This selfie arm can literally hold your hand as you take glam pics

The selfie struggle is real, folks, for sure, but has it really gotten to the point where we’re using fake plastic arms to make our selfies seem less lonely? Well, sort of.

The Selfie Arm is both hilarious and creepy, and can make all your selfies instantly weirder — if that’s what you’re into. Before you become irrationally angry at the world that this even exists, you need to know that it doesn’t really exist. It’s performance art, sort of. It’s meant to draw our attention at the absurdity of the constant picture taking: our Insta-culture.

Artists and designers Justin Crowe and Aric Snee didn’t invent the Selfie Arm prototype for friendless people afraid of looking lonely on Instagram (although that’s exactly what it’s good for). They designed the device as, “a direct commentary on the growing selfie stick phenomenon, and the constant, gnawing need for narcissistic Internet validation,” according to an interview they did with Design Boom.

Let’s face it, folks. Our obsession with taking pictures of ourselves might be teetering on extreme, and we maybe need to scale back a little. At least, that’s the vibe we’re getting from this latest art project. Thankfully, this particular device isn’t really available for purchase. If it was, it might catch on and make us all look even sillier.

Crowe and Snee are artist/designers who experiment with the relationship between humans and technology, and they envisioned the prototype as a sarcastic solution to Internet loneliness. The Selfie Arm is their reaction to our obsession with constantly posting pictures of ourselves, and the artists told Design Boom they are, “fascinated by the idea of technology and its illusionary ‘connectedness’ and ‘sociableness.’”

The Selfie Arm eliminates the look of a lonely selfie, without doing much about the lonely part. And that’s the point.

It’s a biting metaphor about how disconnected we’ve become from other humans, and how reliant we are on the unreal validation received from likes and shares. Even though the device is pretty comedic, its message is brilliant. Here’s what we learned from the Selfie Arm: We probably need to put our phones down and look around a little more.

(Images via Justin Crowe and Aric Snee)