Projecting the right image is now the world's most difficult task.
Our visual, virtual selves express more of who we are than words or flesh ever can.
It's not remarkable, then, that someone would take time -- a lot of time -- over ensuring that a selfie expresses the perfect angle on the perfect flesh.
Yet a video that has now been seen by almost 1.5 million YouTubers is dividing the world, to within inches of armed combat.
The video shows a woman in a bikini desperately trying to ensure that her selfie will show her best self. She searches for the right angle of her face and, well, upper torso. She turns her phone, this way and that, and checks her art.
Satisfaction doesn't come easily. Perhaps holding the phone in her left hand will change the shadows.
About 23 seconds into the proceedings, we stop and realize that someone is taking their time to film a woman taking her time taking the perfect selfie.
The filmer begins to add commentary. It's derogatory and even Not Safe For Work.
The selfie-taker has no idea she's being filmed. Would she care anyway? It's hard to know. Her greater concern, having reached facial satisfaction, is to achieve a fine angle on her bottom.
The filmer is aghast.
Yet who is more absurd? The woman taking an age to take a selfie? Or the woman taking an age filming the woman taking an age to take a selfie?
The most fascinating thing about selfie-taking is surely its very mundanity. Everyone is doing it, because everyone thinks it's the normal thing to do. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram need to be fed and their offal is us.
There are even large contraptions people are carrying around in order to make selfie-taking easier and the results more fetching.
Yet the woman filming still seems to be surprised at the efforts our bikini girl is making to look her best.
I have no reason to believe that this video was invented purely for some level of shots and giggles.
But the divided response to it on YouTube (roughly: Who's That Fool Taking The Selfie? vs. Who's That Fool Filming The Woman Taking The Selfie And Insulting Her?) shows that people's self-awareness might not yet be as refined as they think it is.