Kim and Khloé Kardashian snapping a selfie at Jeff Bezos’s extensively lambasted marriage ceremony on June 27 (picture by Mrco Bertorelo/AFP through Getty Photos)
I assumed my days of writing about selfies had been over. My e-book The Selfie Era (2017) had completed its job: It chronicled the shape’s rise into the mainstream, from changing into Oxford Dictionaries’ “Word of the Year” in 2013 to reworking TV reveals, pop psychology, advertising, and visibility for marginalized folks. At present, the selfie has develop into so normalized that, just like the texts I ship and the air I breathe, I’d virtually forgotten about it.
Then, the selfie resurfaced on the most elementary of locations — Chicago’s large Six Flags Nice America amusement park— in a most uncommon method.
On a heat afternoon final autumn, my associate and I had been driving the Logger’s Run, a watery curler coaster-esque experience that includes sitting in an outsized fiberglass log because it floats down a “river” — a steel slide full of water. After many twists and turns, it ends with one huge drop and an enormous splash.
A couple of minutes later, smiling and soaked, we headed to a contraption with flying chairs. We had been swinging by way of the air with different fairgoers when my associate found that her cellphone wasn’t in her pocket. It will need to have flown out throughout the Logger’s Run, so we raced again to it. We minimize the road, weaving our method by way of sweaty our bodies till we reached the log-dismounting space. After about 20 minutes of asking round, a man carrying a soaking-wet blue shirt hopped out of his log clutching my associate’s iPhone. Moments later, it was again in her fingers.
Later that day, as we swiped by way of the lovable images we’d shot on her cellphone, a selfie of a random man popped up. He appeared like he was excessive above the bottom. We checked out one another, out of the blue very confused. Was this some form of elaborate cellphone hack? Had her cellphone began selecting up another person’s iCloud stream? May or not it’s that this wasn’t even her cellphone?
The stranger’s selfie continues to be in my associate’s digital camera roll. (picture courtesy Alicia Eler)
Then it hit me: This was the identical man who had returned her cellphone on the log experience. For some cause, he determined to snap a selfie earlier than the large splash.
His selfie continues to be in her digital camera roll, an odd artifact of our interplay with this stranger who discovered a cellphone and determined to take a photograph. Was he bored? Curious? Hoping another person would see it and keep in mind him?
After a lot contemplation, I concluded that he probably took the selfie as a result of he thought it could be humorous. If he’d taken it together with his personal cellphone and posted it to his socials, possibly he feared it could come off as attention-seeking. Or maybe his mates would’ve been happy that he was having enjoyable at Nice America, and fortunately appreciated it. A selfie positive aspects that means based mostly on its context, which is set by the place it’s posted and who sees it. I started to marvel why folks take selfies and what they signify.
That curiosity stemmed from The Selfie Column, which I wrote for Hyperallergic from 2013 to 2014. Most individuals don’t marvel why somebody took a selfie and posted it — as an alternative, they assume they know that particular person’s intentions, turning the selfie right into a projection of their very own concepts. As Agatha Christie wrote in her 1930 novel The Mysterious Mr. Quin, “Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.” There may be extra to the selfie than meets the attention.
Within the decade or so since its rise in recognition, the important objective and that means of a selfie largely stay the identical. A lot of the selfies that make headlines are nonetheless unintended, or a minimum of coincidental; a seek for “selfie” brings up daredevil selfies, demise by selfie, self-promotion, loneliness. What has modified is the place and when folks snap selfies, and the expertise they use to take them.
A Temporary Historical past of the Photographic Selfie
One of many first selfies was an 1839 daguerreotype self-portrait by photographer Robert Cornelius, however it wasn’t till 1963 that artist Andy Warhol started taking selfies in picture cubicles as a part of his inventive apply. He was obsessive about documenting his existence. “A picture means I know where I was every minute,” he as soon as stated. “That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual diary.”
Little did he know that at some point, this visible diary could be public and on-line, for mates and strangers alike to see, relying on privateness settings. Everybody may have their quarter-hour of fame.
Within the early 2010s, Kim Kardashian pioneered the selfie as it’s understood at the moment: a self-image with an consciousness of potential publicity. “I can look at any photo of myself and can tell who did my hair and makeup, where I was and who I was with,” she writes in her 2015 e-book Egocentric.
It’s straightforward to imagine that solely self-involved, celebrity-seeking, actuality TV-show-wannabe of us take selfies. However that’s an oversimplification of a visible tradition phenomenon that has modified the best way we talk with others.
Selfies At present
In 2025, the selfie is extra ubiquitous than it was in 2017, earlier than TikTok and Instagram reels. TikTok has 1.8 billion month-to-month lively customers, whereas Instagram has over 2 billion. That’s loads of selfies.
However one of many major causes our selfies look totally different at the moment is — unsurprisingly — the speedy ascent of synthetic intelligence.
