Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Where's your selfie?

Think of the times when you feel so good about the way you look and want it to become breaking-news.. So you take your phone out, look into the front camera and Voila! There's your selfie! And was that hard at all?
That's how the world revolves around today and all thanks to technology!!!
It is not a very recent phenomenon as it goes back to 1900 with the debut of the portable Kodak Brownte box but has suddenly taken the front and yet again, Technology is to be blamed.

So what exactly does it mean to "take a selfie"???
Isn't it just a self portrait photograph? Yes, it is just that but with the invention of our dear smart phones and social networking sites, it has become much more than just that.
It first started off to be a big boon with one of the very first social networking sites- MySpace where people could express what they felt through it but now it has become even bigger with the latest
techno boosts: Instagram and Snapchat.
Instagram is an online photo-sharing app which enables users to capture their best shots and then use digital filters to make them look even more appealing. It has recorded to have the most selfies posted there. The third most trending tag is #me with over 67 million photos which are all only self portraits and #selfie being the 27th most popular tag with over 20 millions photos. So how absurd can it get?
And with Snapchat which is a picture messaging service being at present one of the most obsessive things on this planet allowing you to keep clicking pictures all day long unless you get fed up which is very unlikely to happen.

The "selfies" took to greater importance when President Obama created an "international incident" by taking a cell phone picture with his seat mates, Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Britain's David Cameron recently at Mandela's Memorial Service.

The even more astounding fact is that it has now been included in the online version of the Oxford Dictionary and it had been awarded "top 10 buzzwords of 2012" and "word of the year" as of last November.
That just comes to show how times are changing and how well we seem to be adapting to the whole "selfie culture".
Research studies have also proved to what extent it damages one's brain and given an insight to the psychology behind it. It is said that more than half of the world's population, when feeling low, unconsciously picks up their phones, and starts clicking the best shots they can just to feel better again.
It is also more habitual among the female clan but that seems to be changing over time too and it is no more a trend seen just among the the youngsters. Even people in their middle ages are seen very often trying to keep up with the times so they do not get left behind.
They can get quite obsessed too if I must add!

Today, there are so many other words that have derived from the word itself and are highly used such as elfie (selfie in an elevator) , selfoo(selfie in the loo) and so on and I won't be surprised if these hit the dictionary sooner rather than later.

It is yet another addiction, trust me!

But for now, let's just be contented with the fact of being able to strike a pose in the most flattering manner and show the world our selfies!

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