In 2013 the Oxford English Dictionary coined the word Selfie as the 2013 Word of the Year. It has also been added to the game Scrabble. A Selfie is a self-portrait photograph typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone and are often shared on social media sites. These casual self-portraits are plastered on Facebook walls, Instagram posts and Tumblr feeds daily.
A selfie has become such a sensation in our culture today, even our president is known for taking selfies. There are some selfies that will go down in history, such as the Ellen DeGeneres’s Oscar selfie (considered to be the tweet heard around the world) or the monkey selfie that is caught in a copyright battle. Even though selfies are newer to pop culture, the idea of them is not new. Several people claim to have taken the first selfie or coined the term selfie, but who do you think actually did?
This Australian man claims he coined the term selfie in 2002 after a drunken night at his friend’s house.
People say the characters in Thelma and Louise took the first selfie in 1991.
Other people think Mr. Bean took the first selfie in 1990.
This selfie of Buzz Aldrin was taken in 1966
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna used a mirror for her selfie 1900.
Robert Cornelius, an American pioneer in photography, took this photograph of himself in 1839, which is one of the first photographs of a person ever.