Three to See – Jamie Garrett Offers Up the Places He’d Like to See Ban Selfies

Nothing epitomizes the narcissistic "me" society we live in more than the selfie.  I can't imagine seeing someone with an old-school Polaroid camera turning it around and pointing it at themselves for a picture, but the world we live in now says "me" is the most important thing to be photographed.

Looking back through the very few actual pictures I've collected over the years features two types of photos... photos of stuff taken by me, and photos of me taken by someone else.  Never did I allow the two to crossover.  Maybe it's due to the fact that once you took the picture, it's forever and you've now got one less picture left that I never attempted to turn the camera around to get a shot of me.  Maybe it's because if I'm taking a picture of something it's for the "something" and not for the "someone".

There are some places that have outright banned the act of taking a selfie.  Selfies can be stupid.  Selfies can be dangerous.  Selfies can even be deadly.  Places like Pamplona's Running of the Bulls may seem like an obvious no-selfie zone, but apparently stupid people made it necessary to ban the process of slowing down to get a picture of you being chased by a 1-ton death machine.

New York has become the first state to ban the act of taking selfies with tigers because that's apparently the "in" thing on dating sites like Tinder.  You've nabbed yourself a winner if you see that profile and go for it all.  Iran, following the death-selfie, banned the act of posing for your own pic.

Mecca, the holiest of holy sites in the world of Islam, has been forced to ban selfies.  You'd think a religion with zealots that will kill you for drawing a likeness of the prophet Mohammed would be wary of selfies on holy ground.  Tread lightly, is all I'm saying.

Sites such as O2 Arena in Brixton Academy in England have banned selfies.  South Korea even has a hefty $30,000 fine and prison time for those that use Bluetooth on their selfie-sticks.  How North Korea of them.

Banning selfies is equivalent to banning farts.  Most of the time you're aware that someone around you has farted, but you can't go around sniffing out the culprit.  If you see a flash during a One Direction concert at O2 Arena, are you going to start checking phones for duck lips?

There are a few places I'd like to see selfies eliminated or outright banned.  I think funerals, wakes and viewings should be off-limits.  You'd think that would go without saying, but you'd be wrong.  Nothing shows the respect and admiration you have for a grandparent that lived through the depression, sweated and toiled for the family and left a nice chunk of cash in their will like pushing your boobs up for a quickie beside the casket.

I feel selfies on a public walkway (sidewalk, pedestrian bridge, etc) should be banned.  There's nothing worse than trying to make your way through a crowd only to come across a group of knuckleheads taking up the whole sidewalk to take a 14th selfie in the hopes of not looking stupid this time around.  Here's a hint... you look more stupid with every pic.

More than either of the first two spots I feel selfies should be banned, I feel the most offensive spot where selfies are taken is EVERYWHERE.  Let me explain before you call me an angry old man that yells for kids to get off my lawn.  I think selfies should become a thing of the past.

Other than being by yourself, without a mirror nearby and with an immediate need for a picture to be taken (think:  hostage holding today's newspaper for proof he's alive), selfies should become as "yesterday" as planking.

If you're by yourself and taking selfies, you've either got an inappropriate texting situation or extreme narcissism going on, and both need to stop.  The only exception to being selfie-crazed when you're by yourself is if you're sending pics to a significant other deployed overseas.

If you're in a public setting and you're talking selfies (by yourself OR with others), you're contributing to the continuing decline of human-to-human interaction.  Why not ask another human being to take the picture?  Sure, I may be inconvenienced if you come and ask me to snap a pic of you and your drunk girlfriends, but it's not any less than hearing/seeing you try to take the same selfie 15 times because you can't quite get it right (could be the booze, who knows).

It blows my mind that you're about to post a picture of yourself, taken by yourself as opposed to asking a fellow human for assistance, to social media to your hundreds  of "friends" and followers, yet you won't ask someone to take your picture.

You may be saying to yourself, "But Jamie, I think it's stupid to ask someone to take a picture of me and my lunch just so I can post it to Facebook".  I couldn't agree more.  It's stupid.  No one wants to see where you ate lunch (unless you got food poisoning, in which case share that QUICK), and if you think it's obnoxious to ask one stranger to take a useless picture of you, why would you think it's cool to share a picture as stupid as that with your hundreds of "friends"?

Kills me, I know.  Let's kill the selfie, and soon enough we'll be laughing about selfies the same way we laugh at dial-up internet, Google glasses and Michael Bolton.