essay on social epidemics
Answers
Explanation:
On March 4, 2014, what became known as the most famous selfie ever was taken by Ellen DeGeneres. The photo was captured at that year’s Oscars and featured Bradley Cooper and a multitude of other famous faces (Toole). Just a couple of months before, The Chainsmokers’ music video for their satirical song “#SELFIE” was uploaded to YouTube. The song itself has the tagline “Let me take a selfie,” spoken in between the ramblings of a vapid party girl. The video features a good number of the 2,000 selfies sent in for the sole purpose of being mocked (unbeknownst to the fans who sent them). To this day, the video has around 426 million views (Toole), and it is an incontrovertible fact that the selfie has tipped.
How did the simple (and perhaps narcissistic) act of snapping a picture of oneself become a global phenomenon? A more pressing question is, what special characteristics make a person, product, or idea capable of becoming a social epidemic? In his nonfiction work, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell proposes that there are three rules of epidemics: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context. Focusing on the selfie in particular, two of these three rules can effectively be applied to analyze what is behind the vast amount of selfies found on various websites today - The Power of Context and The Stickiness Factor. The technology and social media of the modern world prove that the selfie has tipped. The first photographic portrait in history.