selfies
Do you know the names of all these Japanese photo poses that have appeared over the years?
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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.
Like them of loathe them, the invention of the selfie-stick has revolutionized how people all over the world are taking photos of themselves. If there is one drawback to this new invention, however, it would have to be that it still requires one hand to hold and snap the photo. But what if you want to strike a cute pose using both of your hands, like throwing up a couple of peace signs or doing cat paws by your face?
Well, a new selfie method has just started showing up, demonstrated by girls posting their photos on the Chinese social networking site Weibo. This might just be the next clever new life hack, but it does require a lot of pedal dexterity!
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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