John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are busy taking selfies,” and that philosophy has inspired generations of people who aren’t really paying attention. Now, after years of those lives being documented solely on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Yik Yak, Wigwam, Glub Glub, Beep Boop, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated, and Fyvush Finkel, they will at last make their way to television, which is that thing people sometimes snap selfies in front of.
Deadline reports that Disney’s millennial-focused cable network Fusion has ordered My Selfie Life, a half-hour reality series that will follow young people as they undergo a “major experience,” then don’t really feel that experience because they’re too busy taking selfies of it. “We all might live some of the same life events,” the network says in a statement, “but the way we experience them is as unique as our own fingerprints.” In this case, the fingerprints we smear all over our phones, in a desperate attempt to document every passing moment so that we can look it. But you know, later.
Each episode of My Selfie Life will deal with a single subject going through that sort of “major experience,” which could include things like “tracking down lost love, beginning a sex change, defeating an eating disorder, dealing with mental illness, beginning an interfaith relationship,” or any other life-changing event that doesn’t require your complete focus. All of those stories will then be told “in the most authentic way,” as captured by the subjects themselves on their own devices. It’s much the same as how Facebook has only the most authentic photos of people you know.
My Selfie Life debuts this fall, upon which it will provide a “compelling exploration of what it’s like to be young and living in the digital age”—finally, giving those young people a place to think about themselves.