selfies
Phone returned to owner with a surprise on the camera roll from a trio of good samaritans.
Saying cheese is fine, but flashing the peace sign could be inviting not just social media attention, but identity theft too.
With Japanese society’s overlapping loves of photography, smartphones, and social media, it was only a matter of time until selfie sticks took the country by storm. They’re an especially common site at tourist destinations in the country, since no proper Japanese journey is complete without commemorative photos taken of the group posing with the most famous local attraction, Shinkansen, and possibly whatever the local culinary delicacy is.
But as of this weekend, there are 1,195 places where you’ll see plenty of travelers but not a single selfie stick: the train stations of western Japan, which have prohibited their use.
Twitter photo comics were the platform for a six-panel post-breakup transformation meme earlier this year.
Using the tagline “you broke up with me ’cause that girl’s cuter?” (‘ano ko no hou ga kawaii kara’), the comics typically show a girl transforming herself from a bookish persona into a fully made-up “cute” version of herself.
Then, men started doing them too. And cats. And babies.
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