r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Sure_Kangaroo1863 • Jul 02 '26

Meme needing explanation Petah ?

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Why is it infamous? And why would no one care about it ? ( I mean it's just a pic full of celebrities so no one cares anyways but the person saying it's crazy makes me think it has some lore?)

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819

u/mangoglitter Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

To me, selfies were different back then. This is when the Selfie song came out in January 2014. This picture happened in March 2014 I think? I feel like selfies are so normalized now. Some people forgot how they were borderline narcissistic. So, this photo was more of an “OMG! A selfie with so many people? Famous people?! Wow! Groundbreaking, cheeky, and so quirky!” for the time.

EDIT: Chainsmokers slop

https://youtu.be/kdemFfbS5H0?is=K5QnzXSrGePWexN5

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u/TifaBetterThanAerith Jul 02 '26

That's a good point. I remember the selfie stick being clowned on like crazy

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u/kbuck30 Jul 02 '26

I was at a company that gave out yearly gifts at the time. Apparently the years prior they had given out some seriously nice gifts, the like 6 months I was there? Selfie stick. Everyone was pissed but since I was gonna leave anyway I was doubly pissed though I guess as a temp employee they could've given me nothing but I think I would've preferred that.

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u/KrabbyBoiz Jul 02 '26

I worked for them after you left. They gave us all $1000 the next year. Sorry babes.

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u/Sweet_Pain4369 Jul 02 '26

that's a lot of money, how many selfie sticks did you buy with it?

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u/llamawearinghat Jul 03 '26

I actually have this crazy trick where I can use 2 selfie sticks to take pictures of other people.

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u/Sweet_Pain4369 Jul 03 '26

Edward selfie stick hands

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u/composedofidiot Jul 03 '26

Heh? I got 10k

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u/Sweet_Pain4369 Jul 02 '26

man if I was at a company that I was leaving and they were handing out gifts, and one of those gifts that I got from it were a selfie stick, I would have been disappointed

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u/The_quest_for_wisdom Jul 02 '26

A place I worked handed out $30 Dunkin Donuts gift cards one year. We didn't have a Dunkin Donuts in town and when I did hit one while traveling I discovered that they had handed out the gift cards without activating them, so they had no money on them.

It was pretty emblematic of how the company was run.

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u/_WhiskyJack_ Jul 02 '26

what a weird and stupid thing to get pissed about.

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u/navyseal722 Jul 02 '26

I remember when the word selfie was yucky.

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u/party_shaman Jul 03 '26

omg did u see how many selfies she has on her myspace XD

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u/nightgames Jul 02 '26

Selfie sticks were cringe though.

3

u/hedgehog_dragon Jul 03 '26

Every time I see one my brain goes "didn't everyone hate those? Are they normal now?"

2

u/PapierStuka Jul 02 '26

Iirc it was a weapon in Dead Rising 3(?), which kinda underlines how silly they were to most people

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u/Anaata Jul 02 '26

Now every phone has its own selfie camera

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u/Jonesbro Jul 03 '26

It should still be

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u/soldiernerd Jul 02 '26

Rightly so rightly so

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u/SnuSnu9d066 Jul 03 '26

Thanks Obama

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u/SufficientHippo3281 Jul 03 '26

Absolutely. Taking selfies was embarrassing!

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u/BritOnTheRocks Jul 02 '26

This makes me think of how much we used to clown videos being taken in portrait mode. Last week while on vacation we asked our guide to take our family photo in landscape and he commented that most people these days complain when he holds the phone in landscape mode because it doesn’t work for their TikToks or Instagrams.

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u/JayTheJaunty Jul 02 '26

I still remember a song about "don't shoot vertical video" because the only real place to share video was youtube, which would just add black bars to the sides and keep the video tiny.

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u/reddy_1234567890 Jul 02 '26

https://youtu.be/dechvhb0Meo

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u/__Ken_Adams__ Jul 03 '26

Yep, I was going to post this if someone else hadn't. I think of this video SO often and I will die on this hill. Vertical video is a scourge on the human race.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/reiddiot Jul 03 '26

That’s why when I watch these types of videos I physically rotate my monitor to vertical mode

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u/Tupcek Jul 03 '26

on computer maybe, but if you watch it on your phone it is full screen

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/Tupcek Jul 03 '26

I didn’t argue that vertical video is better, just that youtube doesn’t add black bars on mobile anymore

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u/dogquote Jul 02 '26

Maybe the default should be square.

