Tacky Selfie: Over Reaction?

[Rageaholic]

It's probably tacky to a picture of yourself smiling at Auschwitz on social media. That said, I can't help but think those leaving nasty comments are overreacting a little bit. It's bordering on bullying, which is a lot worse than posting a tasteless but harmless photo.

[Greenday]

I don't see anything wrong with it. It's just an ordinary selfie. Now, if it was a selfie that actually involved messing around with the camp itself, I could understand the outrage.

[TheHuckster]

It's definitely something I wouldn't do. I would take respectful pictures of the scene itself, without my smiling face on them. The ironic contrast of her smiling face against the buildings behind her that housed indescribable horror 70 years ago could even be construed as some kind of artsy commentary if it were done intentionally with that in mind.

I do think it's very tacky, and without knowing her, on the surface it even looks ignorant and insensitive. People calling her out on it being offended is not at all bullying. This is going to invoke a genuine reaction on people who are going to call her out on it, and if they are constructive in their arguments about it, as the examples from the article are, I don't have a problem with it. In fact, I have a bigger problem with her reaction to one of them, where she says she threatens to kill someone over their reaction.

[s_stabeler]

I do think it's very tacky, and without knowing her, on the surface it even looks ignorant and insensitive. People calling her out on it being offended is not at all bullying. This is going to invoke a genuine reaction on people who are going to call her out on it, and if they are constructive in their arguments about it, as the examples from the article are, I don't have a problem with it. In fact, I have a bigger problem with her reaction to one of them, where she says she threatens to kill someone over their reaction.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. The comment where she threatened to kill someone was someone smiling at her dad's death- when the picture has no suggestion the girl is happy about the deaths of the Jews. Is it an overreaction? yes, but honestly not more so than the original guy.

also I see nothing constructive about the arguments. Hell, the picture isn't even obviously Auschwitz.

is the picture tacky? to publish yes, to take in the first place, probably not. It's a record of her going somewhere she always wanted to see.

[TheHuckster]

I'm going to have to disagree with you. The comment where she threatened to kill someone was someone smiling at her dad's death- when the picture has no suggestion the girl is happy about the deaths of the Jews.

I don't think the picture suggests that she's happy about the deaths, but it does suggest to me that she doesn't recognize the gravity of the atrocities that were committed within many people's lifetimes. It's going to spark an emotion from people, many of whom have direct family ties to what happened.

And the person who was "smiling at her dad's death" was someone who, for all intents and purposes, believed by smiling at Auschwitz, she was doing the same to that person. The post was simply an analogy to how that person felt about the picture. And she responded to it as if she doesn't even understand that what she posted is offensive to those who have personal connections to the former concentration camp.

[siead_lietrathua]

i dunno. her smiling about being there doesn't bother me. later in the comments she mentions it's a place her and her dad studies about together bt he died before he made it. for her it might be more of an "hey dad i made it here" thing than an "i must be super solomn because people died here" thing.
then again, i live on battleground land, where seeing people take selfies at the landmarks where people were slaughtered and towns razed... is pretty normal. give it another 50 years or so and it won't be so explosive a reaction from people. 50 years after that, and noone would blink.
hell give it long enough and there may even be reinactments, like there is for the US civil war, or the 1812 war up here.

[TheHuckster]

i dunno. her smiling about being there doesn't bother me. later in the comments she mentions it's a place her and her dad studies about together bt he died before he made it. for her it might be more of an "hey dad i made it here" thing than an "i must be super solomn because people died here" thing.

I could believe that, I could even understand that, but the way she reacted doesn't seem to reflect this.

then again, i live on battleground land, where seeing people take selfies at the landmarks where people were slaughtered and towns razed... is pretty normal. give it another 50 years or so and it won't be so explosive a reaction from people. 50 years after that, and noone would blink.
hell give it long enough and there may even be reinactments, like there is for the US civil war, or the 1812 war up here.

