Please Spare Us Your #AfterSex Selfies

Good job, Internet: The latest terrible trend in social media is #aftersex selfies, posted to Instagram. Nothing like a little post-coital bliss to break up the pet pics, brunch photos and vacation shots, I guess.

Originally discovered by Nerve, this blossoming cultural phenomenon has already garnered attention from the Daily Mail and Time, and it’s practically shooting fish in a barrel to enumerate all the ways this is the absolute worst. Let’s start by pointing out what everyone should’ve learned in the first grade, which is that nobody likes a braggart. How nice for you that you indulged in a bit of afternoon delight, but it’s really a bit much to disclose that to your entire circle of social media pals. Not to mention it’s a good way to wind up looking like that dude who won’t stop preening about his black belt in karate.

It makes the folks gloating about their fancy dishes of eggs benedict seem downright charming. Please, show me your purchases from Louis Vuitton instead!

It’s such an extreme example of look-at-my-life social sharing that you’ve got to wonder: Are these people boning for the sake of boning, or boning for the sake of Instagram? (I guess you can’t Do It for the Vine, now that they’ve cracked down on NSFW content.) The trend has a distinct air of doth-protest-too-much. The hashtag smacks of high school, when everyone’s so god-almighty obsessed with sex that actually doing it isn’t about the act so much as its social implications. But traditionally, that dynamic has been kept to locker rooms and hushed hallway conversations.

The trend is being criticized as oversharing run amuck, the ultimate obnoxious act of transparency. But frankly, this seems about as natural and unforced as those photos of Civil War battlefields where photographers dragged dead bodies into view to get the best shot. Whose first impulse after really great sex is to take a picture? Does everyone really keep their phone that close? (Don’t answer that.) This is Peak Bullshit Internet Life, the culmination of a trend that began sometime in the late 2000s, with chirpy Facebook statuses and carefully selected flattering profile photos.

I’d always figured complaints about millennials and their obsessive need to document everything were mostly a boomer op-ed cliche, the kind of thing Jonathan Franzen mumbles into battered books while surrounded by noisy, iPhone-waving teens on public transportation. But I’m honestly starting to wonder!

Fortunately, this trend should take care of itself. Much like #ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin, the hashtag has already been swarmed by jokers posting photos of cats, wet-wipes, their own hands. For instance, check out this clown: