Selfies at Funerals

About

Selfies at Funerals is a single topic blog that compiles and curates a series of selfies of people taken while attending a funeral service.

Origin

The Tumblr blog Selfies at Funeral^[1] was launched on October 28th, 2013 by Fast Company's senior editor Jason Feifer^[3], who had previously experimented with a similar concept through Selfies At Serious Places^[2], which highlights various selfies taken in inappropriate places and/or circumstances.

Spread

On October 29th, Feifer's selfie documentation project was picked up by Gawker^[4], Business Insider^[5] and The Huffington Post^[6] among others, with many of the articles describing the phenomenon as a cringeworthy teenage fad. On the following day, The Guardian^[7] asked the readers' opinions on funeral selfies in a blog post titled "Is taking a selfie at a funeral bad form?" while Salon^[8] ran an op-ed article in defense of the selfie-takers, asserting that several photographs featured on the blog should be seen as genuine attempts at connection. FlavorWire^[9] published an article titled "No, Selfies at Funerals Doesn’t Prove Teenage Millennials Are Any More Narcissistic Than Adults," which argued that adults are just as susceptible to social media narcissism as teenagers.

Notable Examples

External References