30 Hilarious Times People Forgot To Check The Background When Taking A Selfie

How do you feel about selfies, pandas? Is your Instagram grid full of flattering pics of your own face that you perfectly captured with the right lighting, angles and filters? Or do you prefer to stay behind the camera and capture your friends and family instead? I’ve never been a huge fan of the selfie myself, but I have to admit, it does have its perks. For example, when asking my partner to take a photo of me, it can be impossible to convey exactly what I’m imagining. The angles will be wrong, he’ll be too close or too far away, and somehow they often end up blurry. If I’m in charge, however, I can capture an image exactly how I want it. And it spares us from quarreling about what makes a “good photo”. 

Selfies have been common for quite some time, especially among solo travelers and anyone who was given a Polaroid for Christmas back in the day. But they have likely been around even longer than you would expect. Contrary to the widely circulated rumor that Paris Hilton “invented” the selfie, the man who is actually credited with creating the innovation was American photographer Robert Cornelius, who took the first documented selfie in 1839. The photo was captured via daguerreotype in Philadelphia, and it was a huge game changer in the self-portrait game. 

Since 1839, there have, understandably, been countless innovations in the selfie realm. We’ve come a long way from simple daguerreotype photos, but another form of selfie that’s still popular today came about in the early 1900s: the mirror selfie. According to Rangefinder, the first documented mirror pic was taken with a Kodak Brownie box camera and features an unknown woman. Although the image is at least a century old, it seems eerily similar to a mirror pic we might see on a friend’s Instagram story today. We just might find her attire and home to be a bit old fashioned…

While you might imagine a selfie to be exclusively a photo that includes the subject holding their arm outstretched and turning the camera towards themself, the first known photo of this nature was taken in 1909 by Joseph Byron Clayton. The adorable selfie features his arms outstretched in both sides of the frame, with his entire outfit shown in the middle. Perhaps he was even starting the outfit of the day trend as well! In 1920, the same innovator took the world’s first known “groupie” as well, featuring five men that worked for his studio standing with him on a rooftop in New York. 

Nowadays, selfies are often associated with teenagers using Snapchat and Instagram, but it’s possible that they existed for quite some time before teens got behind the trend. The first known selfie taken by a teen was captured in 1913 by 13-year-old Anastasia Nikolaevna, a member of the Russian royal family. She also used a Kodak Brownie to snap a mirror pic, unknowingly participating in a trend that millions, if not billions, of teens would later follow in her footsteps with. If you’d like to see the iconic photo for yourself, you can find it right here!

Selfies are extremely common today, and we’re all familiar with the idea of them. But snapping pics of ourselves actually did not have a specific name until the term selfie was coined in 2002. Allegedly, we have an Australian man named “Hopey” to thank for the word, as he posted a photo of his injured lip online with the caption, “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.” And in 2014, selfie was officially added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. So yes, it is a word! 

As time has passed, however, selfies have become increasingly accessible. Back in the day, people had to use actual film cameras to snap their selfies, but as of 2003, smartphones began adding cameras that made selfie-taking much easier. Gone were the days of turning our phones around to see our faces or awkwardly trying to get the perfect mirror selfies. Of course, many of us still take selfies in the mirror when that’s the style we’re going for, but it’s great to have options. Plus, the “selfie camera” that my phone has today is much more impressive than the back- camera that my first smartphone had. We're so spoiled!

Now, I would be remiss to write about selfies without mentioning the infamous selfie stick. This device, which gained massive popularity in the early 2000s, with some buyers purchasing it ironically and others genuinely loving it, is the bane of many travelers’ and people who live in tourist destinations’ existence. But according to the BBC, this creation was actually invented twice.

Apparently, the creation first came about in the 1980s when Hiroshi Ueda, an employee at the Minolta camera company, realized he had a problem while traveling in Europe. “When I was in the Louvre Museum in Paris, I asked a child to take a photo of us, but when I stepped away, the child ran away with my camera," he explained. Thus, he came up with the “extender stick”, or an extendable stick with a tripod screw that was compatible with new, small cameras. Ueda even added a mirror to the front of the camera, so he would know exactly what would be in the frame.

"The philosophy behind it was that I didn't need to rely on anyone else to take a photo - I could take a picture of myself whenever and wherever I liked," Ueda went on to say about the original selfie stick. He even convinced Minolta to start selling them, but unfortunately, they were not a hit. That didn’t stop Ueda from continuing to use it, though. “Even 30 years ago, when the product stopped selling, I always, always carried a pocket camera and extender stick with me," he told the BBC. "It's like an extension of my arm. Whenever I want to extend it, I pull it out, and whenever I'm just walking around, I fold it up."

The patent that Ueda had on his version of the selfie stick expired over a decade before the real selfie stick boom, but he’s not bitter about being ahead of his time. “My idea came too early, but that's just one of those things. I patented about 300 ideas, so that was just one of them. We call it a 3am invention - it arrived too early." And while I personally have never used a selfie stick, I have to admit, it was a genius creation.

Whether you consider yourself to be a selfie queen or you’d rather shy away from the camera, we hope you’re enjoying this list of amusing selfies gone wrong! Keep upvoting all of your favorite pics, pandas, and feel free to share your thoughts on selfies in the comments down below. Then, if you’re interested in checking out another hilarious list featuring adorable selfies that appear to have been taken by animals, look no further than right here!