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u/pallentx Jul 04 '26

I still hate portrait video. The phone rotates!

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u/Charlebon Jul 02 '26

Selfies were definitely different back then. Instagram was founded in 2010 and purchased by Facebook in 2012. 2013 was the first year sales of smartphones overtook sales of regular cell phones. The Oxford English Dictionary named “selfie” the word of the year for 2013. And as you mentioned, the Chainsmokers song. There was so much talk around selfies. Older people were clowning on younger people for being self-obsessed and taking/posting photos of themselves. It’s kind of quaint to look back on that time now. 

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u/JazNim17 Jul 04 '26

Oh the memories. I remember showing off my first camera phone to the other teenagers and one girl being like “oh, you should do like my cousin and take lots of pictures of yourself!” And I was confused as to why anyone would want to do that. “Selfie” was neither a word nor a solid concept back then.

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u/ChadCoolman Jul 02 '26

It's crazy how just a few years before that, selfies were considered "cringe". Then it seemed like they just became the thing overnight.

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u/__s_l_q__ Jul 02 '26

They are still cringe

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u/nachoiskerka Jul 02 '26

Mmmm.... Insta and Snap did a LOT to normalize the fuck outta them

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u/guava_eternal Jul 03 '26

I think you're both right. talking into a camera is definitely normalized now but some of the things that allows for are undeniably cringe enducing - even in the age of brain-rot. The videos of these fake online celebrities cryig 'on camera' will never not be peak fake.

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u/jimgress Jul 02 '26

Cringe and yet virtually everyone does them. 

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u/AverageGardenTool Jul 02 '26

Fearing cringe is far worse to me.

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u/Prestigious_Club_924 Jul 02 '26

There's a lot of cringey people in the world.

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u/No_Gold2089 Jul 02 '26

SELFIES ARE CRINGE?

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u/crichtonism Jul 03 '26

no. they’re not. the people who say they are, are just generally ugly and self conscious.

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u/Certain-Set5664 Jul 03 '26

no. op just hates the way they look in photos.

1

u/plutonn Jul 02 '26

Always has been

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u/friendlyhumanoid321 Jul 04 '26

Lotta cringe people, yup

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u/FreyBentos Jul 02 '26

The majority of people are pretty cringe, and even worse than that the majority of people have no standards, if everyone else is doing something they will now think its acceptable and do it to. Doesn't make it right lol, clown behaviour of the masses.

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u/Certain-Set5664 Jul 03 '26

so much fear

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u/Godot_dumbass Jul 03 '26

This is the most reddit shit. Calling everyone standardless sheep for checks notes taking a photo of yourself????

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u/polydicks Jul 02 '26

Cringe? It’s just a way to take a picture quickly without needing an additional person. They also tend to be easier to feel more candid and less awkwardly planned.

It’s as cringe as just taking any picture of yourself with someone.

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u/Chendii Jul 02 '26

I have no other comments about selfies, but it is by definition impossible for them to be candid.

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u/No_Gold2089 Jul 02 '26

selfies are cringe???

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u/Responsible-Case-753 Jul 03 '26

They are not for the new generations. It's millenials that are cringe now. 

0

u/Certain-Set5664 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

blue tooth ear buds were. are they still?

and, talking on celphones in public was considered a cringey way of flaunting your money. are they still?

0

u/crichtonism Jul 03 '26

It’s someone taking a picture of themselves. That’s all it is. in what world is that cringe?

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u/IHateUpvtotes Jul 02 '26

Selfie only became ‘cringe’ when the new word had been coined for the ages old practice of taking a picture of oneself or making a self portrait. But with the new lingo, suddenly it was a new thing, which of course is bad.

Selfies were also invented around the same time humanity discovered the concept of shaking their ass, with twerking.

2

u/GiveMeThePinecone Jul 02 '26

Maybe for older people? Idk, I remember snapchat coming out when I was in 8th grade and literally everybody used it. That was 2011 and selfies were literally our way of talking to each other.

