Polly Vernon
I need a word for a thing I’ve noticed people doing on social mediah[ 1]. It hasn’t been formally identififified yet, and I’d like to – mainly so I can start damning it with the utmost force, once I have. Dear God, this thing is awful! Annoying, perplexing, dripping with vanity and conceit and wanton intent to mislead. A shiz load of people are doing it, enough to make me wonder if perhaps they’re right, and I’m nowt but a curmudgeonly old reality purist, who should get over her unrealistic attachment to ‘truth’, and start rolling with current modes for presenting oneself as a lot hotter/happier/more successful online, than you actually are… But that seems unlikely. So: regarding the bad – currently nameless – thing. It’s where an individual posts a headshot of someone who bears a fleeting resemblance to them – perhaps their hair is similarish, or their skin tone is in the same ballpark, or the kink in their nose or the snaggle of their teeth – except that, hang on a minute! The headshot person is waaaaaay more beautiful and cool, and, now I come to think about it, actually an obscure French model from the ’70s (or some such). The poster will casually pop the headshot image on their Instagram feed, without comment, in the hope followers will either straight mistake the beautiful cool obscure French model for them – or at the very least, realise this is who they’re all supposed to think the poster looks like, as opposed to Garth from Wayne’s World. I’m tempted to herewith baptise these ‘Fnelfies’ – Fake News Selfies – on the understanding that the term extends beyond the realms of the faux selfie, on to the practice of posting a full-length bikini back shot of an individual who, again, could pass for you (same length hair, roughly the same body shape, blah blah) if it weren’t for the fact that they are actually a recently googled stock shot of a hot girl on a beach, while you are… Well. You, on a beach. At a push, I’d like it if Fnelfie could also be applied to those who routinely Facetune/ Onetouch their actual selfies to the point that they look like smoothed-over Manga character approximations of human faces, and I start wondering if they know how removed this idea of their heads has come from what they look like to other people, with eyes, who can actually see them. [1] That’s how we’re spelling it now, yes.