However, warns Laurence Allard, a French professor and mobile technology specialist, the very name of the product itself might be self-limiting.

“It’s contradictory,” she says. “The selfie isn’t just a portrait. It has its own codes and rules, and the main one is that a selfie has to have been taken by hand. An authentic selfie should show it was taken with your arm extended—that’s a sort of signature.” And, she explains, the use of a selfie stick removes that particular element from the frame.
— How the Selfie Stick is Killing the Selfie – LightBox

Today in “Are we sure Time hasn’t been replaced with The Onion” news, apparently now we are expected to ponder whether introducing a new layer of technological mediation between the photographer and their camera (i.e., ATTACHING IT TO A GODDAMN STICK) may jeopardize the authenticity of selfies.

This is ridiculous. I understand wanting to push back against the jerks who refuse to shut up about how selfies are ruining photography. But if there is one area where photography does not have to worry about receiving academic validation and legitimation of its “authenticity,” one area where the photograph can proceed free of any anxiety over its seriousness and its intellectual genealogy, surely it’s selfies. COME ON.

Or maybe there is not and never will be space in photography which can be free from demands for legitimation, because if we stop proving photography is an art in every moment we trip a shutter, we’ll all have to give up our Art Cards and admit we just like playing with cameras.