The Merriam-Webster dictionary announced that it has added several new words, including “selfie,” defined as “an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks.” Perhaps my favorite response to this news was when Chevy Chase tweeted: “Twerking and Selfie have officially been added to the dictionary. Future and Optimism have been removed.”
Eat your heart our, Ellen DeGeneres!
We all have that friend who posts way too many selfies on Facebook as if they look different from the 47 others they’ve posted this year or as if we somehow forgot what they look like. I’ve been known to take a selfie or two, but I keep it contained. After all, I’m old enough to remember when selfies were just called “no one else wants to take my picture.”
Indeed, there is a quite a debate about selfies. Are they self-expression, narcissim or something else? When the parody news site, The Onion, published a fake news article claiming that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had officially confirmed that obsessively taking selfies is a mental disorder, it went viral as a “real” article.
Whether OCD or just plain FUN, selfies are all the rage. Google recently reported that 93 million selfies are published every day. Really people, do you have no selfie-control?? Of course, I think Ellen is partially responsible for that statistic. Her celebrity-studded selfie at the Oscars garnered 37 million views on Twitter (43 million people watched the Oscars). Samsung reportedly offered between $800 million and $1 billion to buy the photo featuring several A-List celebrities.
Well, Ellen, I’ve got you beat because I consider the selfie with my family (above) to be priceless. As for the selfies below, well….you be the judge:
Happy Monday,
Mary
P.S. Come on, I dare you….post your favorite selfie on our Facebook page!
