Selfie sports: the field of digital documentation

Were you really there if you didn't take a selfie for your Snapchat or Facebook?

The large majority of us, especially students here at Rhodes, have attended a sports game at some point in their lives. Either because they genuinely love watching sport or because they want to socialise. Sadly (for me, anyways), the latter category of people seem to dominate the stands: there to pre-drink, or add to their collection of selfies with purple paint smeared in warrior lines on their cheeks.

This selfie culture has become one of the most prevailing cultures in our society. People argue that it's one of the best tools for self-expression, and freezing moments in time for them to cherish. We have cultivated a worldwide lifestyle punctuated by the slogan: "I post, therefore I am."

I went to one of the big Rhodes rugby matches last week where they played against local rivals University of Fort Hare in the Varsity Shield tournament. My mission was to immerse myself in the crowds of patriotic, energetic Rhodes and UFH fans and see how many selfie Kings and Queens I could catch in the act. Obviously, when your mission is to take photos of the selfie-takers, there seemed a lot less in comparison to when I don't intend to take notice of them. But I tried, and I got some pretty cool results.

A lot of people I have spoken to have said that "taking selfies at sports games is just a result of the time we are living in". So, is this something we just accept? I'm okay with that, personally, because selfies are fun and are ways to document different parts of our lives. But when I'm at a sports game, I want to watch the sport being played. To others, this might not be the case: I'm just an overly avid sports fanatic who is extremely defensive of my commitment to all sports.

But an interview with Sherry Turkle, sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), shed some light on the reality of the selfie culture. What struck a chord is this statement: "The pause to document becomes part of the living of a life." In other words, most peoples' experience at a sports game is not complete unless they have some proof that they were there.

However, there are pretty snazzy technological things being developed that are helping to boost fan engagement at sports matches. Snaptivity is an app aiming to change the way people experience sports matches by capturing their celebrations and most emotional moments without requiring any selfie stick or camera.

Although the app's main interest is placing more focus on the fans, and less on the players on the field, by "capturing them in the most candid moments", it does allow fans to not worry about documenting their time at the game and pay more attention to what they paid a ticket for. The app works by logging in your ticket and seat details, and robotic camera infrastructure locates where you are seated in order to take pictures of you for you to access afterwards. How cool?! Anti-climax: it doesn't exist in South Africa, but we can have hopes that something similar will come to us.

But either way, we live in the digital age. People are experiencing things digitally and documenting them digitally, and not a moment is missed.