Where are these people's arms?

As I travel through the myspace profiles, I invariably come across these bizarre close up pictures of people taken at strange angles. You know, the ones where there arm extends and disappears either to the right or to the left of the frame. In some pictures, both arms extend on opposite directions as if to be giving the veiwer an uncomfortable hug.

Everyone knows that I'm talking about the self taken pictures. All over the internet there are self taken pictures with digital cameras and webcams. (The webcam pictures are the most disconcerting because I feel like my head has been severed and placed on someone's desk and that I now stare at my assailant from his workspace.)

I'm saddened by this new state of affairs in which we find ourselves. No longer do any of us have actual friends to snap our photos for us. Now we must take out own pictures in a masturbatory ritual of holding our camera out, turning in on ourselves and snapping away. Then we share our darkly lit photos with a world of pixilated friends whose voices we will never hear; whose skin we will never touch. We take only our own pictures, we touch only our own skin and we look at a screen that tells us that we have seventy-five friends.