The selfie revolution

You can blame the Oxford Dictionary for making the “selfie” respectable. After all, being named word of the year, as it was in 2013, does tend to soften some of the self-consciousness in this most self-conscious of actions.

Once seen as a symbol of narcissism and self-obsession, it is now the new normal, to the extent that most smartphones are sold on the basis of the front camera. Or, as that feature is now almost
universally named by manufacturers, the “selfie camera”.

I was one of the holdouts, having a near-allergy to the selfie. I still resist, but succumb more often than I would like. The reason for continued resistance is that it remains a big leap from the word becoming respectable to the action itself shedding its narcissistic image.

For most, it’s already happened, and for that you can blame Ellen DeGeneres. She choreographed the most famous group selfie yet at the 2014 Oscars, when she roped a bunch of actors into a group selfie, using the new Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone. Her tweet of the photo became what was then the most retweeted posting yet on Twitter and was estimated to have been worth a million dollars in marketing value to Samsung.

Ironically, it was Samsung’s up-and-coming challenger, Huawei, that came up with a new word for this type of selfie: the “groufie”. This was thanks to an 8 megapixel front camera on the new Huawei Ascend P7 which took the highest-quality selfies – and groufies – possible on a smartphone at the time.

It didn’t end there, and selfies and groufies have morphed into variations like selfscapes (selfie in a landscape), skyfies (selfies from the air, using remote
controlled devices) and jerkies (selfies to make an idiot out of yourself). I invented all of those, so it’s easy to imagine a new word emerging for every type of selfie.

The leading smartphones of the year so far, the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and Note 9 with their f1.7 apertures on the front camera, and the Huawei P20 Pro with its 24 megapixel front camera,
will be competing heavily with the iPhone XS and XS Max, due out this month, for the line honours in best selfies. It is such improvements that ensure the selfie will not die any time soon.

It has been estimated that more than 1 000 selfies are posted to Instagram every 10 seconds. More people die from selfie-related accidents than shark attacks.

And such trends will only grow. While self-portraits are as old as photography – the first portrait ever was arguably a selfie, taken by Philadelphia chemist Robert Cornelius in 1839, and teenage selfies go back to Russian Duchess Anastasia Romanova’s 1913 effort – it has only become a consumer obsession with the advent of the front camera on the smartphone.

Little wonder there is no etiquette around selfies. Little wonder Samsung once received a presidential rap over the knuckles when it engineered a sequel to the Oscars hit, getting Boston Red Sox baseball star David Ortiz to snap a selfie with Barack Obama.

“Maybe this will be the end of all selfies,” a White House advisor later commented.

Hardly.

While it won’t come down to that, the incident highlighted the need for some selfie ground rules. Particularly because platforms for posting, finding and sharing selfies are becoming more common, they are already entering the realms of the human resource department.

An ill-advised self-portrait in a bar or bedroom can as easily end up in the files of a recruitment agency as in a personal photo album.

So, for the sake of both personal reputation and career mobility, avoid the following:

• Duckface poses: no one wants to hire someone whose profile picture spells “half-wit” or “cat’s rear”.
• Bad taste: ranging from funerals to memorials, disaster sites to public toilets, common sense should tell you what’s inappropriate for a selfie.
• Conspicuous consumption: showing off your expensive tastes in meals, cars or clothes is offensive to most.
• Driving: oh, so you’re vain and a dangerous driver?
• Gym: because no one cares.
• Too many selfies: “me, me, me” is not a great advert for the self.
• Firearms: great evidence to be taken down and used in a court of law or a job interview.
• Bored face: if it bores you so much, imagine what it’s doing to the rest of us.
• Taking advantage: If you include others, get their permission both for the picture and how you use itIntimate or semi-naked: Oversharing. And not only by yourself.

• Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za
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