Entering “selfies” into Google Trends, a program made to track the amount of searches for a term, yields one result in March of 2012. The chart reaches its peak with 100 results in January of 2013. Since then, the results have fluctuated from 80 to 90. Google seems to think that selfies are rising in popularity.

Selfies may seem like a hip new trend among the youth of the world, like bell-bottom jeans and windbreakers, but there’s just one issue: selfies aren’t some new fad.

Selfies aren’t something invented during the rise of personal cameras and smartphones. They’re just a new name for an old concept. A selfie is nothing more than a self portrait, and self portraits aren’t new. Just because it’s easier to take a picture of yourself doesn’t change the fact that people have been creating representations of themselves for centuries.

I can get my phone, take a picture and post it to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. It’d take less than a minute for me to produce content and put it out there for people to see and “like” or “favorite.” It wasn’t that easy for an artist to put his work out there. There are at least 36 surviving self-portraits of Vincent van Gogh. He had sit at an easel and paint, for hours on end, over the course of several months.

Let’s say it took van Gogh three months to make one self-portrait. It takes me a minute to post a selfie to Instagram. There are roughly 43,800 minutes in a month. If I posted a selfie every minute, then at the end of three months I would have posted 131,400 in the time it took him to complete one self-portrait.

The thing is, I’ve got a considerably easier life than van Gogh had. He suffered with alcoholism, severe anxiety and mental illness. He didn’t continuously paint. He took breaks and let his work sit. He did things at his leisure. Even then, people didn’t appreciate his work.

According to The Art Story, van Gogh’s career lasted from 1880 to his death in 1890. In that ten year period, he made roughly 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings. In his ten-year career, he sold 1 painting to a family member. People didn’t care. He became famous posthumously. People only started caring about his work after he died. Now, where am I going with this?

Let me ask a question: do you care about selfies? Probably not. Did people care about van Gogh’s “selfies?” No. Did people call van Gogh a narcissist because he painted 35 pictures of himself? If you ask me, sitting for three months to paint yourself seems more narcissistic than taking a one-minute selfie. And he painted at least 36. That’s 108 months of painting. Wowzers.

Let’s take a second and ignore that people have been making self-portraits for literally centuries. Ignore the genre of self-portraits, and the icons like Frida Kahlo who painted several self portraits. Let’s look back at the major problem people have with selfies.

People say selfies show conceit and narcissism. People who post selfies are the devil incarnate, and social media like Instagram and Snapchat are Satan’s hands curling around the neck of today’s youth. Submitting your image to Facebook is the equivalent of selling your soul. A modern day Tom Walker would have snapchatted Old Scratch.

The thing is, it isn’t your problem if someone posts 12 selfies an hour. The fact that Sally Cheerleader or Chad Quarterback posts pictures at the beach or at the gym doesn’t concern you. If you don’t want to see them, don’t. Unfollow Chad on Twitter. Unfriend him on Facebook. Delete Sally from Snapchat, and block her on Instagram.

It doesn’t matter if selfies are stupid or not because if it isn’t your selfie, it isn’t your problem. When you have a kid and they post selfies you can start worrying. Until then, give selfie-takers a break. You’ve probably taken at least one selfie in your life, so stop complaining.

When asked what he thought is the greatest threat to America, citizen Liam O’Connell responded, “The selfie. People have no clue how degrading selfies are to your intelligence.”

A study conducted by Urban Dictionary called upon experts on selfies to analyze the effects of selfies on humans. Proclaimed psychologist SaRAWRR submitted a definition of selfie based on his findings: “A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website. You can usually see the person’s arm holding out the camera in which case you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to take pictures of them so they resort to Myspace to find Internet friends and post pictures of themselves, taken by themselves. A selfie is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a direction that is not towards the camera.”

Another entry from sociologist “Future Sociologist” said: “The beginning of the end of intelligent civilization.”

All of these independent studies followed strict guidelines set by Urban Dictionary, and interestingly enough, it was concluded by every single scientist that intelligence was dependent on the number of selfies taken, not socio-economic status or personal character.

In a paper from the University of Birmingham, (real) scientists prove that those who take selfies have more shallow relationships: “Increased frequency of sharing photographs of the self, regardless of the type of target sharing the photographs, is related to a decrease in intimacy. People, other than very close friends and relatives, don’t seem to relate well to those who constantly share photos of themselves,” Doctor in management David Houghton said. I’m asking you, the reader, do you like being shallow?

It is because of these dangers that us human beings must progress from the follies of social media fads towards the success of people taking other people’s pictures. It’s time as a planet of human beings to progress to the future, for the future. American hero Thomas Paine once said “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” Thomas Paine wants you to stop taking selfies now so that you children don’t have to deal with it later.

Look at the greats: Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Diego Rivera. They all used talent to paint pictures of themselves. SaRAWRR already set the parameters to define the selfie, which self-portraits obviously do not fit under, but nonetheless, there are still naysayers that will go against the words of professionals.  

So, take a selfie. Then, paint a self-portrait well enough for a 10 year old to identify the subject of the painting. See the difference?

Let’s look at another good metaphor: a friend of mine watches “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” (no, I don’t know why), and calls Kim “the selfie queen.” It doesn’t take a genius like Walker Allen to realize that Kim is arguably one of the most materialistic, unintelligent person ever. Now, tell me again how fine art and idiocy are the same.

It is at this point that we’ve established that selfies make you stupid and shallow.  I ask again, is it acceptable for society to allow a concept that is proven to harm humans and not even warn against or prevent the practice?

When I open Instagram, and look at the popular page, I see what everybody sees, which is an influx of selfies. Instead of praising and encouraging selfies, WE MUST ATTACK THIS EVIL! There needs to be warning signs and push notifications when turning on the front camera. We must prevent the atrophying of intelligence!

Let us not forget also the physical dangers of taking selfies. The Telegraph reports that 12 people have died taking selfies in 2015 so far, more than the number of shark-related deaths. As fun and innocent as selfies may seem, we learn from other’s mistakes and realize how dumb they are.

It’s OK, I get that states like Texas, according to National Pubic Radio, would rather sweep concepts like slavery in the U.S. under the rug and not teach proper history to children, but since when have we been actively encouraging our youth to be shallow, learn no social skills and put them in danger?

I’m not putting words in Walker’s mouth, but he is literally telling you that selfies are stupid, but it isn’t your problem, so why should you care?

Here’s why: because it is everyone’s problem that society is getting shallower, and, as he points out, once it is your problem, then you’re in trouble. In a way, he is admitting that the selfie itself is the problem. He just argues that you shouldn’t care until you have to, which is a dumb idea.

If nothing but tragedy can sway you, then all I can say at this point is think of the kids. We tell our children not to go into stranger’s houses, and to say no to drugs, but why don’t we pay more attention to what has killed 12 people? Is it fair to our youth that we actively shield them from protection? That’s exactly what we’re doing.  We’re using a shield, a tool designed to protect, to block their safety.

If we continue to take selfies, we will be striving for failure. We are the most powerful species on the planet, and life is easy. Imagine life as a fly. You won’t live for more than a month, people are constantly killing your kind, and food is never a guarantee. That sounds pretty hard. That’s what life is like lower on the food chain.  We must stay on top, we are humans.