Im usually not one for taking or posting selfies, but everyone does it from time to time. In my experience, selfies are taken to document one's presence at certain events, or sometimes just showing one's relaxed or funny side. Here's a look at some of the selfies I have posted to my Instagram. This one is the first selfie that I ever posted to my Instagram, in a hotel bed in Vermont with the caption,"Just a little #SS from me and #BigWeird in Vermont." The point of this selfie was to show my followers that I have the experience of traveling far away from home with my lacrosse team. All or most of my followers know that I play lacrosse here at UMBC, so that part was implied, but I also wanted my teammate to be a part of the selfie. This selfie does not outwardly say that I am a college student, but my followers know that to be part of my identity. So while I am not explicitly talking about my status as someone who can afford to go to college, to those that know me understand that as part of my identity. 
This next one was a something that I posted over the summer. My friends and I all had been wearing bucket hats a lot this summer, so as a sort of inside joke some of us started posting pictures with our bucket hats on what we determined to be #BucketHatTuesdays. This follows the same trend that I want my friends to be a part of my selfies, but this time through a hashtag instead of them being physically in the picture that I posted. It also represents a different group of friends, that is, my friends that I know from back home who do not attend UMBC. So although I am still connecting with my group of friends in this picture, it is a different group that I am targeting.
This last picture is one that was taken in January of last year. It was during this time that we in Catonsville experienced a blizzard. So, I decided to celebrate the blizzard by sitting on my front porch with one of my roommates in ironic attire. I wanted this to express irony in a way that would be funny, and that my followers would laugh at as well, while also expressing that my roommate has the same sense of humor.
All of these selfies show qualities about me that I do not outwardly try to express, but are evident nonetheless. In all of them I would like to think it is pretty obvious that I am a white male that does not live a lavish lifestyle, but a comfortable one. And I don't think it is evident what my sexuality is from any of these pictures, as that was not the intention of any of them. But I do think it is important that I include my friends in my selfies, whether by hashtags or by their physical presence in the picture, because it creates a memory with that person. And if there is one thing that Instagram has given us, it has allowed us to document our memories and share them with others, and I believe that is the reason why we post anything, not strictly selfies.
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