After-sex selfies are yet another form of social comparison

From article:

Perhaps this sexual shamelessness upsets the old. But there’s something else to it too: boasting is boasting, whether it’s about sex or expensive restaurants or new Allen Edmonds shoes. People get similarly annoyed at friends who have too many holidays in Capri, and remind us of that photographically too many times. We get annoyed at the very fit people who post pictures in their bikinis all the time. It is unpleasant, if you are not having sex, to be shown your friends happily having it, just as it is unpleasant to see their engagement announcements if you are unhappily single. After-sex selfies are simply another form of happiness porn.

And there have been studies on this too: Facebook leads to depression. (A few researchers have come to similar conclusions; the most recent was from the University of Houston.) The problem is “social comparison”: Constant envy, constant competition, a constant sense that everyone else’s life is working out more calmly and elegantly. The more you use Facebook, the more likely you are to be depressed. Instagram, for its part, is largely a cataloguing of hedonistic pleasures, leading one to forget that there are other pleasures.

Yet, if we say we are more serious, deeper, than these smugly naked people, we face a fundamental dishonesty…

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/russell-smith-coming-to-terms-with-public-displays