Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.20 (535 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B071R3KHST |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 208 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-06-05 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Not what I expected - much better! Mr. Paul I. Medew I was expecting some kind of breezy survey of internet culture. It was instead a fantastic exploration of our changing understandings of who we are - history, psychology, philosophy - read like an Adam Curtis script at times. Will Storr is brutally honest in his self-reflections and superbly integrates them into a broader picture. Highly recommended. Hande Z said We, the self. Will Storr is a delightful story teller. The theme of this book has been gaining currency in the past few years largely in connection with our reliance on technology and the age of digitalisation. Storr’s book focuses on the concept of our ‘self’ and how we have changed the way we conceptualise ourselves in this new age. He begins with a little history of our sense of self-worth and the trends in suicide. We are increasingly becoming ‘social perfectionists’, having greater, perhaps inflated, sense of our self and our capabilities as well as our responsibilities. But because Storr fuses interviews with relevant pe. "A "should read"" according to Topanga Bird. Amazing, in depth, survey written for the general reader but fascinating even for the specialist.
We see this person everywhere: in advertising, in the press, all over social media. We are supposed to be slim, prosperous, happy, extroverted and popular. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy. But this model of the perfect self can be extremely dangerous. We're told that to be this person, you just have to follow your dreams, that our potential is limitless, that we are the source of our own success. Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Selfie takes us from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the selfie generation, and right up to the era of hyperindividualistic neoliberalism in which we live now. We live in the age of the individual. Unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. It tells the extraordinary story of the person we all know so intimately - our self.. This is our culture's image of