Selfie Waves

Selfie Waves

visitors were finally allowed to take

selfies at the White House

this is the first legal selfie ever

taken on a White House Tour

but

a year before the ban was lifted in

February of 2014 I met with the

president

and secretly took an illegal selfie

while on the toilet In The West Wing

thanks Obama

why am I admitting to this crime now

well it's time for the truth

who took the first selfievisitors were finally allowed to take

selfies at the White House

this is the first legal selfie ever

taken on a White House Tour

but

really

few people would call this a selfie but

it is the oldest known self-portrait a

depiction someone made of themself that

includes Head and Shoulders it was

sculpted more than three thousand years

ago by Pharaoh akhenaten's first Chief

Royal sculptor A guy named Beck next to

himself Beck sculpted his wife to Heart

making this also a contender for oldest

known asy

but the roots of the selfie go back

further than this we have been making

things that resemble ourselves in whole

or in part intentionally or not for as

long as there's been cause and effect

just looking into a pool of water

creates a kind of selfie A Primitive

ephemeral one that you can't preserve or

send to anyone but it is undeniably an

image of the self made by the self even

the earliest life forms on Earth were

capable to some degree of

self-discrimination they could

differentiate themselves from the

environment around them they have inside

them in some chemical form a crude

pre-conscious sense of themselves I call

things like that a first wave selfie

first wave selfies are unintentional

automatic or accidental resemblances

something makes of itself in whole or in

part like prehistoric human Footprints

or the mental images animals have of

their own bodies

the first big leap in selfie history the

second wave began with the first

intentional depictions of oneself second

wave selfies include everything from

Chauvet caves 32 000 year old hand

stencil prints to the paintings of Jan

Von Ike and Judith leister

but in the 19th century self-depiction

changed in another Major Way a

technology emerged that allowed

likenesses of the self to be made faster

and with less skill that seemed more

accurate less mediated and more

indexical than ever before

photography ushered in the third wave

selfie

in the fall of 1839 outside his family's

lamp and chandelier store in

Philadelphia thirty-year-old Robert

Cornelius stood completely still for

about 15 minutes in front of a camera he

built using a modified opera glass and a

sheet of silver plated copper the result

was a significant image it could be

found on his gravestone in

Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery the

Smithsonian calls it the first selfie

but they also don't in that same fall of

1839 a man named Henry Fitz Jr took a

photograph of himself in Baltimore

Smithsonian Magazine and pretty much

everyone else has called cornelius's

Selfie the first

but in their archives the Smithsonian

calls Fitz Juniors the first the reason

for this confusion is that honestly we

don't know which of these came first all

we can be sure of is that neither of

them is the first equally by r a

Frenchman wrote of taking a photo of

himself in 1837 two years before these

but it's been lost and other even

earlier examples may have been lost as

well because these are photographs

people took of themselves it's largely

uncontroversial to call them selfies but

you know they're not like

selfie selfies if you've seen my video

is cereal soup you know what I just did

there contrastive Focus reduplication

that's when you repeat a word in order

to focus on prototypical examples in

contrast to edge cases for example we

went on a date last night but you know

it wasn't a date date in that statement

I'm contrasting what I did last night

which might have been a date to a true

date date which is obviously a date okay

anyway the point is no one called these

selfies when they were taken they were

photographic self-portraits the word

selfie wouldn't even exist for another

160 years after they were taken so at

some point between this and this our

relationship to self-depiction changed

and our vocabulary had to expand to

discuss it

what rough Beast emerged to make the

coining of selfie necessary

well let's keep going

around 1846 Czech photographer MV

lobethal took the earliest known selfie

with a mirror this of course would

become a classic selfie technique

mirrors provided an easy early way to

capture the self with a camera but in my

opinion this mirror selfie from around

1900 is the most arresting I think you

die at least three times once when your

body stops living again usually sometime

later when your name is spoken for the

last time but now thanks to photography

more and more of us are able to save

ourselves from the third the last time

and image of you is seen the identity of

this woman is unknown that makes it the

oldest known selfie taken by a person

whose name we have forgotten this is the

oldest known example of the classic

outstretched arm selfie technique it was

taken by Joseph Byron in 1909 images

like these were a significant step

toward the eventual fourth wave selfie

the presence of a camera or arms or

poles in the shot evidence of how it was

made are Hallmarks of the modern day

selfie stereotype for example a 2013 ad

campaign for the cape times reimagined

famous historical photographs as selfies

and in every single one an arm

connecting the subject to the camera was

used

five years after Byron's armed selfie

Anastasia nikolivino Romanova the

youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II

and great-granddaughter to Britain's

queen Victoria and Prince Albert took

this photo of herself

she was 13 years old at the time so many

have claimed it to be the first selfie

ever taken by a teenager but that's not

true in 1852 61 years earlier British

chemist William Henry Perkin took this

photo of himself when he was just 14.

however even though Anastasia wasn't the

first teenager to take a selfie in

another way she was unlike Perkins whose

shot feels like a self-portrait she took

pictures that feel much more like we

today would call selfies the photos she

took were personal

she sent them to friends to share her

mood and daily life here she is posing

with fake novelty teeth in 1915 or 16.

four years after taking this famous

selfie her camera was confiscated and

not long after Bolshevik revolutionaries

executed her and her entire family

together in a basement conclusive

evidence of her death in 1918 wasn't

uncovered until 2007.