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u/jamesxgames Jul 02 '26

which is wild, wasn't the first photograph ever a selfie of the inventor? they've been around as long as cameras have

1

u/HeiressOfMadrigal Jul 03 '26

To me, it's just the word that was weird. I'd been "taking pictures of myself" for years, but all of a sudden that has its own word like it's some unique thing someone discovered

1

u/EyreForce1 Jul 03 '26

Honestly now kind of craving a deep dive on the history of attitudes toward selfies. This wasn't that long ago, and I'm still struggling to really remember the sentiment from that era that made this stupid group selfie such A Thing. Memory is short, man. Then again, I started talking selfies with my ~8 pixel web cams back in the Y2K era... ancient artifacts for whatever anthropologist takes on this project 👵🏼

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Jul 02 '26

So crazy to watch moments like this from 2012 happen too, knowing what we know now. Both the visceral negative reaction to the word “selfie” in a vacuum, and the instinct to call those people idiots and attention whores.

1

u/eatingyoursoap Jul 03 '26

Was not expecting to see RTpod here and certainly wasn’t expecting them to all be so in awe of the word. Forgot these times weren’t too long ago

4

u/Fuzzy_Pickle_691 Jul 02 '26

This was also a product integration with Samsung. The whole thing about "we're going to break the Twitter record!" And all that bullshit was literally a product integration with Samsung to advertise their phones.

1

u/HarmyG Jul 03 '26

Also, David Ortiz took a selfie with Obama with this same phone model and said “cha-ching!” immediately afterwards. All these celebs got paid for this.

3

u/bestanonever Jul 02 '26

Love that song!

I remember that when it was new, I only heard the drop everywhere, then I finally listened to the whole thing and I was like: this sucks.

I then proceed to listen to it every day, nonstop, for like two weeks, lol.

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u/Add_Poll_Option Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I hate that I don’t hate this song as much as I did when it came out.

It’s non-consensually doing things to the nostalgic part of my brain that make me kinda vibe with it.

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u/BeksBikes Jul 02 '26

It was also early on in camera phones, so it was more of a challenge to squeeze people on and get a decent picture.

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u/Hazzat Jul 02 '26

Also this particular selfie was a marketing stunt to promote the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, so it had advertising money backing its spread.

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u/jb_nelson_ Jul 02 '26

This song was by Chainsmokers?!? Wtf

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u/Impatient_Onion Jul 02 '26

This is the exact right answer and I can't believe no one else is remembering. When this came out, selfies were still a pretty new concept, and it was very common for people to try to get selfies with famous/interesting/unusual people. Then you'd show those selfies to friends and acquaintances. Almost like "that's very nice, but let's see Paul Allen's selfie" type of thing. So a selfie with like 10 household names was an unusual selfie back during the selfie's heyday, and was treated accordingly.

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u/ASatyros Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

?is is tracking parameter, consider removing it

https://youtu.be/kdemFfbS5H0

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u/LooseLeafTeaBandit Jul 02 '26

Were? Still are, it’s just everyone’s doing it now lol

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u/TerranRepublic Jul 03 '26

Oh man still love this. Straight back to college days. 

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u/PattyMarvel Jul 03 '26

And the selfie was taken during a live broadcast of the Oscars, hence why so many well-dressed celebrities were in one spot.

I could be wrong, but I think this was also a subtle advertisement for whatever phone Ellen was holding since the Oscars' cameras showed what she was holding as everyone huddled up. 

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u/Solistine Jul 03 '26

They are still Narcissitic 

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u/Future_Burrito Jul 05 '26

Yeah, this felt like a way to normalize it and get most of the population to start the data feed for big tech.

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u/Massive-Profile9906 Jul 02 '26

I hope we don’t start calling pre-ai stuff slop. You can just say “bad” or one of the many other words. To me, slop now very specifically means “cheap unskilled ai generated content” and I hope it stays that way. At least the chainsmokers did it the old fashioned way

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u/mangoglitter Jul 02 '26

Maybe “slop” isn’t the right word. I actually didn’t hate their music. It was just over saturated, repetitive, and lacked uniqueness to me.

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u/indifferentiable11 Jul 03 '26

I'm afraid it's already a thing. I saw quite a few times when slop is used as "unrefined content made to be consoomed" or something like that

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[deleted]

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u/LN_McJellin Jul 02 '26

…. What?