Selfies with Homeless People: Can a Few 'Likes' Win over Decency?

We've had the gym selfie, the pet selfie, the funeral selfie and now we have perhaps the most cringeworthy and pointless trend of all: the selfie with homeless people.

The latest trend, splashed all over social networking site Tumblr, demonstrates that many people now believe it is reasonable, even normal, to bother vulnerable, hungry, cold, sick and mostly unconscious homeless people for a picture, just to obtain few 'likes' on social networks and gain a bit of self-confidence.

This latest tendency is the umpteenth example of a society no longer able to distinguish between privacy and oversharing, between decency and highly unnecessary entertainment.

Since the advent of social networks, people have started sharing chunks of their private lives on public platforms, well aware that perfect strangers have access to such information.

But the urge to place private moments on public display has become a widespread obsession, an all-consuming desire to make everybody across the globe aware of every single aspect of daily life.

From a meal eaten at a restaurant to pictures of someone's toilet, everything has been shamefully posted on the web with the sole intention to draw attention.

Social networks have exacerbated the narcissistic, self-centred side of millions of people who desperately need to be 'liked' by others, very often perfect strangers from the web.

In this latest case of extreme oversharing, the concern is not only that most of the times the posing occurs without the consent of the homeless person in question; but also that a social problem such as homelessness is ignored and, even worse, ridiculed by hundreds of youths who have completely lost, or probably never had, their sense of decency and respect for other people (or themselves).