The New Yorker's Bob Mankoff pays tribute (after a fashion) to Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year, "selfie" (hey, it could have been "twerk")

Is this Ton Smits cartoon the precursor of the selfie?

by Ken

This week New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff devotes his blogpost, "Selfie Explantorie" to the alarmingly ubiquitous word selfie, explaining: "The fact that 'selfie' was named word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries caused shock and dismay among the many advocates for 'twerk,' who protested by flooding social media with butt selfies." And there in one sentence you have two of my nightmariest words -- "twerk" because I still don't know what it means (and don't want to) and "selfie" because, alas, I do.

Here's a selfie of Bob's own:



Bob recalls this cartoon of his from 1997 ("and now, wow, that seems, like, so sixteen years ago"):



Now Bob says, "I’d give my last bitcoin to have that much privacy now."

"Artists need to bear their share of the blame" for the selfie mania, Bob ventures (with examples). Among the contributions there were actual selfies, like this one:

And, er, modified-actual selfies:

And naturally, from Roz Chast, a real-selfie:

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