Why does nobody talk about that old lady who claimed she invented the word 'selfie'?

I saw this pop up on a deep dive last night and it blew my mind. Some woman in Australia actually tried to say she coined the term 'selfie' back in 2002 after a drunken fall and a photo of her busted lip. Turns out, there's a photo of the actual message she posted on a forum, and it shows she spelled it 'selfy' not 'selfie'. So she wasn't even right about her own story. Has anyone else ever run across this weird bit of internet history?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_harris25d ago

It totally reminds me of this thing where some guy tried to claim he invented the word "photobomb" back in 2004 on a different forum, and he had this whole backstory about his little sister ruining a family photo. People dug up the old thread and it turned out he actually wrote "photo bomber" (like, with a space) and then tried to say he shortened it later, but the whole thing kind of fell apart when someone pointed out the timestamp on his post was a year after the term was already floating around on flickr. Weird how people get so attached to being the first to say something, even if the evidence is super shaky (or in this case, just plain wrong).

lewis.troy25d ago

Yeah @casey_harris people get weirdly possessive over random slang lol.