although her work was cut short she

pioneered the use of Photography as a

social behavior as a way to communicate

not just commemorate she has been called

the Kardashian of her day but despite

her influence she was more of a

trendsetter for hairstyles than

photography she didn't usher in a

worldwide shift in Behavior where young

people everywhere started taking selfies

camera manufacturers didn't rush to make

self-portraiture easier and articles

weren't written about how great or how

scary it was that young people were

taking pictures of themselves

though the modern day selfie still

wasn't born it continued to gestate and

kick within the womb one such kick was

the use of sticks and pulls to activate

a camera's shutter in 1925 newlyweds

Arnold and Helen Hogg used a long Pole

to take this picture in 1934 Helmer

Larson used a fallen tree branch to snap

this selfie with his wife naime in

Sweden on Reddit Chooch 37 shared his

grandfather using a selfie stick in the

late 1940s here's one from 1957 and

going back to 1920 here's Joseph Byron

taking a handheld photograph with others

I mentioned this image because a second

camera captured how it was taken giving

us an early depiction of what is now the

recognizable human selfie pose now what

I think makes this image so significant

is that it's another early Taste of the

selfie as we know it today as Jin's

rushitz pointed out in exploring the

selfie if you Google self-portrait you

get a lot of self-portraits there's only

one image that shows someone making a

self-portrait Norman Rockwell's famous

triple self-portrait but if you Google

selfie a lot of what you get aren't

selfies they're pictures of people

taking selfies

four the selfie as we know it today the

pose of taking one is just as if not

more Salient than the actual result

blogs and articles containing outrage

over people taking selfies in

inappropriate places or when they should

be behaving differently rarely complain

about the actual images they dislike the

performance

in 2015 Joanne paternapatania published

a book of pictures of people taking

selfies from which she had removed the

environment giving us what feel like

selfie poses preserved in specimen jars

the idea that those taking photos can be

a nuisance didn't begin with selfies far

from it there's a long tradition of

photographers especially tourists

raising eyebrows for being annoying

centering themselves over the location

and being predictably heard like for

example the Pisa pushers found in Italy

the modern day selfie that was to come

however makes a person look like a

tourist everywhere they go not because

everything suddenly became a landmark

but because people have always loved

looking at themselves and as cameras

became smaller and easier to handle it

was inevitable that people would start

snapping more self-portraits Vivian

Dorothy Meyer took really cool mirror

selfies in the 1950s and 60s but she

kept them to herself her selfies were

unknown and unpublished during her

lifetime a couple of years before her

death she failed to make payments on a

storage unit she rented and her Works

were auctioned off six months after her

death in 2009 a collector who had

acquired them uploaded her images to

Flickr and they went viral inspiring

exhibitions a documentary a road in

Paris was even named after her the

popularization of instant cameras in the

60s and 70s made taking selfies

physically and mentally easier you

didn't need to know how to develop the

film yourself or feel self-conscious

turning in selfies to be developed

but instant cameras with mirrors on the

front didn't come around until decades

later selfies still hadn't reached a

Tipping Point

in 1969 Michael Collins took the first

reverse selfie a photograph that

contains everyone but yourself

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are in

this Lander right here and every human

living or dead at that time is on this

ball of Rock Only Collins himself behind

the lens is absent in 1983 Hiroshi wada

submitted a patent for a telescopic

extender for supporting a compact camera

an early selfie stick and two years

prior Lester wisbrod started what was to

become a personal tradition using his

new auto focusing compact camera to snap

selfies with famous people whiz broad

was the pioneer of the celebrity selfie