In April, OpenAI rolled out picture era capabilities in ChatGPT. Social media was shortly flooded with AI-generated photographs within the fashion of Studio Ghibli, the most recent in a protracted line of developments that require folks to present AI firms entry to their faces. Filters and modifying apps like Facetune and YouCam Make-up had been popularized within the 2010s, however some now use AI to investigate facial options and determine methods to “enhance” them, to each absurd and dangerous impact. The Tumblr aesthetic is out, and refined AI-powered filters are in. It’s simpler than ever to make your self conventionally fairly for a selfie.
The tourism business and artwork establishments have been involved about selfies, too. In 2015, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork boldly banned selfie sticks. Across the similar time, a museum in Manila created an interactive artwork museum designed particularly for taking selfies. Final month, a customer by accident tore a gap in a Seventeenth-century portrait whereas trying to take a selfie on the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, a part of a development of museumgoers backing into artworks whereas snapping selfies.
Nonetheless, extra vacationer websites are accommodating ravenous selfie-takers. Town of Barcelona is taking motion to ease the selfie mania at Sagrada Família, Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished cathedral. Town not too long ago introduced plans to create a devoted public sq. the place guests can take selfies earlier than coming into the basilica.
Persons are nonetheless utilizing selfies on relationship apps, usually poorly. It’s frequent information that for those who’re searching for a connection, there are a number of selfies it is best to keep away from: mattress selfies, gymnasium mirror selfies, shirtless selfies (for cis males), rest room selfies, extreme group pic selfies, selfies the place your ex or a toddler (yours or another person’s) has clearly been cropped out. However loads of folks nonetheless do that, both as a result of they don’t know tips on how to curate good images of themselves or don’t wish to find out how.
Selfies with celebrities are nonetheless in every single place, although followers have gotten extra aggressive. Earlier this yr, a fan requested Tameka Empson, who performs the “Kimfluencer” Kim Fox within the BBC cleaning soap opera EastEnders, to take a selfie at a funeral. In April, Australian cricket participant Travis Head turned down a selfie request at a grocery retailer in India. The video of his so-called “selfie-refusal” went viral. In February, the Brooklyn-based Subway DJ requested comic Jerry Seinfeld for a selfie and held up his cellphone accordingly. Then he shouted: “Free Palestine!” Seinfeld replied, “I don’t care about Palestine” and walked away. Subway DJ frowned and posted the video anyhow.
Politicians are additionally utilizing selfies as energy strikes.
In March, the US authorities illegally deported 238 Venezuelan males who they claimed had been gang members of Tren de Aragua. A lot of this was based mostly on their tattoos and social media profiles. To deport them with out due course of, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act — a regulation enacted in 1789 below then-President John Adams that permits the president to deport and detain immigrants throughout a “declared war.” They had been despatched to CECOT, a mega-prison in El Salvador that’s recognized for human rights abuses. US officers have admitted that they wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego García, who was below protected standing. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador demanding his launch, and was capable of meet with him. There’s a photograph of them speaking over espresso and water, a glance of concern in Van Hollen’s face as he leans throughout the desk, however no selfie.
Moore’s April 15 selfie at CECOT (screenshot Hyperallergic through @reprileymoore on Instagram)
Consultant Riley Moore, a Republican from West Virginia, additionally visited CECOT and acquired a tour of the jail. However he opted to take a selfie throughout his go to in April, his clean face seen in entrance of a cell full of shirtless tattooed males. In one other picture in the identical submit, he provides two thumbs up in entrance of the cell, writing within the caption, “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.”
The images are vile and dehumanizing; the submit obtained many feedback, with folks calling the selfie “despicable.” One person stated, “I live in your district, and I am disgusted that my representative sees human degradation as a photo opportunity. Shame on you.”
Selfie Futures
Once I wrote my e-book in 2017, the selfie was the brand new child on the block and millennials had been on the forefront of social media use. However now it’s clear that the selfie is right here to remain. At present, rising issues round selfies and self-imagery because of publicity to social media are largely directed towards Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who’re completely rising up on-line. Earlier this yr, mother and father of 4 British youngsters who died after collaborating within the viral “blackout challenge” sued TikTok. The development circulated in 2022, and now movies or hashtags associated to the problem are blocked. In 2020, the TikTok “skull-breaker” viral problem got here below fireplace for the same risks it posed to children.
Whereas these aren’t selfies within the conventional sense, they’re outgrowths of the core idea of crafting and sharing photographs of oneself. In 2022, social media firms made round $11 billion promoting to minors within the US, the place 95% of teenagers use social media, in line with the documentary Can’t Look Away: The Case Towards Social Media (2025). The forthcoming iPhone 17 would possibly get a significant selfie digital camera replace, doubling the entrance digital camera to 24 megapixels; Androids just like the Xiaomi 15 Extremely have already got 32-megapixel cameras. Picture high quality will enhance, providing sharper, brighter selfies.
The selfie will proceed to flow into, mutate, and join us with others in surprising methods, as long as we’ve smartphones in our pockets. Although it could not at all times really feel prefer it, the selection to submit is ours.
