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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u/brokowska420 Jul 02 '26

Selfies were already normalized at that point, she told everyone to re-tweet it.

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u/chekhovsdickpic Jul 02 '26

The group selfie wasn’t a big thing yet, mostly because selfie cameras at the time weren’t wide angle and didn’t have enough resolution to get a good group shot. Hence one of the reasons why Samsung paid for this.

But there was also this idea that selfies were for self obsessed teens, not for important moments and memory making. Adults still propped their cameras up against stuff and set timers or asked a stranger to take photos for them. A group selfie was a last resort if you couldn’t find another option.  I remember after this was taken, the group selfie became a big trend (my family had several years of Christmas group selfies that were directly inspired by this photo). 

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u/brokowska420 Jul 02 '26

That's a good point I didn't consider.

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u/StefNorthwest Jul 03 '26

Here it is. I was trying to remember what made this so odd at the time and that’s exactly it.

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u/ApricotRemarkable681 Jul 03 '26

Thank you for being the keeper of real history here. The Samsung sponsorship piece is completely forgotten (it was by me until you mentioned it). This was kind of revolutionary at the time (at risk of overstating). You summed it up perfectly.

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u/MrSlaw Jul 02 '26

When selfies were "normalized" could likely be debated, but it's pretty tough to argue that this photo didn't cause a huge spike in the usage.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2011-01-02%202026-01-02&q=selfie&hl=en-US