When Ben Innes shared a grinning photo of himself standing next to the man who hijacked his plane, he described it as “the best selfie ever”. It was a quote that launched a thousand pedantic tweets.
Innes was one of three passengers and four crew held by Seif Eldin Mustafa, who hijacked an EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo from Alexandria and forced it to be redirected to Cyprus on Tuesday.
“I got one of the cabin crew to translate for me and asked him if I could do a selfie with him,” Innes, 26, told the Sun. “He just shrugged OK, so I stood by him and smiled for the camera while a stewardess did the snap. It has to be the best selfie ever.”
But was it really a selfie? Selfie is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”. They should know, it was their word of the year in 2013.
Sorrynotsorry to be pedantic, but as neither subject seems to be holding the camera themselves the EgyptAir hijacker photo is not a selfie.
— Kamahl Santamaria (@KamahlAJE) March 30, 2016
it's not a bloody selfie if someone else took it!!! It's just a plain photograph!!! pic.twitter.com/NNBrEc3sxH
— Margot Huysman (@margotlily) March 30, 2016
Ok so I know it's not the point, BUT WHY DOES THIS CONSTANTLY SAY SELFIE, IT IS NOT A SELFIE IT IS NOT A SELFIE IT- https://t.co/m8yjEqveSe
— Rachel McGrath (@RachelMcGrath) March 30, 2016
Innes was not the only one to call the snap a selfie. “Only Ben could get a selfie! #proud,” reportedly tweeted Sarah Innes, a relative, who later deleted her account, presumably in shame at having got the terminology incorrect.
The snap was termed a “hijacker selfie” in multiple media reports.
Wednesday's Sun: "Hijackass" pic.twitter.com/gYCm1SiHrz #BBCPapers #tomorrowspaperstoday (via @suttonnick)
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) March 29, 2016
Wednesday's Times front page:
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) March 29, 2016
Lenders get tough over buy-to-let#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/B8KkScUu36
too many goddamn selfie pedants. "hijacker selfie" reads way better than "takes photo with hijacker." It works. Let it be.
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) March 30, 2016
This is not the first time that a famous selfie has generated controversy over whether the correct terminology has been used.
Possibly the most viral selfie of all time was the picture taken at the 2014 Oscars and tweeted by host Ellen DeGeneres.
It was widely known as “Ellen’s selfie”. But even DeGeneres herself never called it that. It was, in fact, a selfie taken by Bradley Cooper. So technically “Bradley’s selfie”.
Has the word selfie lost all meaning? Linguist Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, has coined the phrase “anachronym” for when a word or phrase remains in use even when the meaning is no longer accurate, giving examples like dialling the phone, even though phones no longer have dials.
Selfie may yet become the latest anachronym, a phrase meaning a photo taken of oneself, but crucially retaining the second half of that dictionary definition: “with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
The Guardian’s style guide defines a selfie as “a self-portrait photograph. There may or may not be other people in it, and you might post it on social media, frame it or put it in an album, but if you are in it, and you took it, it’s a selfie.”
