I'll keep my selfies to myself if you'll do the same.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.