From the New York Times Book Review, February 14, 2018, by Jack Dickey:
THE SELFIE GENERATION
How Our Self Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture
By Alicia Eler
294 pp. Skyhorse. $24.99.
Eler, who is the visual arts critic for The Star Tribune in Minnesota and also a millennial, has published for years on the selfie and its implications for privacy, self-expression and sex. In the selfie she finds “an aspirational image” essential to “being seen by others online.” She sees the selfie as a lifeline to those who struggle to be represented in the media ecosystem; she mentions transpeople and agoraphobes. And not all selfie-takers, she proves, are as oblivious as imagined.
Unfortunately, Eler’s book would have benefited from a more careful edit. Her discursive style is sometimes whimsical, but mostly distracting. She dwells on a topic having little to do with selfies and then glosses over complicated selfie-related stories. Fake news in the 2016 election gets at least seven pages; the macaque who took a selfie and then saw PETA sue for his copyright gets just two. She provides an extended discussion of blogs that post screenshots of bad Tinder conversations but glosses over the July 2016 Facebook Live stream by Diamond Reynolds after her husband, Philando Castile, was shot by the police. And while there are moments where her light touch suits the material well, a section on social-media surveillance at Standing Rock is hindered by her choice to discuss it through quoting a meeting she had over coffee with a protester.
In spite of its flaws, though, Eler’s book alights on the source of the selfie’s power: It is the easiest way to assert one’s humanity in our hyper-networked world. Perhaps our much-fussed-over narcissism is not a flaw but a survival tactic.
