Thanks to social media and the smartphone, June 21st recognizes a form of self-portrait that couldn’t exist without them. It’s National Selfie Day!
On National Selfie Day, we are encouraged to take creative (appropriate) selfies and share them on social media.
- While the act of taking a selfie may predate social media, smartphones and the word which is now in the Oxford dictionary, the popularity of taking these self-portraits and the ability to do so has never been easier. Selfie sticks and multi-functional camera phones make it all too easy to take these kinds of photographs as well as group selfies (aka groupies).
- Women take 55.2% of all selfies.
- In 2013, Oxford Dictionaries named selfie the word of the year!
- In 2016, 70 people died while taking a selfie and that number is on the rise. These selfies that end up causing death have been nicknamed “killfies”!
- The earliest known photographic self-portrait (selfie) was taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. American photographer Robert Cornelius took a daguerreotype of himself in 1839 and even wrote on the back ‘the first light Picture ever taken.’
- According to Google, 24 million selfies were uploaded to social media last year.
- In a lifetime, the average person will take 25,000 selfies.
- Men Who Post Selfies Are More Likely To Be Narcissistic Or Psychopathic!
- When the instant Polaroid cameras arrived, more and more people began to experiment with photography as a hobby and a way of preserving certain life events. The habit even made its way into the movies, such as the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise,” where the two lead characters use a Polaroid camera to take what we now call a ‘selfie’ before embarking on a disastrous road trip.
- The Word “Selfie” Was Actually Invented By A Drunk Man in 2002. In Australia, Sept. 13, 2002, in an internet forum there appeared the following post by Nathan Hope: “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer (sic) and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
- Mr. Hope however denied coining the term, claiming it was a common slang. Over the years, linguists have analyzed this phenomenon and pointed out that it is a typical feature of the Australian language to shorten words and end them with “ie,” citing how “barbeque” and “postman” become “barbie” and “postie” respectively in local usage.
- Yes, there is such a thing as a selfie addiction. It’s described as the “obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of one’s self and post them on social media as a way to make up for the lack of self-esteem and to fill a gap in intimacy.” The American Psychiatric Association has it categorized into three easy-to-remember levels: borderline (3 selfies a day), acute (at least 3 selfies a day) and chronic (posting up to 6 or more selfies a day).
- The first recorded selfie dates back to 1524—not digital of course! Titled “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” the Italian renaissance artist Parmigianino used a convex mirror to paint himself, only flipped.
- It was former American astronaut Buzz Aldrin who took the first out-of-this-world selfie in 1966 during the Gemini 12 mission.
- #selfie remains as the official label and link for people to tag their digital self portraits. The first use of the hashtag goes back to January 16, 2011, in a photo uploaded by Jennifer Lee on Instagram.
- Scrabble players rejoice! As of 2014, the word selfie officially became accepted for use in the much-loved word game.
- Google statistics tell us that, solely on Android devices, there are an astounding 93 million selfies taken everyday. If you do the math, that’s approximately 64,583 photos per minute.
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