What is up with Marvel's obsession with selfie covers and phones?

[Sighphi]

People like taking selfies. It's a thing. Not exactly a new thing, either - as plenty of people like to point out, it's not that different from the days of rich people paying for portraits of themselves, it's just that selfies are available to anyone with a phone. Miserable old bastards can bitch all they want about it being narcissistic or whatever, but miserable old bastards don't know jack shit about it. The hatred of selfies is frankly a hatred of women feeling proud of themselves. Because selfies are primarily associated with women, even if it's something that plenty of men do, too, and women are the primary targets of anti-selfie crusades. It's misogyny, pure and simple, wanting women to be ashamed of themselves, or at the very least to not feel too proud of themselves. That eternal tightrope women are forever being forced to walk of being Just Right. Not too this, not too that. Not too thin, not too fat. Not too submissive, not too assertive. Not too ashamed, not too proud.

Selfies are feminist. Hating selfies is, 99% of the time, a result of hating women.

I was talking about a specific thing, not about selfies as a whole.

It would like me saying why do hunters need assault rifles with 30 round mags, what are they hunting that they need that much firepower.
That's not a point about gun control overall but about a specific scenario.

I was specifically talking about super heroes taking pics.

I think this is just society as a whole.

Every time a celebrity appears or something happens, there seems to always be people taking pictures with phones.

My point is, saying that it's pandering to children isn't entirely accurate when grown men and women everywhere (and I mean literally everywhere) in the world take pictures and videos of interesting things.

Not really. Famous people can walk fine out in the open. As long as they are not making a scene most people just let them pass.

[Venomous Mask]

Again, not a new phenomenon:

[Yagamifire]

Feminist debates are far more nuanced than we find in most internet debate.

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Seriously the funniest thing I've read this morning. Thanks for the laugh upon waking up.

The fact that that this

Feminist debates are far more nuanced than we find in most internet debate.

is in the same exact thread at this

Selfies are feminist. Hating selfies is, 99% of the time, a result of hating women.

Is killing me. LMAO

[Username taken]

I was talking about a specific thing, not about selfies as a whole.

It would like me saying why do hunters need assault rifles with 30 round mags, what are they hunting that they need that much firepower.
That's not a point about gun control overall but about a specific scenario.

I was specifically talking about super heroes taking pics.



Not really. Famous people can walk fine out in the open. As long as they are not making a scene most people just let them pass.

I disagree.

Lots of celebrities (I mean real celebrities not mildly popular individuals) get a LOT of attention from some fans (and some crazy photographers).

[Username taken]

Again, not a new phenomenon:

Exactly.

People have been taking pictures of themselves for a while and with the rise of mobile phones people just take them more frequently and very easily.

I don't take selfies much but I really don't have any issue with the practice.

What's wrong with taking a picture of yourself and appreciating yourself? Regarding comics, they've always been following cultural trends from the language to Superman actually fighting Muhammad Ali. Some fans tend to blow everything out of proportion these days, I can only imagine the reaction to a comic featuring Superman fighting Floyd Mayweather or Connor Mcgregor...lol

[The Negative Zone]

I didn't know "selfie covers" could cause such discourse on a comic book forum.

[whiterabbit]

Heh....youths.* Don't we want young readers anymore?

Kids don't have the money to spend at $4 and $5 dollars an issue. They can buy Call of Duty #14 for the price of 2 six issue stories.

[Yagamifire]

"Selfies are just a new fad and Marvel is tapping into it. It's mostly young girls that do it and old people don't like it because it's new (and cuz they're sexist!)!"

"Selfies have always been around and they're nothing new! Look at these old men taking selfies of themselves!"

People need to sort their narratives out.

[Username taken]

"Selfies are just a new fad and Marvel is tapping into it. It's mostly young girls that do it and old people don't like it because it's new (and cuz they're sexist!)!"

"Selfies have always been around and they're nothing new! Look at these old men taking selfies of themselves!"

People need to sort their narratives out.

There are several different narratives in the thread.

I don't think the people that don't like selfies are sexist. Yes, some people roll their eyes at the sheer number of selfies that some young women (females take a lot more than guys) take but I'm not sure it's coming from a position of sexism or misogyny.

