selfie

[Ben Zimmer]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/texts-from-hillary-clinton_n_1415551.html
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton took a few minutes away from her texting
(and all her other duties as secretary of state) and met with the two
guys who have turned her into the latest Internet meme.
In less than a week, the blog "Texts from Hillary" has become an
online sensation, boosting Clinton's public image in the process. ...
Stacy Lambe and Adam Smith, the two guys behind the site, said they
received an email from a member of Clinton's staff on Monday
afternoon, out of the blue.
"We didn't even believe it at first," said Smith. "Stacy and I IMed
each other at the same time, basically saying, 'Oh my god, this
email!'"
The staffer invited them over to the State Department, saying the
secretary loved the site and wanted to meet them. Her staff also
submitted Clinton's own idea for a post to the site, which went up on
Tuesday. In it, Clinton calls out Smith and Lambe for their creation
(and makes a scrunchie joke).
Smith said that the submission was from the Clinton herself --
although she may have had some help on it -- and that they talked
about it with her at the meeting.
---

It does seem quite likely that Clinton "had some help" composing the
text messages, as it's hard to imagine that "selfie" is part of her
lexicon:

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Hillary: “sup adam. nice selfie Stace :-)
Adam: “omg … busted”
Stacy: “sry Hillz”
Hillary: “ROFL @ ur Tumblr! g2g -- scrunchie time. ttyl?”
---

Urban Dictionary's definitions for "selfie":

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When someone takes a picture of themselves looking ugly or funny and
sends it to their friends to get them to laugh. People who do this are
not trying to look good and usually don't. The typical selfie face
involves a peace sign and duck lips.
---
A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to
Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website. You
can usually see the person's arm holding out the camera in which case
you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to
take pictures of them so they resort to Myspace to find internet
friends and post pictures of themselves, taken by themselves. A selfie
is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a
direction that is not towards the camera.
---

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org