(image via VeryFunnyPics.eu)

(image via VeryFunnyPics.eu)

LOS ANGELES — What’s the best thing about selfies right now? That they are everywhere, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. According to the internet, selfies are both the cause and effect of many social issues today.

Can a selfie make you skinnier? Of course not — it is a reflection of you today, however you happen to look. But now the makers of a new app, SkinniePix, offer users a way to shave 10 pounds off their selfie. Our fat phobic culture isn’t going away anytime soon, and apps like SkinniePix only amplify this reality.

In the world of teen selfiedom, we’ve encountered news that is more severe than the young British boy whose selfie obsession nearly took his life. In Mexico, a teen girl named Erandy Elizabeth Gutierrez killed her best friend Anel Baez by stabbing her 65 times. Baez had posted to Facebook naked selfies that the two of them shot together. According to Gawker, Gutierrez wrote on her Facebook account: “It may seem that I am very calm, but in my head I have killed you at least three times.”

In celebrity selfie news, Kim Kardashian was trying to take a selfie with an elephant in Thailand — an #elephantie, we’ll call this — until the elephant let her know that it wasn’t interested in being seen with her. She was in Thailand shooting the next season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. In the United Kingdom, the royal family posed for a selfie! Just kidding — this version of Prince William, Duchess Kate Middleton, and even the queen herself are all top British lookalikes.

Back in America, next weekend at LACMA here in Los Angeles there’s a fascinating symposium going on about selfies, self-portraiture, and self-documentation featuring folks from Tindr, Snapchat, academia, and the art world.

That’s all the selfie news I’ve got. Now it’s on to this week’s selfie shooters, who offer up images from Los Angeles, Ireland, and New York City.

Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/119025/this-is-your-selfie-reality/