Andy Warhol knew a thing or two when he said back in 1968: “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”.
The Internet was not popular and social media yet to exist. It was another time, but the desire to be noticed was already deep-rooted, though at different levels. Technology thereafter came up with the ultimate self-promotional tool, the “selfie’.
Last year, Oxford termed it as “The international word of the year” and defined it as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
From Pope Francis to Barack Obama and at the Oscar’s on Sunday, selfies are trending on all major social media sites. What can we discover behind all the self-portraits?
More than 3,000 selfies posted on Instagram were evaluated by Stefaner Moritz and her staff from Selfiecity. Everything was taken into consideration, even how their mouths were open at the time of the shoot. The study revealed that people take less selfies than is often assumed.
Here are some takeaways from the survey:
* “Depending on the city, only 3-5 per cent of images we analysed were actually selfies”;
* “In every city we analysed, there are significantly more women selfies than men selfies (from 1.3 times as many in Bangkok to 1.9 times more in Berlin). Moscow is a strong outlier - here, we have 4.6 times more female than male selfies”;
* “Most people in our photos are pretty young (23.7 is the estimated median age). Bangkok is the youngest city (21 years), whereas New York is the oldest (25.3 years). Men’s average age is higher than that of women in every city. Surprisingly, more older men (30 years plus) post selfies on Instagram than women”;
* Women’s selfies show more expressive poses; for instance, the average amount of head tilt is 50 per cent higher than for men. Sao Paulo is most extreme — there, the average head tilt for females is 16.9°”.
The picture shared by Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres has become the most re-tweeted image ever, attracting over 1 million re-tweets in less than an hour and surpassing the record previously held by Obama, when he tweeted an image titled “Four more years” in November 2012.
