The more appropriate name for a selfie stick, I think, is “dipstick,” but I am an awful man. The great David Carr of the New York Times has noticed the ubiquity of these collapsible self-admiration apparatuses, realizing that while old media expends great time and effort fashioning fabulous products, many prefer quick-fix ephemera, content to skip the traditional content and instead contribute to the world’s exponentially expanding high school yearbook, our new-age bible. From Carr:

“Selfies are hardly new, but the incremental improvement in technology of putting a phone on a stick — a curiously analog fix that Time magazine listed as one of the best inventions of 2014 along with something called the ‘high-beta fusion reactor’ — suggests that the séance with the self is only going to grow. (Selfie sticks are often used to shoot from above, which any self-respecting selfie auteur will tell you is the most flattering angle.)

There are now vast, automated networks to harvest all that narcissism, along with lots of personal data, creating extensive troves of user-generated content. The tendency to listen to the holy music of the self is reflected in the abundance of messaging and self-publishing services — Vine, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Apple’s new voice messaging and the rest — all of which pose a profound challenge for media companies. Most media outfits are in the business of one-to-many, creating single pieces of text, images or audio meant to be shared by the masses.

But most sharing does not involve traditional media companies.”