First of all, what is a selfie? Well, it can be defined as a self-portrait photograph, in most cases taken by a smartphone, sometimes with an aid of a ‘selfie stick’, which has been very popular over the past couple of years.
Paris Hilton claimed to have invented the selfie, when she tweeted a few throwback photos of herself and Britney Spears from 2006, captioning it “11 years ago today, Me & Britney invented the selfie!”. Selfies have been a thing for centuries, they did not become a thing because of Paris.
Alex Williams has written an extremely interesting article for The New York Times in March of 2018, discussing “How The Selfie Conquered The World” in which he had discussed this claim, as well as elaborating on the term itself and its roots.
So, where did the term ‘selfie’ actually originate from?Well, according to Williams, the credit goes to an Australian man who used this word in an ABC Science Online Forum back in 2002, where he used it to describe a snap of his bloody lip after intoxicatingly face-planting; – “Sorry about the focus, it was a selfie”. It was however, quite recently that the term was considered to have “hit the big time”, by Time, when in 2012 it was included in its top 10 buzzwords of the year.
Can we consider the selfie as a new genre of photography? According to photography historians, indeed we can. Given the evident technological shift, it’s not all that surprising that many people started ‘turning their cameras on themselves’.
MySpace- the breeding ground for the selfie? MySpace was considered a sensation, before Facebook went mass. Every MySpace page needed a profile shot, which could have encouraged many people to opt for a selfie rather than a photograph of an object or anything other.
Before we knew it, selfies took over social media.
Kinga's Digital Self 
Kinga , I have never thought of the selfie phenomenon as a new genre of photography? What is your own opinion on this? Do you believe we could be building history by taking selfies?
LikeLike
Personally I have a mixed opinion on this, if you think back to when Kim Kardashian published her book of selfies, the world went crazy, however the selfie craze isn’t much of a deal now. So I guess I don’t entirely agree with the photographers who have labeled it that way, but I do feel that it won’t die down in the coming generations, and in the future the family photo albums may consist of mostly selfies
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes Kinga I would agree with that in the future it will all be selfies in the photo albums but I believe at times when people take selfies they are inclined to take too many rather than actually living the moment would you agree?
The population nowadays could be at a funeral or at a crime scene and it would be seen all over social media which I don`t think is acceptable selfies are being used in wrong circumstances and sometimes people go overboard with them would you agree?
LikeLike