The benefits of limitation is an old theme in discussion of creativity. But in this case, the arbitrary constraint also provides the inspiration. I mean, 140 characters is an enticing challenge, an excuse to shield yourself from self-criticism, and a less intimidating scope when you're deciding to start a project.
Producing a "selfie" is, by definition, working within an artistic constraint, and when I read your post I had to assume that we had already seen many "selfie artists", which seems to be the case:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/10-artists-who-use-selfi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raffaello_Sanzio.jpg
No selfies in the canon here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kirchner_1919_portrait.jp...
Utterly unimaginable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muybridge_disk_step_walk....