It is vital that we preserve our early selfies for posterity
Not to mention all our accumulated cat videos.
News that the world selfie has been named word of the year today sent the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) into a flap, because after having been identified as the host of a forum in which the term was first used it was unable to produce the actual picture. The Oxford Dictionary has decided this thread in a science …
Selfie and Facebook are synonymous with the age we live in.
All about self gratification, the publication of private lives that are neither interesting nor important to the rest of the population other than in the eyes of the one that publishes the inane, boring, self centred, insignificant, uninteresting and sadly lacking minutiae of their daily existence.
Welcome to the decade of 'look at me, look at me'.
I think you totally fail to understand what FB is for, to its users. It is a way for people WHO ACTUALLY KNOW EACH OTHER to keep in touch.
The fact my friend got a new kitten is indeed insignificant and uninteresting to 99.9999% of the world, but it is interesting to me. If you restrict your use of FB to only those people whose lives you are actually interested in, it makes much more sense.
I suggest the reason FB is so boring to so many on this site is because they HAVE no interest in anyone but themselves. Which is ironic when you're claiming FB is about people who only care about themselves.
If someone on FB is boring or spews updates that are boring, I simply block them. I'm sure they do the same if they feel my updates are dull too.
Correction, that is what FB is supposed to be for... in reality people judge their worth on having thousands of friends they never ever met but share their lives with....
I use Facebook to keep in touch with people who are either a) living in another country and timezones mean its easier to share updates than talk or b) are addicts to Facebook and who seem to have forgotten that SMS & email exist.
While I agree with your comment about Selfies, I've used facebook pretty much since they accepted non us members.. Personally, I use it partly as a way to keep in touch with friends I do actually spend time with and partly as a way to keep in touch with friends that for various practical reasons, I no longer see regularly (such as those who have moved to a different country for instance). I don't have thousands of friends on FB, nor do I need them.
Regarding publishing photos and status updates about myself, personally I don't, really do that much. I usually use my status to comment on something I've seen or experienced and 99% of the photos of me that are online were uploaded by other people.
You know photography did exist before the internet right? In fact I'm sure just after photography was invented the idea of immortalizing one self occurred (probably at the same time as arty shots of ladies in various states of undress )
Exhibit A.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cornelius
Whatever. Oxford is wrong. We were using the word "selfie" for self portraits taken with Polaroid's "Land" cameras, especially the SX-70, in the early 1970s. (San Francisco Bay Area.) I suspect searching the Usenet archives could turn up many cites for this term being in use on TehIntraWebTubes in the very early 1980s, but I can't be arsed to look. A late 1970s CompuServe or TheSource photography forum archive would probably also turn up cites, if such an archive exists.
Kids these days think they invented everything ...
All classical forces of production finally cumulating in the production - naturally - of self itself. This selfie reflects intriguingly the nature of the beast but it's really more about producing "self" through the accumulated interactions and the socializing. It's the Social producing itself through net-work: expressed often as individual displays but the means of production remain sharing & responding to image and vibe.
If a 'selfie' <shudder> contains the titular lip-pinching, then comment on the post. Offer the contact details of a local pest control officer.
'You must have a bee's nest nearby - because your lips don't usually look like that'.
Yes, your comment will be deleted rapidly at the behest of the vain poster, but you will have sent them a gentle prod that they are being very, very silly.
'Storage admins may just have found the moment at which it is finally possible to ask for budget dedicated to the above tools. You can hear them now: “Boss … did you hear how the first ever selfie was nearly lost?”'
I think of the lines from J.V. Cunningham's "To What Strangers What Welcome":
Where the lost hurries to be lost,
Both in its best interests
And in the best interests of life.
I go lobbying for more storage, but would I could get rid of all the piled up videos, pictures, etc. that were of mild interest at best when made and survive through neglect and indifference.