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We had photo booths back when I was a kid, 50 years ago. There's plenty of evidence in my mom's family photos that selfies/group selfies aren't new.

There's a photo booth as part of the plot in one of my favorite movies, Amélie.

That's by definition not a selfie since it's expected to be a group activity.

I'm pretty sure the success of Purikura in Japan was the inspiration behind the Game Boy Camera / Game Boy Printer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Camera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Printer

Silly observation but the avatar 'Jack Frost', the snowman looking character on the attract screen was also used as a character in the early 'Persona' video game series also produced by Atlus.

This is a bit false. After phones started adding cameras in 2002, only 3G phones started adding front facing cameras, because it looked like we would use videotelephony over the 3G-324M standard. The first 3G phones available in the UK in 2003 were also the first phones with front facing cameras, NEC e606 and Siemens U10.

I used to love the basic photo booths in the malls in Canada as a kid.

East Asian selfie culture and photo booths are notorious for extremely heavy filters, which reminds me of the early Myspace/Photoshop days:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AxUbEkfatG4

That's absurd. Selfies are almost as old as photography. The reason behind the current selfie culture is the ubiquity of cellphone cameras and the show off culture that came with social networks

Way too many ads, won't read (uBlock doesn't work in the browser that's integrated in my HN reader app)

They still have modern versions of these machines at arcades in tokyo today, I just used some recently. The photo booth is gamified in the sense that you are timed throughout the process and are given some poses to try and replicate, and you only get two photos (which you choose) digitally, plus a selection of a few for the printed stickers. You can still get digital copies of the rest of the photos online for a fee.

It's pretty fun! The small amount of gamification adds an additional layer of excitement to the photo booth.

Gen Z takes selfies with the higher quality back-facing camera using 0.5x zoom. You can't see yourself while taking the photo, but that's part of the appeal.

I remember Sonny Onoo, Eric Bischoff's friend at WCW was taking credit for inventing the Selfie

It's booming again in East Asia.