I think the whole "selfie" movement itself is indicative of a "Me! Me! Me!" society - and pretty well every major psychologist etc... would agree. When my husband started his school year in September, they had a PD day where they had seminars on learning to recognize the signs of addiction etc.. in their students (college), and I kid you not - one of the recognized addictions that they talked about is media addiction - Facebook, Twitter etc... which is a form of narcissism. Having to post photos of every little thing we're doing, so every can see and "like" it? Why?
As far as the sticks, I understand wanting to get family shots, so now that I know what they are, I can see where they might be useful, but... even then, so unnecessary. Whatever happened to asking the person next to you, "Hey, can you take a photo of my family and I?"
Oh, I'm sure plenty of psychologists would agree, but, you know what?
The Sixties was all "Me! Me! Me!" and society was on the brink of collapse. The Seventies was all "Me! Me! Me!" and everyone despaired for the future. Then the Eighties was all "Me! Me! Me!" and again, everyone despaired. It gets old after awhile. Every generation seems to think the world's going to heck in a handbasket and they're all convinced that everyone else is getting selfish and rude. (But I'm just fine!)
This is not
actually a quote from Socrates, but rather a saying based on 1907 summary of common complaints about young people in ancient Greek society:
"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."
(Source:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/")
Basically, it gets old. Really, really old. Remember when comic books were going to cause the downfall of society? Then it was rock music. Video games. Texting. Won't someone think of the children!
Folks taking photos of everything? That's because it's easy and memory sticks are nearly limitless. We're all acting like professional photographers used to act in the old days, burning through roll after roll of film to get that one perfect shot. Technology democratizes photography, making it accessible to everyone. As for posting your pics, that's just another way of communicating with people and finding human connection. A picture is worth a thousand words (though, these days, with the ease of self publishing, many people are also writing those thousand words). It's a great big beautiful tomorrow!
Me, I find selfie sticks rather LESS intrusive than the ol' "Let's back up six feet into the throughfare in order to take a picture of the family," routine. You don't
want to walk between the photographer and his subject, but sometimes you don't notice them in time. Or everyone ends up shoved into the narrow space behind them, trying to squeeze by. Selfie sticks take up much less room and eliminate the risk of accidentally photobombing folks.
I really think it's the name that causes many people to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the device. Selfie sounds selfish and sticks bring to mind, "sticks and stone may break my bones". Call it a "monopod" and people are far less offended by it.