Selfie sticks: Capturing the world, one selfie at a time

MANILA, Philippines - Remember the days when you have to mount your camera on a tripod or practically any stable surface then sprint back to your barkada and squeeze yourself into the group right before the red blinking light of the camera stops? It’s the old way of taking a group or self-portrait. But in a snap, selfie stick, an extendable handheld self-portrait-taker that is usually attached to smartphones, has taken the limelight out of camera tripods.

Tripod’s one-legged brother “selfie stick” is clearly having a moment of its own online. According to Google Trends, online queries for selfie stick, monopod, and other related terms started to pick up in 2014, mostly in Southeast Asian countries.

Indonesians, Malaysians and Filipinos currently lead other Asian neighbors in terms of online interests on selfie sticks. Google Trends shows that it was late 2013 that the obsession on selfie sticks first started in Jakarta, Indonesia, roughly seven times the interest in the US. The contagious obsession for selfie sticks soon spread to Malaysia between January-March 2014, double the search interests of Indonesians.

Time’s Selfie Capital of the World Philippines overtook Malaysia in the number of online queries for selfie stick, bagging another belt to become the selfie stick capital of the world, with double the search interest of Malaysia.

The ubiquity of selfie sticks must have been caused by the global selfie pandemic that captured the world in 2012. An online study conducted by Google on the history of people’s interest on the term selfie revealed that the journey of selfie to online stardom only gained traction in 2012 beginning in Asia, contrary to claims that it first popularized in the US. The Japanese term for selfie in 2012 was more than 50 times more searched than US’ selfie. The Taiwanese, Korean and Chinese equivalents were also far more searched than selfie. 

 The selfie explosion soon gave birth to selfies’ most tag-along friend—the selfie stick. The extendable metal ‘wand’ does its magic by simplifying the art of doing a selfie. Its appeal seems to be in its strong inclusive element—everyone fits into the frame—and its spontaneity that usually brings about wacky photographs.

Nowadays, people often confuse selfie sticks with monopods. But there was a time that when people needed to take steady shots, they sought the traditional monopod. A Google image search of the term monopod’, limited to results from 2000-2010, shows that monopod then referred to that single-stand camera support. However, in January of this year, the same image search for the one-legged camera stand is now the handheld selfie stick. 

The popularity of selfie sticks is now stretching out farther to the northern part of Asia. In August this year, online searches on selfie stick peaked among selfie-takers in Japan and South Korea, with Korea showing the bigger spike.

Dubai is also increasingly overtaking Indonesia and Philippines as selfie stick search capitals, placing second after Singapore that made high interests on the modern arm extenders.

“Almost everything now seems to find meaning in the four corners of digital photography. The figures we gathered on selfie sticks provide a portrait on how the act of capturing ourselves visually as a way to communicate is continuously evolving. From the early cameras to smartphones and to photography enabling tools like tripods and now selfie sticks, people continuously find ways to better represent themselves in a community that has evolved into digital natives,” said Gail Tan, Google Philippines head of communications.