Just in for 2020: Instagram selfies are no longer the last word in narcissism. The upgraded way to peacock — egoism 2.0, if you will — is the multi-selfie.
Practised Instagram hawks will know the score — if you don’t, visit Kylie Jenner’s account, though don’t stay long as the vapidity might be contagious.
Observe: Jenner rarely posts one picture of her blandly beautiful face but instead shares a gallery of two or three infinitesimally different shots, differentiated by the slight cock of an eyebrow or the subtle snarl of a plumped lip.
It expresses a first-world problem of the highest order: essentially, you cannot decide which of your marginally different, equally vain pictures to post so you post all of them.
Watch the likes multiply — a recent triptych, starring Kylie in a red, crocodile leather suit, got 5.7 million likes. What have you done recently?
Other repeat turbo-narcissists include Kylie’s elder sister Kendall, their friend Bella Hadid and the model Emily Ratajkowski.
As Jia Tolentino, the eloquent New Yorker writer and author of Trick Mirror noted in a viral essay for the magazine last month, due to a combination of identikit fillers and fawning filters, these women now all look almost the same, at least on Instagram.
This means that if you spend too long down a hole staring at (almost) identical image after identical image, you will start to feel like you can see them everywhere, even when you close your eyes.
Not that it’s just the Instababes doing it. Even if you have purged your feed of celebrities (new year, new you!) you’ll find your mates succumbing.
A Scandi brunch in the corner table at a Broadway Market caff, weak January sunlight pouring through a window? Lovely but did you need both pictures? The changed position of the fork is so slight, it’s a veritable spot-the-difference puzzle. Your sister uploads three group-shot images from her birthday, all smiling, all happy, all the same.
The best way to handle narcissism, other than unfollowing, is gentle trolling.
To clarify, not abuse. But you can get in on the joke... Upload 10 of the same selfie, exactly the same, and tag a repeat offender. Start leaving comments on their posts expressing your preference for post one, two, three etc, or say: “Oh my God, you’ve improved so much! When was the first one taken???”
