As everyone is busy looking back at the good, bad and indifferent happenstances of the last decade, there is one that seems to have passed unmentioned – one noisome new norm of present-day life that did not exist to any extent when we rolled into the 2010’s.
Look up the word “selfie” and you will find it has allegedly been around since 1839 when it was coined by one Robert Cornelius, an early photography enthusiast, after taking a ‘daguerreotype’ self portrait. Hmm, maybe, but an alternative and much more entertaining version, comes from the Oxford English Dictionary no less: This venerable source holds that in September 2002, an inebriated Australian wrote on ABC online: “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a “selfie”.
Coming from the land of “the barbie” this sounds highly credible. That said however it’s highly improbable that the lippy Ozzie would ever have guessed that, by the early 2010’s, his besotted term “selfie” would be in sufficiently common use for the O.E.D. to name it as their 2013 ‘Word of the Year’.
So, whatever the origin of the word, I would like to propose that the act of taking “selfies” be nominated as, “Tourism’s Most Annoying New Feature of the Last Decade.” Your alternative nominations will be welcomed.
Furthermore, I hereby propose that “selfie sticks” should be banned from all public places – especially museums. I mention the latter specifically as, on a family Christmas visit to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, one couldn’t look at a Caravaggio, a Rembrandt or even a common or garden Grecian urn without being confronted with throng of wand-waving selfie-takers: “Look mom, here’s me in front of some Dutch dude with only one ear.” Enough already!
Of course another sad result of this selfish phenomenon is that it is downright dangerous. In 2011 there were just two deaths attributed to “selfie accidents”. By last year that number was holding at over a hundred per annum. In Russia two schoolgirls fell arm-in-arm to their deaths while taking a selfie and in Arkansas a student fell off a cliff while backing up for what became an act of selfie destruction. In India – which for some reason seems to suffer more selfie incidents than anywhere else – three teens were killed by a speeding train that they wanted to capture in the background. Falling backwards off high buildings bridges and cliffs, car crashes, animal attacks and drownings are among the myriad inventive ways people have managed to meet their maker while trying to get that special (and last) selfie.
Statistics for 2018 had males making up 75 percent of selfie deaths. A little over 50 percent were in the 20 to 29 age group, while 36 percent were between 10 and 19. Nearly half of recorded deaths occurred in India, followed by Russia and the United States – no stats were available for Canada, which is probably a good sign. Of course, because “taking a selfie” is never cited as the cause of death, the actual number of fatalities resulting from “look at me falling off of …” shots could be immeasurably greater.
As needlessly tragic as all these deaths are, another sad aspect of ‘selfie-driven tourism’ is surely that the real joy of simply ‘being there’ gets lost in the constant scramble to take that, “look at me” picture, to post on Instagram, Snapchat or whatever. In fact the constant trifecta of texting, phone-gawping and selfie-taking, all serve to remove the participant from the many rich, mind-broadening experiences offered by every aspect of travel. And it doesn’t have to be limited to tourist meccas.
For example, with one or other of my three sons – mostly on college visits trips – I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years driving around some back and beyond parts of the country. I’ve always loved driving through those middle-of-nowhere little Podunk towns: The kind where one can’t help but wonder, “Why the bleep does anyone live here?” “What can they possibly do for a living?” and “Why do they all have to have three or four rusting-out junk cars decorating their front yards?”
Then there’s the clearly once inhabited, now tumbledown, derelict homes that can’t help but set one’s mind to wondering about the history of the families that once lived there. Regrettably I don’t think any one of my kids ever took their faces away from their phones to enjoy the experience of passing through these nondescript hamlets – the kind of places from which they’d never want to post a selfie!
So, here’s wishing you all a very happy new decade and may the ‘selfieish’ side of tourism have gone the way of the postcard by the time we reach 2030.
