Love it or hate it, the concept of taking a picture of oneself and sharing it with the world is a phenomenon that refuses to die. But for the love of all things holy, can’t we find a better name than ‘selfie’?
There is, arguably, nothing wrong with self-portraiture; after all, nobody slagged off Rembrandt or van Gogh for painting pictures of themselves. But we’re not here to argue about the cultural phenomenon, so much as the name it has.
A name that’s sickly and juvenile; a name that encourage people to create horribly forced takes on the theme; a name that any adult must surely cringe at whenever they hear it uttered, let alone say it themselves.
“Selfie”, you overhear in a bar, assuming that they let in a minor by accident, only to find out it was the 23-year-old in the corner who just doesn’t realise there must be a better way. But we can help them, starting here and now.
If we must take pictures of ourselves and then post them to the internet, let’s at least find a good name for it. Got any ideas?
Picture: alex-pl/Flickr