The selfie stick. Love it or hate it, it's unfortunately here to stay.
Or is it? There's no doubt that the tool to help you snap the ultimate photo of yourself on your smartphone is taking over the country. However, it is precisely the popularity of the selfie stick that threatens its existence in public places.
Many venues are starting to ban the selfie stick. For instance, Mashable recently took a deep dive into the selfie stick ban at museums. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, New York's Museum of Modern Art, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the Dia: Beacon Museum and the indoor galleries at California's Getty Center and Getty Villa all currently ban selfie sticks, according to Mashable. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also considering banning the device.
The reaseons for this are fairly obvious and understandable. They don't want you to hurt the priceless artwork or hurt someone else. Could you imagine how terrible it would be if you accidentally destroyed ancient Egyptian pottery or something all because you were trying to take a selfie? How could you live with yourself after that?
However, it's not just museums that are banning selfie sticks. Other venues you would think would have less stringent photography rules are banning the sticks as well. The Emirates Stadium in London, where the Arsenal Football Club plays, banned selfie sticks in January. Some of the U.K.'s most famous music venues, such as London's O2 Arena, the SSE Wembley Arena and the O2 Academy Brixton, started banning selfie sticks this month due to photography restrictions in the venues and safety regulations.
The South Korean government even went so far as to ban selfie sticks in the entire country back in November. This was actually just a way to regulate selfie sticks after the government declared them "communication equipment," which meant they had to be tested and certified before being sold. Anyone caught selling unregulated selfie sticks could be fined $27,000 or be sentenced to three years in prison.
So selfie sticks help with taking photos, whether they're of yourself or of the world around you. I get that. But you have to admit that they are pretty annoying to everyone else, not to mention they tend to make the holder of the stick look pretty ridiculous. Maybe we should all just stick to selfies? I think they're about as much bothersome photo-taking as we can handle right now.