However, I didn't think that cell phones and selfies on comic covers could "trigger" people. I mean, we see them everyday and I don't see how any form of contemporary entertainment set in the "world outside" could avoid this.

[Rogue Star]

Narcissism is generally understood to be an excessive love of oneself. I would argue that the vast majority of those who take selfies don't fit that criteria.

The fact that "self" is in the name of the term doesn't mean it's bad. "Self-care" is a thing, too, where "self" is part of the term, but anyone with any sense at all agrees that self-care is a very good and very important thing. "Selfie," as a term, does not include any sort of value judgment. It's a neutral word. It is not equivalent to selfish, self-obsessed, or anything else. It's just a term for a person taking a photo of themself. Which is something that's been going on for almost as long as cameras have existed. And before that, self-portraits were a thing, too. Before phones with cameras were so ubiquitous, people would get friends to take pictures of them, or they'd go to portrait studios. Before cameras existed, people would pay to have portraits painted. Selfies are by no stretch out of the ordinary. The only difference is the ease with which people can take selfies, and the resulting control it gives them over how the pictures turn out.

Selfies are fine. Selfies are very often a way for people who struggle with self-image to be able to be more comfortable with their appearances. The popularity of selfies also makes it something that people can actually bond over. Right now, on Twitter, #LGBTbabes is trending. LGBT people are posting selfies of themselves looking like babes. And the same people posting the selfies are also going through the tag and showering love on other people for their selfies. It's a declaration of unity and appreciation. And it's fun. Selfies are fun to do. It's something fun that young people, especially young women, like doing to feel good about themselves and to feel connected to the people they share the selfies with.

And then people jump on them, try to shame them, tell them that liking how they look makes them self-obsessed narcissists. And it's bullshit. What's wrong with just letting people be goddamn happy? People always hate young people for wanting to be people. People always hate the things that make young people happy. That shit needs to stop. Young people are great, and they deserve to be allowed to love things, and love themselves, without miserable old bastards trying to argue they should feel bad about it. If some girl posts two dozen selfies a day? More power to her. If a tween girl like some shitty pop singer? Rock on, girl. If teen girls obsess over poorly-written vampire romance books? I totally ship the protagonist with the bad boy vampire. No shame. Only love.

And on banning people from criticizing, well, if someone is trying to shame a person for their appearance, or to shame them for posting a selfie, then that someone is an enormous prick and deserves to be shamed in response.

It all boils down to this: You care too much about what other people think. Words and opinions have no power over you unless you give them power because you're desperately seeking the approval of others.

You will not survive this world in one piece if you have a glass jaw. Toughen up. Let people's criticisms roll off like water on a duck's back. Or like the saying goes, "If it don't apply, let it fly!"

There's no point in being angry at... "haters". Because haters don't die, they multiply. Make sure you don't become like the people you're angry with.

[Rogue Star]

Again, not a new phenomenon:

As far as my points about narcissism goes, I'm referring to the people who are constantly taking pictures of their own self because they just can't get enough of seeing how good they look... and often times they feel like posting many of them a day to certain social media websites because they thrive on receiving people's compliments, forcing me to ignore them.

[Tiamatty]

It's not just millennials our world leaders (see both candidates from last year's US election), the news we consume are the same. Your advertisments are very self centered all about me me me. Society has become very artificial and narcissistic. And the TV created that gets the most views like Love Island are just a reflection of how vapid people have become. Now whether it's harmful or approaching a psychiatrislc illness level depends on how rampant people are using it. Depends on if it's effecting their relationships and they're self esteem and self worth.

So it's not just millennials and it's not just selfies.

Frankly, I'd argue Millennials are, on average, less self-centred than previous generations. They've grown up with the Internet, in a world made much, much smaller than at any time in human history. 30 years ago, a teen in Nowhere, Nebraska probably didn't know any black people, and all they would know about black people is what they got from pop culture. Now, they can do deep dives into Black Twitter, easily find tons of media from black creators, and actually learn, in as much detail as they want, about black culture and the black experience. And the same applies for every group. I've never met a trans person (that I'm aware of), but I'm able to pay attention to what trans people say about themselves and the world they live in.

All this inter-connectedness makes Millennials more compassionate, and more willing to help each other out. There's a reason crowd-funding works, and to be blunt, it ain't the goddamn Baby Boomers or Gen-X'ers. It's Millennials. It's young people giving money to other young people, because they want to see each other succeed. So I would argue that society is actually becoming less superficial and narcissistic.

