As unpopular as the atomic bomb: where is the selfie stick?

Almost forgotten

As unpopular as the atomic bomb
Where’s the selfie stick?

For years he met us en masse on vacation, now he has disappeared from the face of the earth. What happened to the selfie stick – and why doesn’t anyone need it anymore?

The selfie stick raises at least three questions: Why do we need an artificially extended arm to take pictures of ourselves? Why do we photograph ourselves? And where is the stick?

For a long time, the extendable arm prosthesis stood for the paradox of individualism and herd instinct in which we are all trapped: a gripping arm holds our mobile phone so that we can photograph ourselves in front of sights without outside help – like all other holidaymakers too. We no longer had to speak to anyone who would press the shutter button for us, and from then on there was no need for a travel companion.

“One of the 25 best inventions”

In 2002, Canadian Wayne Fromm made the selfie stick marketable, and soon his gadget was supporting billions of people in self-portrayal on social media. The telescopic pole experienced its high point in 2014 when it was ennobled by the US magazine “Time” as one of the 25 best inventions.

But shortly thereafter, the stick began to descend. From the beginning, some reviled it as an unsympathetic narcissist: inside accessory (“Narcisstick”), from 2015 it was discredited as a “plague in churches and museums” (“Die Zeit”). From the Louvre to the Uffizi, he was banned for threatening to massacre priceless canvases and visitor eyes. It was also banned from festivals, sporting events, amusement parks, zoos and stadiums because it could be used as a weapon, injure people or obstruct their view, or, as in the “Bear Selfies” at Lake Tahoe in California, tempted selfie hunters to commit suicide :inside, bears lurked to take photos with them. In November 2015, the final crash from the Olympus of groundbreaking ideas: Silicon Valley tech pundits named the selfie stick in a survey as one of the two inventions they would most like to undo – along with the atomic bomb.

“Exaggerated selfie hype”

Certainly all reasons why the stick is gathering dust in the attic today with the Nordic walking poles. The Munich “Trendbüro” mentions more. Sabine Rogg, Director Trends & Strategy at BRIGITTE.de:

“That part was probably the exaggeration of the selfie hype, which after extreme manifestations has changed into more tolerable variants – today, from time to time, people just take pictures with their hearts.”

Modern mobile phone cameras also have a wide-angle function, which makes the stick superfluous, and it tends to be a hindrance for the clips that are popular today on Tiktok and Co. Perhaps the pandemic, which has made travel impossible for some time, also plays a role in the disappearance of the selfie stick. At home we learned how to show ourselves in close-up without a spectacular background (Brooklyn Bridge, Bear, Lake Constance), just like our morning coffee. Both filtered, of course.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Atlantic, The Economist, Time

Bridget