still though no one was using the word

selfie selfies hadn't become a thing yet

but then

something happened in Japan

in 1995 19 year old toshikawa haromi

known as hero mix was nominated for the

new Cosmos of Photography award by world

renowned photographer Nobi Yoshi araki

she submitted a portfolio of snapshots

she'd taken of her daily life and she

won the grand prize there was already a

unique culture of photo diary and photo

booth use among young people in Japan

but hero mix's sudden Fame amongst

teenagers and the educated Elite made

the practice a thing suddenly young

people all over Japan wanted to be like

her the New York Times called it hero

mix syndrome increased demand for

cameras that made self-portraiture and

proto-instagramming easier LED camera

manufacturers to speed up the release of

features that served immediate frequent

photography hero mix took a lot of

photos tens of thousands and her work

generated polarized reactions some

critics adored her While others found it

all baffled now by the time selfies were

called selfies the same debate was

started again but it was a about the

behavior hero mix had brought into focus

more than a decade before you know it's

hard to say who took the first selfie

but in my opinion hero mix took the

first selfie selfie her work hastened

and christened the arrival of the fourth

wave selfie the selfie as we know it

today

now if it hadn't been her it would have

been someone else people love looking at

themselves and it was becoming easier

and easier to do so but hero mix

popularized taking pictures of yourself

as a social sharing activity more akin

to speaking than remembering less a

memory than a message nowhere is this

more clear than in the story of the

first camera phone picture on June 11

1997 while his wife was in labor

Philippe Khan Jerry rigged together a

makeshift system involving his star

attack flip phone a Casio QV and a

Toshiba laptop when his daughter was

born he took a photo with the camera and

used the laptop and phone connection to

immediately email the image to more than

2 000 people social media is strongly

associated with the fourth wave selfie

but as we've seen it wasn't its origin

instead social media was simply a mouth

that showed up later and demanded to be

fed them

online we have no bodies we can't just

walk in and be seen we have to upload

images of our bodies for them to be

there selfies are an easy solution

because they don't require other

people's help

but on top of that there's a sense in

which a photo of yourself taken by

someone else is that person's point of

view it's their story

but a selfie well a selfie's point of

view doesn't belong to another person

when I look at a selfie of you I'm not a

third Observer looking at you through

someone else's eyes

it's just me

looking at you

selfies allow us to be online first hand

not second hand

in the same way that brown bears who

migrated to the cold lands of the north

evolved pale guard hairs and became

polar bears as humans migrated into the

cold lands of the screen they evolved

selfies

by 2006 everyone knew that something was

happening the New York Times published

an article that year about how young

people were suddenly taking a lot of

photos of themselves

was it weird what did it mean not once

in the article is the word selfie used

but it could have been because sometime

between 1995 and 2006 the word selfie

was born selfie with a Y had been a word

since the 1600s it meant self-centered

or selfish but selfie with an ie is new

the earliest recorded usage of it is

from a September 13 2002 post on Dr

Carl's self-serve science Forum

Australian Nathan hope uploaded an image

he took of how busted up his lip had

gotten and he wrote sorry about the

focus it was a selfie

hope has been hailed as the inventor of

the word selfie but says himself that he

probably heard it somewhere else first

which is likely the word selfie is a

hypocrism a pet name an affectionate

familiar cuter version of an existing

word Australians are famous for doing

this barbecue Barbie mosquito mozzie

Australian Aussie self-portrait selfie

they don't only use I.E they love o s

and Z too Australian English has given

us probs Rando totes saws preggers and

yes even doggo

Myspace was an early incubator of

thriving selfie colonies but in 2004

when Facebook launched as a serious

