Selfie 2013 Craze Affects Popes, Celebs, Astronauts, And Even Funerals

The selfie 2013 trend has been infecting popes, celebrities, astronauts, and – disturbingly – now even funerals.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the terms selfie, twerk, and squee were added to the Oxford dictionary in 2013. So all you scrabble players now have full justification in using the newest lingo.

Oxford traced the word selfire — a self-portrait usually taken with a camera phone — back to an Australian Internet forum in 2002 where a man posted a selfie of his injured lip, but it didn’t become widely used until this year. And because of the 17,000 percent surge in usage, Oxford made selfie the Word Of The Year 2013 with “little argument”:

“Normally there will be some good-natured debate as one person might champion their particular choice over someone else’s. But this time, everyone seemed to be in agreement almost from the start.”

The rise of the word selfie can probably be blamed on celebrities. For example, Justin Bieber created a company called Shots Of Me entirely focused on Bieber selfies (narcissistic much?). Kim Kardashian’s selfies always tend to get traffic because they tend to feature her in sexy, almost nude poses. And now there’s a lawyer for protecting your right to nude selfies and some people in Thailand will need one after Rihanna’s monkey selfie got them arrested.

But the most famous of all the celebrity selfies in 2013 probably has to be the Pope selfie, where Francis posed with teenagers at his Vatican crib:

Sorry if this is old news, but the Pope took a selfie, and I'm about 75% more interested in becoming a Catholic now. pic.twitter.com/bnDjpBvISm

— Zendayagram (@DopplerTixon) November 19, 2013

But the best selfie ever award for 2013 probably should go to International Space Station astronaut Aki Hoshide, who took a selfie of himself floating in space at just the right angle so you can see the Earth and ISS reflected in his mirror-like helmet mask. Hoshide even knew his selfie trumped Bieber, the pope, and them all based upon his caption:

“There are selfies, and then, well there are selfies.”

Unfortunately, a new selfie 2013 trend is getting way too down to earth and is even a bit macabre. The new funeral selfie trend has people taking selfies before, during, and after funeral services:

Do you think the selfie 2013 craze should have earned it Oxford’s Word Of The Year?

http://twitter.com/itsWillyFerrell/statuses/402670112626704384