No, You Don't Want To Do 'Aftersex' Selfies

You really want your aftersex selfie to have Newt Gingrich's mug photo-shopped onto it then circulated with your gf?

There are so many reasons not to do "aftersex" selfies that it shouldn't be necessary to enumerate them. Start with the smug, solipsist nature of the "selfie" itself which embodies all the gratuitous self-infatuation that is poisoning this country - causing it to mutate into a bunch of navel-gazing zomboids with faces pushed into assorted small screens - whether of smart phones or iphones.  Let us also recall what Krimhilde, my sister-in-law and Eck spiritualist,  said:

"These are the creations and obsessions of the immature human, which remains steeped in narcissism, in self-absorption. No truly advanced or advancing human on the path to a higher spirituality takes a selfie. Our true motivation and mission in this life is instead to embrace selflessness. That means placing one's body in proper relation to one's spirit."

Wonder what she'd think of the 'aftersex' selfie?  It isn't difficult to imagine and the clue is in the last line of her comment.

But perhaps one isn't spiritually inclined. Then there are other reasons not to traverse the route of this benighted form of selfie:

1- Any instagram, any selfie can go onto the larger web, and can also be used in ways never intended by the original senders.  One such is displayed above with the aftersex selfie twisted into a mocking caricature by having photo-shopped the visage of Newt Gingrich into the guy's face. The poor girl friend is then stuck being seen with this GOOPr goober along side her, while the delirious face of the cat who sent the selfie is nowhere to be found.  (Let's also bear in mind a truly malicious person would use programs superior to photo-shop to superimpose the face of a terrorist onto the selfie, instead of Newt's!)

2- The GCHQ, NSA's Brit cousin, can snatch it up - as it does millions of instagrams, via its 'Optic Nerve' program. As the Guardian noted (Feb. 27), having gobbled up and stored millions of such images, including "sexually explicit" ones it's become increasingly difficult to keep them from the prying eyes of staff. While aftersex selfies are usually not explicit, one can picture GCHQ staff having some good yucks at the assorted ones captured that they gawk at before permanent storage. Besides, do you really want your aftersex selfie stored in some spook outfit's system for decades?

3- This ought to go without saying, but sheesh, if you actually have to post an 'after sex' visual maybe you aren't getting enough in the first place.  I mean why would you need the selfie? To remind yourself for the next 'dry' six months of what you haven't been getting regularly?  So then you can stare freely at the captured sex-satisfied smile and engrave it in memory until the next time?  Oh wait, it's not that at all, it's that you want to rub it in to your friends' faces how much you're getting and they're not! Again, a fool's errand! Most perspicacious people will still perceive you have to "prove" you are getting at least what THEY are getting! And they'll still end up believing that because you had to post it then you ain't getting what they are!

4- The aftersex selfie is gauche and uncool. No really cool person, at least  from a 60s perspective, would have to advertise having had sex.  A hippie couple from the 60s would view this manifestation not so much with disdain or judgment, but look at the senders with a mixture of pity and sympathy.  They'd also kind of tie it in with the perspective in (3).

5- Sexual relations, as Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts once pointed out ('Does It Matter?') are still a basic form of human intimacy. This extends not merely to the sex act itself but to the prelude to it (foreplay) and the post-coital phase which ought to include light banter, snuggling, cuddling - but not dispatching "selfies" to the digital world of 2 billion staring, peering, judgmental eyes.

6- The person who would violate the  boundaries of social propriety by taking an after sex selfie (also according to Watts) would be blind to what constitutes the off-scene or the "ob-scene" in human relations and situations, and hence would also be likely to send a selfie of him (or her)- self sitting on the crapper taking a dump.  Since the person lacks the social perceptions to see what ought to remain private in one domain (sexual), they'd likely lack it in another (bodily elimination) for which privacy is also warranted. (Of course, the exact analogy here would be the "post-dump selfie").

These are just some of the reasons the wise and mature person avoids taking aftersex selfies. Of course, the really wise and mature person avoids taking any selfies, period!