Have we not realised dissertation selfies are painfully cringe?

Adding ‘obligatory’ does not make it better


The diss hand-in photo shoot is a mad craze that ruins lives. It must be stopped.  

A plague is upon us. A plague that spreads each year from student to student. Friend or foe, Mathematician or Criminologist, man or women: all are infected.

We all go to uni – it’s an impressive achievement. After meeting some people it really is an achievement for you to make it to university. However educationally-stunted you may be, surely you knew the general outline of your course? You surely must have known there would be a thing called a dissertation?

Taking a photograph of a wonderful thing can be beautiful – a 1000 words and all that. Your dissertation on water irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa is not a beautiful thing.

Nor should it be surprising – a duck stealing a bag of crisps is surprising, and worth photographically documenting. You doing a totally normal and 100% predictable thing is not.

You went to uni to graduate. To graduate you must write a diss. Why are you documenting actually doing this normal thing with a photograph?

No one cares about you finishing a compulsory aspect of your degree. It’s equivalent to photographing yourself at every seminar. It’s not interesting for anyone besides yourself.

Your diss isn’t even that important! A double diss is worth a third of your year – will you be taking pictures of your completed summatives in other modules which cumulatively will add up to around a third anyway?

Apparently in our selfie-happy world we have to share every moment of our lives. So even though you haven’t graduated, and potentially could do really really badly you still feel obliged to share a photo holding your fucking diss.

You’re holding an essay outside a grim 1960s building. How can you possibly think this was going to turn out well? Maybe the dead behind the eyes look is what you all were going for.

You’re invariably going to be a mediocre player in a soul-destroying capitalist world. This diss is a key ingredient in progressing towards that deathly life. Why document it other than to share with the world your own recognition of your inevitable descent into a position of capitalist lap-dog in chief?

So no you didn’t cure cancer, graduate, or even necessarily do well in a compulsory aspect of your degree that isn’t even important. Don’t now try and dig your way out of it by saying it’s ‘obligatory.’