Homo 'Selfie'-nsis — Taking Down Tongues

It has recently been embarrassingly (but in a friendly, 'laughing with you' way) pointed out that I take a lot of goofy selfies. I figured I would confront this head on. Let me explain the evolution of selfies as it gradually began to show up in my life.

This story begins at a time when I was selfieless (2012 to be exact!), taking pictures around France and Italy during my first journey across the Atlantic. There were lots of pictures of beautiful stuff like this:

Beginning my adventure around the city of Venice (Italy).

And lots of pictures of cool stuff like this:

The complete, ancient Roman town of Ostia Antica, just a quick train ride outside of Rome (Italy).

While siting around the dinner table about three months later in Indonesia, I showed my host family and language tutor pictures of my previous travels. They saw almost exclusively pictures like this:

The Basilica of Saint Mark (Venice, Italy).

My tutor playfully, but mischievously turned to me asked, "how do we know you've been to these places if you aren't in any of the pictures?" Of all my pictures from my Italian trip, I am only found in this one:

Only one awkward picture of me out of hundreds of photos from Italy.

That's when it began.

A saltatory burst onto the evolutionary path to becoming homo sapiens selfienesis! Click for evolutionary epic music.

Others along the way commented on how I often had pictures of places, but no pictures of myself in them. I began to think, "maybe I should be taking selfies," but nevertheless I refrained.

Still preferred to have my picture taken. This is me near a bower in New Guinea.

When I began my 'round the world' trip I knew that they would be demanded of me and almost six months in I had one picture of myself for every 300 photos of others things. On that faithful day, on the Brunei river searching for one of my amazing, fat nosed cousins, the proboscis monkey, I shot my first selfie.

After that, selfies weren't no thang. I was like selfie.

Selfie.

My sunburned face in Manokwari, West Papua.

Selfie.

Meeting a villager in the Arfak Mountains, West Papua.

I adapted to the new social climate that required me to take selfies to remain fit in this brave new world. What's more is that, these selfies are helping me get my genes into the next generation as I capture my hotness in new locales (This is why I'm hot, ask Shari if you don't believe me). Perhaps I should consider a modeling career (joking). The transformation is complete. The species homo sapiens selfienesis is taking over the world to leave more archaic species behind.

Those who take pictures of other people or things.

I hope we can all keep up and confront our evolutionary destiny. If not, there will be many posts that will make you weep, as there are many, many more selfies to come.