Possibly. But, by then, people who have a deep emotional and personal connection to it will have passed on, just as they have for the civil war and 1812. For me, it's not a question of the location of the selfie, but that it's still "too soon" to take the subject matter casually. For as long as there are people still living who have experienced the horrors that went on, either by having experienced them first hand, or remember loved ones who did, making light of the events is going to invoke an especially negative reaction.

[Gravekeeper]

Its not just that she's smiling, its that she actually called it a selfie at Auschwitz along with a happy face emoticon. There's tacky and then there's tone deaf. Also, she's inviting the attention so I can't say as she deserves any sympathy for drawing the ire of the Internet on her. She's the one retweeting and spreading the photo for the fame whoring.

If she had posted the picture and why it meant something to her instead of posting it with happy face emotes I doubt this would have gone anywhere.

As is, I have zero sympathy.

[patiokitty]

My opinion on the whole matter is mixed. Yes, it is horrible what happened at Auschwitz but it is time to move on. Never forget it and work to ensure it never happens again, but those sites? Bulldoze them and, at most, erect a small memorial about the events that happened, and then create new buildings and new memories of the place. Why keep these obvious reminders of such a cruel era? The memories of those atrocities should be more than enough, especially with places like the Holocaust Museum being in existence and children being taught about what happened (unless you're a student in Germany - they avoid teaching students about this sort of stuff because it is still so painful a part of their history).

I have spoken to survivors of the death camps who were only children during the Holocaust, and many of them would prefer that the buildings be torn down and buried. I have also done a great deal of research while in university of this era of German history - I have some personal ties to WWII Germany through my dad and my Opa because they accepted that while I was not blood related to them I was still family (my dad is my mother's third husband).

[Gravekeeper]

The article links to a tumbler of similar pictures. Including 3 smiling selfies at 9/11 and a guy doing a smiling thumbs up at the Holocaust memorial. So....yeah. This could be much worse. >.>

[HYHYBT]

Blame, partially at least, parents and photographers who ingrain from the earliest age a mandatory connection between smiling and being the subject of a photo.

[Rageaholic]

Blame, partially at least, parents and photographers who ingrain from the earliest age a mandatory connection between smiling and being the subject of a photo.

LOL there's a lot of truth to that.

[Hyena Dandy]

I sometimes wonder about selfies. They're an interesting thing... I mean, like, why people take them. I don't totally see it as narcissistic. In a way, I agree with HYHYBT here. There is a bit of the 'Smile in a camera' thing.

A lot of these... I mean, selfies seem, sometimes, to me, to be a "Here's where I was" thing. You used to tell people all the places you went, now you take a photo, and you're in it, so they know you went there and didn't just copy it off the internet.

A couple others of the ones on that blog seemed to me like bored kids who really, really didn't want to be here. I think there's an age where "Going to auschwitz" is a great way to educate someone about auschwitz and make them understand, but that's after they can totally comprehend it. I see the pic of the guy who looks maybe 15 or 16 in the gas chamber, and I can't say I'm at all surprised. He's goofing off there the same way he probably does in class.

Plus, this one, if ever there was a time to smile at Auschwitz, "I always was going to come her with my father, and he died before we could, but I finally made it" is a super good time.

[AccountingDrone]

hell give it long enough and there may even be reinactments, like there is for the US civil war, or the 1812 war up here.

Too late, there are already re-enactment groups. [A friend and I joke about being ersatz-gruppen. We are so in that handbasket to hell.]

[Greenday]

My opinion on the whole matter is mixed. Yes, it is horrible what happened at Auschwitz but it is time to move on. Never forget it and work to ensure it never happens again, but those sites? Bulldoze them and, at most, erect a small memorial about the events that happened, and then create new buildings and new memories of the place. Why keep these obvious reminders of such a cruel era? The memories of those atrocities should be more than enough, especially with places like the Holocaust Museum being in existence and children being taught about what happened (unless you're a student in Germany - they avoid teaching students about this sort of stuff because it is still so painful a part of their history).

People still deny that it ever happened. Destroying the camps would get rid of the only proof left.