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Comment by ScaleneTriangle | Hacker News Reader

The example of a selfie is in fact, not a selfie.

My most upvoted reddit comment ever was when I posted a "Sacagawea selfie"... by sticking my camera at the end of a statue's arm: https://i.imgur.com/UXRUx8q.jpeg

It's a picture of people taking a selfie. I think that communicates what a selfie is better than an actual selfie.

The caption says, somewhat ambiguously, "Example of a selfie".

That could mean "this image is an example of a selfie" (which is false). Alternatively it could mean "this image shows an example of a selfie being taken" (which is true).

Ha. Now I want to see the photo of that one being taken.

Something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cmwov/_/c0tpyls/

EDIT: If you don't want to wade through that thread, here's a single image strip of that OP descending into madness as he shows how he took the "k-1" photo: https://i.imgur.com/Z12CC.jpg

Sure but they are showing someone who we can presume completed taking a selfie. Though, arguably, the photographer we do not see, being further away would have taken a better (less distorted) picture, if the self photographer hadn’t hogged up the view.

In any case, I’d be curious to have joerg colberg’s take on this. Looks like he touches upon it tangentially[1] but not full on.

[1]https://cphmag.com/real-world/

Statue selfies should become a genre ! I will contribute.

That’s the point. You accept it as a picture of someone taking a selfie. Not just of someone taking a selfie but doing it competently.

It’s how I am supposed to picture myself to make a good selfie…and also how selfies are cast as shallow to make them easy to dismiss.

Even though Ansel Adams’ self portraits will hang on gallery walls as dearly priced artifacts.

It's right under the paragraph about the "plandid," and it seems to be a perfect example of that, though the caption makes it ambiguous re: intent.

I frequently see people say online that they "took a selfie of" something else these days. This language really bothers me.

In my native language we have a running joke that goes like this:

    - I had a fie.
    - ???
    - Ah, it's just like selfie, but when someone else is making it for you.

(Originally: jebka/samojebka)

I have heard that as well, but the selfie in those cases was them with whatever they said. So it is more a short form of "took a photo of me with..." which I think is OK.

At a restaurant someone from a group of youngs once handed me her phone and asked me to "take a selfie of us".

This points to a deep rooted problem. Probably OCD.

(Ha, you expected me to write about a problem in how people use language, got ya :-)

Or, a deeply-rooted assumption that "conformance to some arbitrary rules that have been adopted as signifiers of intelligence and class" is in some way an admirable quality, rather than the abilities to infer meaning in the face of ambiguity and to update one's mental model in response to new information (also known as "intelligence")

I took a self-portrait of... It's people not thinking through what they are saying and rather relying on stock phrases to relay information.

Maybe, but it’s way more likely that they mean “I took a picture of something with myself in the frame.”

A selfie can really be any picture where you’re holding the camera and in the frame. The subject of the photo can be something other than you.

“I took a selfie with…” means that I and the other thing are the subjects.

“I took a selfie of…” means that the other thing is the subject I’m just in the picture.

No, I very often see people say things like "I took a selfie of my dog" and only the dog is in the picture.

> relying on stock phrases to relay information

You can see this in other common phrases.

Take "miles per hour" for example. I've met plenty of people who can't figure out how long it would take to get from A to B at X mph. They'll deliberate over how they know from running on their treadmill that they run (on average) at 8 mph, and they recall that it usually takes them Y minutes to run Z miles, and then they factor in the diameter of their car's wheels (because surely a car with larger wheels gets there faster for the same mph vs a car with smaller wheels), and finally sprinkle in a bit of multiplication to arrive at their best guestimate.

That is, plenty of people don't realize that "per" means "for each", and that it's not some singular word "milesperhour", but a phrase meaning "miles traveled for every hour spent travelling".

Other fun phrases thrown around without understanding (or with similar words mistakenly swapped in):

Miles per gallon.

For all intensive purposes.

Nip it in the butt.

Bone apple tea.

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