The kids are alright, I promise.

Source? Selfies are a cultural phenomena (I won't get into the good or bad argument, which has already been flogged to death here) but they are in no way exclusive or even dominated by women. The idea that they are a 'feminist issue' is absolutely perplexing and seems like yet another massive reach in the recent trend of turning absolutely anything into perceived 'oppression'.

One of the articles I linked to in a previous post gives the numbers. Those articles also go into why selfies are a feminist issue.

So my mom hates women?! I never knew!

But honestly, I don't know where that connection don't liking selfies = hating women you are making is supposed to come... it seems completely random... men take a f*ckton of selfies too, and they aren't particularly associated with women... Trying to associate dislike of selfies with mysoginy seems like an attempt to smear other people's opinions by randomly linking them to a reprehensible behaviour... "If you don't think like I do, you are a mysoginistic baby-eating nazi!"

So 68% vs 42% makes selfies a female thing? Isn't that stretching things a bit? How can you say that something is strongly associated with women when almost half of the men are doing it, and a third of the women aren't doing it?

If you're having trouble understanding the argument of selfies being a feminist issue, try reading the articles I linked to. Or some of the countless other ones out there. The shortest possible form: Selfies are a feminist issue because young women are more likely to be attacked for taking selfies than any other group.

And wait, is that Tiamatty person joking or not? Because at first I thought it was clearly a funny joke, but now I can't tell.

I'm completely serious. So are the people who wrote the articles I linked to earlier. So are the people who wrote all the other articles that can be found about it. Or the people who haven't written articles, but have simply talked about it on social media and other places.

[LOSTie-chan]

I feel like selfies are old hat anyway.
Gimme some covers with dabbing and fidget spinners.

[ViewtifulJC]

Lets be real Peter Parker's been taking selfies and selling them to Jonah for like 50 years

[Tiamatty]

I was talking about a specific thing, not about selfies as a whole.

It would like me saying why do hunters need assault rifles with 30 round mags, what are they hunting that they need that much firepower.
That's not a point about gun control overall but about a specific scenario.

I was specifically talking about super heroes taking pics.

Superheroes are people, so why wouldn't they like taking selfies? If anything, it's unrealistic how few selfies we see superheroes taking.

Also, didn't Spider-Man actually spend 30 frigging years getting paid for taking selfies? [Edit: Viewtiful made this same joke while I was typing this rant up, so I'm taking that as proof of some sort of psychic connection.]

It all boils down to this: You care too much about what other people think. Words and opinions have no power over you unless you give them power because you're desperately seeking the approval of others.

You will not survive this world in one piece if you have a glass jaw. Toughen up. Let people's criticisms roll off like water on a duck's back. Or like the saying goes, "If it don't apply, let it fly!"

There's no point in being angry at... "haters". Because haters don't die, they multiply. Make sure you don't become like the people you're angry with.

Alternatively, people could try not being toxic trashfires who insult people just for liking things. I mean, that's an option, isn't it? That people stop being assholes? And that people stop making excuses for the assholes? Why the hell is it always the responsibility of the person being attacked to just "suck it up"? Why is it the responsibility of teens whose hormones are making it difficult for them to cope with all the new emotions they're being flooded with to brush off insults from grown-ass men who SHOULD. KNOW. BETTER? This is victim-blaming bullshit. Different people have different thresholds for how much negativity they can cope with. And each person has different thresholds at different times! One day, you might feel like you're the Fricking Boss, and you're just itching for someone to come at you so you can smack them down. The next day, you might feel like a useless idiot, and every little bit of negativity piled on you by random jackasses just weighs you down that much more.

"Just ignore it" is, frankly, terrible advice. Because we're not even wired that way. Our brains are wired to give a greater weight to negative experiences than positive ones. And it places the burden of responsibility on the person being attacked, while largely excusing the person doing the attacking. What we should be doing is telling the jackasses who insult people for liking things to knock it the hell off and shut the hell up. We should be shaming and scorning those people, and making clear that their behaviour is not acceptable.

But that requires actual effort, easier to just bitch about the "sensitive snowflakes" who feel beaten down by endless think-pieces about how everything they like is awful and they're awful for enjoying it.