Photo: Unknown
Another week, another furore over selfies. President Obama was snapped mid-selfie with the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and a woman the Daily Mail called a "flirty Dane". (She's Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Danish Prime Minister.)
Writing for The Telegraph, Allison Pearson asked, “If the leaders of the free world don’t know how to conduct themselves on a big occasion, what hope is there for attention-deficit teenagers soldered to their smartphones?”
The First Lady, Michelle Obama, appears less than impressed, though a photographer who caught the moment says context is everything, and that a few moments before, she'd been joking around:
It was interesting to see politicians in a human light because usually when we see them it is in such a controlled environment. Maybe this would not be such an issue if we, as the press, would have more access to dignitaries and be able to show they are human as the rest of us. I confess too that it makes me a little sad we are so obsessed with day-to-day trivialities, instead of things of true importance.
And PolicyMic points out that the selfie overshadowed the memorial itself, and is only one of many photos taken that day.
Next thing, everyone will be doing funeral selfies, if this supercut of Instagram is anything to go by – 852 of the 55 million or so Instagram pictures. (Needs more brunch photos, though.) It's easy to dismiss the Instagram aesthetic, but Facebook bought it for around a billion dollars for a reason.
Meanwhile, Mashable shares its picks of the moments of 2013, as seen through the ‘hefe’ filter. Not many New Zealand news outlets are on Instagram, but we trawled thorough the hashtags to see if we could find some New Zealand news moments.