Last week I posted four outfit selfies in two days on my Twitter account. I was at the Fontainebleau for that iHeartRadio Ultimate Pool Party. I had put a lot of thought into what I should wear to each specific event of the weekend. I was alone in a super fancy hotel room that had a really giant and well-positioned mirror. I finally figured out how to use filters on Twitter.

Nope.

I thought I looked hot four times in two days, and I wanted the Internet to agree.

Is there any other reason that we post pictures of ourselves on the Twitter, Insta’, Book, Snapchat and Vine? Aren’t we all just saying, “Here I am! Please react!” If we weren’t in it for a response – even a negative one – we wouldn’t post the shot. There is no known health benefit to uploading photos onto the Internet. It is, at it’s core, an act of vanity; we believe that we are worth being seen. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that necessarily (at this point in the post…), but I am here to admit that my relationship with vanity has changed significantly since the advent of social media. I am more vain, and I think you might be able to say the same.

Five years ago I said, “I am absolutely not going to be one of those people who announces their engagement on Facebook.” Then I did just that. After getting engaged I said, “I am not going to be one of those people who puts a tons of wedding pictures up on Facebook.” Same deal. And those were things that were actually relevant and interesting to the people in my life. They were “news.” The exact stuff I site when I defend the importance of social media in the first place. “It’s such a good tool for connecting,” I say. “It’s a great promotional tool for my work,” I say. “I get lots of great articles about the miserable gun violence situation in our country,” I say.

A selfie is not news.  It’s become “news” in the way that what the Kardashians do is news, but it’s not necessary information (much like all the details of their lives).

But who cares? If everyone is doing it then it’s no longer taboo, right? That’s true as far as I was concerned when I posted my own shots. I felt no sense of the awkwardness or shame that I might have felt when I first started using social media. In fact I thought, everyone does this; why should I hold back? They say the more personal your posts the more dedicated your following, so my selfies only stand to help my cause. They are, dare I say, important. Fine, that’s pushing it, but the, “what’s the big deal” argument still holds a good amount of weight. Until you consider this:

Two weeks ago I got a haircut, and when I left the salon it didn’t look as perfect as I’d hoped for that post-hair-cut-in-the-car-selfie-shot, and I was legitimately disappointed. I actually took the time to stop, take several shots, and filter them in various ways before giving up, really annoyed.

That makes me feel awkward and a twinge ashamed. And it makes me wonder, was the vanity always inside me or did Twitter turn me into a monster? I have long-loved a good photo of myself on a great hair day in an outfit that makes me feel great. I have always enjoyed being the center of attention. I’ve written a blog about my life for seven years.

But I think there’s a difference between enjoying and needing the spotlight. Enjoying is a little bit of  vanity – the belief in one’s own abilities or attractiveness to others. Needing it might be narcissism – the pursuit of gratification from that vanity. I’m not entirely sure, and only the given photo poster knows how the given selfie they post makes them feel.

All I know is that I didn’t love how I felt when only one or two people commented on my four selfies, and there’s one very easy way to stop that feeling from popping up again.