Selfies, influencers and a Twitter president: the decade of the social media celebrity
I have a friend, Adam, who is an autograph seller – a niche profession, and one that is getting more niche by the day. When we met for breakfast last month he was looking despondent.
“Everyone takes selfies these days,” he said sadly, picking at his scrambled eggs. “It’s never autographs any more. They just want photos of themselves with celebrities.”
Anyone who has attended a red carpet event or watched one on TV, knows that selfies have firmly supplanted autographs, with fans lurching desperately towards celebrities with outstretched phones instead of pens and paper. Celebrities have adapted accordingly. In 2017, a video of Liam Payne went viral that showed him miserably working his way down a line of selfie-takers, his smile lasting as long as it took for each fan to press click.
A photo of oneself with, say, Tom Cruise, feels more personal than a mere scribbled signature, which he could have given anyone (and could have been signed by anyone). But the real reason selfies have abruptly rendered autographs as obsolete as landline telephones is because of social media. Instagram is made for photos, not autographs, and what’s the point of having your photo taken with Payne if you don’t then immediately post it and watch the “OMG!”s and “NO WAY!!!!”s come flooding in? If you stand next to a
