Selfies of people & pets are all the rage, and Selfies are growing in popularity every day. There are Selfies of people by themselves, with friends, celebs and pets by themselves, with other felines & their humans. They are in the news, pop media and just about everywhere. There’s no doubt, Selfies rule.

They are fun and statement and mostly proof (if not Photoshopped) that we were really there. This is reality. Plop that face front and center, and Snap that Selfie.

Even National Geographic featured Selfies in their October 2016 issue featuring ‘Back to Nature, The Selfie Generation Gets Outside’ as their cover story.

But believe it or not, Paws had never done a Selfie till last summer. We knew of them, but yawned, who cares, why bother, and it’s not my thing.

UNTIL

Last spring, New York Times best-selling author Gwen Cooper, of Homer’s Odyssey’s fame, called for entries of Selfies for her online book, Kittenish to raise $$ for the millions of animals that had been injured as a result of the devastating earthquake in Nepal during the Spring of 2015.

What a great way to get involved in a back-handed way of helping cats around the world. Paws for Reflection’s real goal is to spotlight cat issues, from the serious to the frivolous, of cats around the world.

Paws snapped our first selfies at 3am (that’s right 3 in the morning) after work. We had no idea  what we were doing or what she was looking for, but it sounded like something we wanted to jump into. It turned out Little Yellow, aka, Paws, made the cut. This was the perfect excuse to jump on-board into the Selfie craze and have some fun with our newfound phenomenon of Selfies of people & pets all the rage.

Selfies of people & pets are all the rage

Little Yellow, his human, and 4 feline family members belatedly plunged into the Selfie World. Now we regularly participate in The Cat on My Head’s Sunday Selfie. Though we don’t make it every week, we make it a regular gig, and are getting first hand look at so many stunning cat Selfies.

Selfies are plastered all over Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. They are even in the Oval office, on the campaign trail, and in the Kremlin.

Are Selfies of people and pets here to stay?

Things come and go in pop culture. There’s no doubt, camera phones and tablets have spurred the Selfie rage, but they are not brand new. The first self-portrait is credited daguerreotype image taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839 outside his family’s store in Philadelphia, PA. It turns out Selfies have been around since photography was invented,

As Photography became affordable to the middle class, Selfies became more mainstream, but not like today. Taking a self-portrait with a 35mm SLR meant having a tri-pod, delayed timing, and making sure you were in the right spot at the right moment so your head wasn’t cut off. That was way too much work for most people.

Selfies of people & pets are all the rage

Smart phones and tablets make Selfies an arm’s length away. One click and it’s done. It’s easy  and spontaneous. If you don’t like it, you delete it and shoot another. Push a few buttons, download a few apps, and Voila, it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and wherever else. Tweet it to your BFF. Email it to your family. They get to enjoy your fun along with you.

This iPhone review will focus on my experience of using the iPhone, but please keep in mind that this is only my opinion. If you have any questions, comments, or experiences with an iPhone that you would like to share, I would love to hear them! Please don’t hesitate to visit Gadgetsfind if you are interested in any specific aspects of the iPhone or technology in general.

Paws’ Mom doesn’t like pictures of her because she’s a few years older and many pounds heavier than she’d like to be. But we absolutely LOVE the whole cat Selfie rage, and we’ve plunged in feet and head first.

It’s time to stock up on Selfies

Now the weekend is here, it’s time to stock up on Selfies. We take out the camera and we find:

• Kitty in a box
• Kitty on the counter
• Kitty front and center in my lap
• Kitty eating a potato chip
• Kitty in a bag
• Kitty wrestling with another kitty
• Oh kitty, wherever you may be – we can do a Selfie

While we’re having some fun with this not so new, but new to us, concept, we wonder, where did it all come from? We did some research.

Cat Selfies sold the idea to Paws

There;s no doubt the invention of the compact digital camera made Selfies boom in popularity. In the 1970s, Andy Warhol did self-portraits when the Polaroid camera came of age. It freed amateur photographers from the precision of the darkroom and the delay of getting photos from a film processor. But Polaroid film was expensive and it wasn’t until the advent of digital that photographs became truly instantaneous.

In 2005, images tagged as #Selfie began appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr. When the Smartphone, the iPhone 4,was introduced in 2010 with a front-facing camera, Selfies went viral.

While Selfies are a great way to share some fun with friends, others believe the Selfie rage is the ultimate symbol of narcissism. Its instantaneous results encourages superficiality – or so some say.

Celebrities like Justin Bieber, and Kim Kardashian have fueled this. The expansion of social networking has enabled them to communicate directly with their fan base and build up a large, loyal following of people who believe they are getting a real glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous. Celebrities can now become their own Paparazzi and  exercise  control over the dissemination of their image.

Over a million Selfies of people and pets taken each day

There’s more than a million Selfies taken each day, We also discovered other interesting tidbits including:

• The word Selfie is now included in the dictionary
• Selfie was Oxford Dictionary’s  2013 Word of the Year
• Selfie has its own song
• Countless public figures, including President Barack Obama, and Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have gotten in on the Selfie craze.
• The word Selfie first appeared in an Australian internet forum, Karl Kruszelnicki‘s ‘Dr Karl Self-Serve Science Forum’, on 13 September 2002.
• Time magazine called Selfie one of the ‘top 10 buzzwords’ of the year in 2012. That was the year Selfie ‘really hit the big time’ and it’s not likely to fade into the background anytime soon.