Monday, December 9, 2013

A "selfie" of old….


Almost indubitably this is the first "selfie," taken about 175 years ago in Philadelphia:



You're gazing at the un-famous visage of Robert Cornelius, a 19th century chemist in the City of Brotherly Love who sat in front of his camera for a minute to create this image in 1839.

He couldn't share it on InstaGram because the Internet hadn't quite been invented yet….

Nice to see that he was fully clothed and doesn't appear to be smashed or high, and wasn't playing air guitar, and wasn't doing anything of a sexually compromising nature, and I'm hoping he wasn't signaling any gang I.D. there….

Just in case you were wondering, the Oxford Dictionaries people decided that "selfie" is their "Word Of The Year." Not sure what that means, really, in terms of cultural sophistication…I haven't done any "selfies" yet so I guess I'm slow on the uptick….

And by the way, "selfie" was first used to describe an online self-portrait by an Australian dude in 2002.

I wonder what "selfie" means in Awstraylyin….it doesn't mean "beer," I know that much.







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