Belfast finishes 29th in World Selfie-taking race

TIME’s ranking of the selfiest cities has revealed that Belfast has 61 selfie takers per 100,000 people, ranking Belfast 29th in the world.

Although we are not the selfie capital of the world like Number 1 Makati City and Pasig, Philippines with 258 selfies per 100,000 people, we can still boast that the majority of us do like our faces, quite a lot.

In the arena of selfies, we’ve made it big time.

The methology behind the madness; the photos were downloaded from Instagram over two sets of five days, of that time, 402,197 Instagram photos were tagged “selfie” that included geographic coordinates. I can’t quite believe myself that I live in a time where “the selfie capital of the world” exists.

You’ll be in no doubt that the entire concept of “selfies” have become viral. The word in itself has undergone a metamorphose from selfies to elfies, and appropriately for Belfast, who rank 4th in the UK in selfie-taking, the Belfie.

Definitely a thing.

Yes, that’s the Belfast selfie. 

Like this

And this.

From the Oscars selfie that didn’t include poor Leo, to defining different selfie takers such as the “I don’t care if this bikini shot is totally inappropriate”, to guides on how to take selfies ‘correctly’, to David Cameron’s serious statesman on the crisis phone selfie – they’re part of our social media world whether you like it or not.

And if it really bothers you that much, I suggest becoming a technology hermit.

Some of you may be reading this and thinking, why do I even care? Well I say to you, that’s just the point isn’t it?

Whether selfie haters, lovers or abusers, it really doesn’t matter. I constantly hear complaints of others such as, “there’s this one guy on instagram who constantly uploads pictures of his meals and they don’t even look appetising!” or “this girl is constantly uploading pictures of her baby onto Facebook and I really don’t want to be constantly reminded that I am probably never going to be a mother and end up an old cat lady like in the Simpsons!”

There are lots of things worth screaming about – take a deep breath, it’ll be okay, you’ll get through this.

I only got four likes on my selfie yesterday.

That, or just looking a daft bat.

Like this.

Van Gogh and Leonardo Da Vinci did it, so what’s the big deal about selfies, really? I’m sure Da Vinci and Van Gogh would have gotten a whole lot of ‘likes’ for their selfies, so you don’t have to feel bad about hunting for compliments with a thousand hashtags for yours.

Send us your best selfies (or more appropriately Belfies) on Twitter @TheTabBelfast