A Flogger (pronounced flow gur) is a "photo logger", a person that uses a social networking site called "photo log" in Argentina. It pretty much is a facebook where you just put pictures of yourself and is a term that they use in Argentina to identify a certain group of people. I tried and tried to rap my head around the concept but it's a very strange phenomenon. The typical picture is where you take it of yourself by holding a camera above your head, tilting your head to one side and trying to look as pitiful as possible. This is how you identify a flogger. But there is much more to a flogger than this, much more. Floggers typically have what we would call an "emo haircut", believe that smiling makes you look weak, wear balloon pants, and video themselves dancing what looks like river dance and posting it to their social networking site. Apparently, a Flogger isn't just someone who vainly takes a bunch of pictures of themselves, during my time in Buenos Aires I came to realize it's a lifestyle.
Emo kids are a strange phenomenon that we have in the states. Most emo kids that i've known have similar backgrounds: 1) they come from white middle class families, 2) have loving parents, and 3) live in some delusional world where they believe they weren't hugged enough as a baby or that their parents hate them because: they bought them a car, feed them, give them money to do stuff with their friends, and don't impose a curfew. Point number 3 must be the legitimate reason that explains why their hair only grows in the front, their headphones are an integral part of their head (except for when they take their bi-monthly shower), and they feel like regardless of their gender they must wear their mother's jeans. And black make up.
So hug your babies. Hold them so tight.
The one thing that floggers and emo kids definitely share in common is how much attention they try to bring to themselves. Every day is the worst day of their life, no one can possibly understand how hard their white middle class suburban existence is, and their unrequited love life is so sensationally depressing that every weak attempt at poetry or song lyrics are based on that one moment that they perpetually live inside. The ironic part of all this is although they say, "I just want to be left alone," and "nobody understands me," they 1) spend a lot of time with their other emo friends who look just like them and make the same ridiculous claims, and 2) spend a lot of time on social networking sites dropping hints every ten minutes that they don't believe in love, or make sure to post as many pictures of themselves frowning as they can so that we do understand that they are "so sad, so very very sad".
To an emo kid or a flogger you are only as cool as you are depressed. Thus, depression is not a psychological problem, but the only way they know to pick up chicks. Their profile picture changes constantly because there are an infintismal number of ways you can frown at a camera and be convincing enough that you're still hurting over that boy or girl back in second grade who took your heart and your colored pencils and moved overseas, ruining your childhood, and forbidding the back of your head to grow equal lengths of hair with the front.
So there you have it. Take my advice: if you see a group of floggers or emo kids standing, lounging, or sitting in your path as you make your way down the halls at your local high school or on the sidewalk outside the mall, step with caution. You may slip in a puddle of their tears, unblock the sun so that it shines on them, or simply remind them what normal people look like. You don't want to end up as a bitter lyric quoted in the caption of their next photo shoot for their wall post, do you?
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