social media platform for people at

Elite universities there was a brief

feeling that selfies were falling out of

favor however when the iPhone 4 debuted

with a front-facing camera in 2010 the

selfie was declared officially back

in 2013 usage of the word selfie had

jumped 17

000 percent in the last year and Oxford

dictionaries declared it the word of the

year

everyone knew what a selfie was we

started calling things that existed

before the word selfies as well but that

is an anachronym a word used out of

place

in time

anachronyms can be words that have

lingered around too long like when we

say we're dialing a number on a

smartphone even though actual turning

dials are no longer involved or when we

call this tinfoil although it's actually

the cheaper and more durable aluminum

foil that superseded it anachronyms can

also be words from today like selfie

that barge back into the past like

calling these medieval Church singers

the first boy band nailing down the

definition of a selfie in the modern

sense is tricky of course does a selfie

need to be a photograph if not

why

if so do I need to be holding the camera

does the use of a timer or a drone I'm

not even touching mean that it's not a

selfie or just a different kind of

selfie

are humans a selfie since God made us in

His image because of questions like that

I prefer what I've been doing in this

video just allow a selfie to mean

anything that something has made that

resembles itself or part of itself that

covers a lot of stuff but can be broken

down into four waves first wave selfies

are unintentional the second wave began

with the first deliberate depictions of

oneself the third with photography's

promise of recognizable self-depictions

that were significantly more accessible

the fourth wave is when selfies became a

thing a cultural phenomenon motivated by

a desire not just to have images but to

be images

throughout the 20th century especially

we found ourselves increasingly

surrounded by images news and travels

and products and stories the entire

world outside our head could be seen

like never before

not in person but through images in the

midst of this image world was the human

animal an organism that got to look at

images but wasn't one which was too bad

because to be an image was to be

something well selfies gave us that

power they put it in our own hands

photography allows more of us than ever

before to delay the third death but the

fourth wave selfie flattens the

boundaries of time and space now we can

be anywhere whenever

does my face need to be depicted for it

to be a selfie

well in October of 2013 Kim Kardashian

posted this image on Instagram

within a month belfie had been added to

the Urban Dictionary a belfie is a

selfie of your butt but selfie selfie

belfie guides and histories and even a

belfie stick soon followed

and this all raises a serious question

about Society if a selfie of your butt

is called a belfie shouldn't a selfie of

your face

be called a filthy

and as always

thanks for watching

let me show you something I've been

working on it is a star projector it

puts stars all over your bedroom and who

doesn't love that

me because it's always just the same

stars I could see if I went outside

that's why mine is different it shows

the night sky not from Earth but as seen

on trappist-1e an exoplanet that was one

of the first targets of the new web

telescope because it's very likely to be

friendly to life whether or not anything

lives there we don't know yet but what

we do know is that it is the furthest

known habitable exoplanet from which the

naked human eye could still see our sun

you can turn on this projector and see

us just as others might

alien others

problem is the Curiosity box is a

limited edition thing in the Box this

comes in

already sold out

that's why it's important to join now we

are now taking pre-orders for our winter

box and for the holidays it's 50 off I

won't spill too many beans but the

winter box contains something that will

help you if you have no choice

don't miss our best deal of the Year get

your first box for just 30 bucks that's

50 off by using Code Black Friday and

don't forget that Mel science is now

part of our family it's the perfect way

to get your kids thinking and curious

let me put my brain food into your gray matter mouth

join today.