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Psychologists claim that taking three or more selfies a day could be a sign of mental illness.
In 2014, a spoof news article coined the term "selfitis," saying that the American Psychiatric Association was going to start recognising it as a real disorder.
Three years on, two researchers have looked at the term and have decided there could be some truth to it.
Psychologists Mark D. Griffiths and Janarthanan Balakrishnan have published a paper in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, in which they argue that selfitis is a real condition, and can be diagnosed as excessive selfie taking.
They also developed a "Selfitis Behaviour Scale" by surveying the selfie behaviour of 400 participants from India. The scale assesses the severity of the condition, of which there are three levels.
India was chosen for the study as the country has the most selfie-related deaths. Out of 127 selfie-related deaths that have been reported worldwide between March 2014 and September 2016, 76 occurred in India.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:25PM (13 children)
You get out of college.
You suddenly have this realization.
No, a revelation really.
Almost an epiphany.
You have no vital or useful skills, talent or knowledge.
All the jobs in Marketing, Management and Politician are taken! OMG! WHAT are you going to do!!!!
To make matters much more worser, the US stupidly doesn't have Universal Basic Income paid for by people who DO have useful skills, talent, knowledge AND initiative.
Thank goodness . . . there are still jobs where you can pretend to contribute something to civilization.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:52PM (6 children)
To make matters much more worser, the US stupidly doesn't have Universal Basic Income paid for by people who DO have useful skills, talent, knowledge AND initiative.
Thank goodness . . . there are still jobs where you can pretend to contribute something to civilization.
Most people who DO have some useful skills and talent are still wasting them in jobs where they pretend to contribute something to civilization, and we'd be better off without them producing anything. Just look at Windows 10, all the new UI/UX stuff going on these days, most American-brand cars (esp. Chryslers), the now-dead Windows Phone OS, Apple Maps, engineers who design modern "island" keyboards, I could go on and on.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)
You just went wrong by listing people who actually do something complex, even if it doesn't add value.
How about Dealership Salesmen, Walmart Greeters, half of the waiting staff in most US restaurants, so many Pentagon employees, TV talking heads, and anyone whose primary income comes from social media posts? (list non exhaustive, sadly)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)
No, I didn't go wrong at all, you misunderstood my point. I was specifically pointing to workers who supposedly do "real", "productive" work as opposed to bullshit like car salesmen and Walmart greeters. How much better would society function if the engineers and technicians at Chrysler didn't do their jobs, and instead went to work at a better car company? It might not be good for the mechanics who profit from unreliable junk Chrysler/Jeep vehicles, but for society overall, it'd be better. How much better would society function if we didn't have UI/UX people replacing well-designed interfaces with ugly, flat-UI, dumbed-down monstrosities? How about the engineers who design laptop keyboards? Society would be better off it they were simply out of work, and the laptop makers were forced to just keep using the designs from circa 2010. Society would be better off if the engineers and factory workers at Frigidaire factories were all laid off, and consumers were forced to buy from better brands like Bosch, Samsung, LG, etc. How have the countless tech people who worked on Apple Maps contributed to society, when there were already so many far-better mapping and navigation applications? Society would be much better off too if Microsoft had been forced to lay off all their UI/UX people before coming up with Metro, and had been forced to just stick with the Windows 7 UI.
That's my point here. We engineers and tech people deride Walmart greeters, TV talking heads, and similar workers as "useless", but there's tons of us who also do useless "bullshit jobs" and ultimately add negative value.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arcz on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:22PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:22PM
"Being from Norway is not a skill." Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:13PM (1 child)
It's not their fault. They are just trying to survive. The problem is their employer who seeks profit no matter the cost. Well thought out, clean, correct code and other very involved engineering problems take time and money. No one wants to front the money for that and pay really smart people to fix problems in a comfortable research environment. Path of least resistance to more money. Doesn't matter how completely fucked it all is.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:22PM
No, the problem is the system. The system rewards people for doing pointless make-work and reinventing the wheel: companies which are rich incumbents make more money by pointlessly "improving" a product and selling a new version, instead of just calling it "done" and moving on to something more productive for their engineers to do. Doing something new is risky, whereas slapping some new lipstick on a pig and selling it as "new and improved" is low-risk and virtually guaranteed to make a profit. Also, there's just not that many new things that need to be done; most new ventures are going to fail anyway. We also don't need lousy products when there's better ones available (e.g. Chryslers), but the market rewards companies with crappy products if their marketing is good enough to make up for their products' crappiness, or they have enough idiot customers with irrational brand loyalty.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)
Coincidentally, civilization offers a well-paid no-skill profession where taking selfies is a requirement: prostitute !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:58PM
Governor of Missouri? Posting as
ACbob_super, right here on SoylentNews? Amazing.(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @02:39AM
Hard at work flat on your back?
Only the cheap ones have no skills.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:21PM (2 children)
I'd be more inclined to listen to UBI arguments, if they didn't suck so badly. How again is it better to drag down the people who have "useful skills, talent, knowledge AND initiative" for those who don't?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:55PM
If it is not obvious what I wrote is soaked in sarcasm, I will simply say that the most powerful argument for UBI is that the UBI recipients would prefer not to work, and therefore should expect to be supported by the people who DO work.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by archfeld on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:19AM
If I had a UBI, I'd stop working as a network security consultant for assholes who really don't give a damn and start making brownies, beef jerky and guacamole for a 'living'. I love all three and people line up for my stuff at the farmers market. I usually sell out in about 15 minutes, but the time it takes to create them make it not really profitable even though I love doing it...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge