The Dangers of Selfies

It's really strange to find out what people do with the selfies we post on social networks. I usually only post selfies of my face because I'm self conscious. I post a lot of selfies though and I often think I shouldn't post any. A friend of mine photoshopped a couple of photos of mine without asking once. He changed my lipstick and hair color to pink. He made the other look like a character from Avatar. I liked what he did but it made me realize that people can take our photos and do whatever they want with them and we'd never know it. 

I was really creeped out when a man told me he was using one of my selfies as the background on his cell phone. I thought....why??? I'm not a model. I'm not famous. I don't think of myself as all that attractive. I kindly asked him to not use my photos for personal reasons and told me to, "take it up with Facebook".  That infuriated me. I blocked him. 

A while back a couple of men used my photos to make creative collages of my face with hearts and doves and crap.  They did so without my permission and I really didn't want my image in such unoriginal works of "art". 

Today I was shocked to discover a friend posted one of my selfies on his Twitter account. Once again, I though "why?".  This is a married man. I'm sure his wife would like to know "why?" as well. I'm hoping he meant to share a photo of Scottie's art and just chose the wrong image. 

All of this makes me realize that nothing we post belongs to us. Once it's public people think they can do what they want. They can photoshop our faces onto naked bodies or onto people doing questionable things. They can glorify, make fun of, or do nasty thinks with our images. Just think what all they can do with our words.