We've seen your funeral selfies and your selfies at inappropriate places. Now, people are saying "cheese!" for a new photo opportunity — the "divorce selfie."
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The Huffington Post wrote about it back in August 2014 — seemingly the first mention of the divorce selfie — when Keith Hinson and Michelle Knight posted a selfie after receiving their divorce papers to end their 3-year marriage.
"Here’s to the most friendly, respectful, and loving split imaginable. We smile not because it’s over, but because it happened," Hinson wrote under the photo.
Here's Chris Neuman and I yesterday after filing for divorce! But we're smiling?! Yep, we're kooky like that. Are we smiling because the partner we chose for forever turned out not to be the forever partner we needed? Of course not. We're smiling because we have done something extraordinary (we think anyway!) We have respectfully, thoughtfully and honourably ended our marriage in a way that will allow us to go forward as parenting partners for our children, the perfect reason that this always WAS meant to be, so they will never have to choose. They'll never have to wonder which side of the auditorium to run to after their Christmas concert or spring play, because we'll be sitting together. They won't have to struggle with their own wedding planning because we'll be sitting on the same side of the aisle - THEIR side. We have struggled, but we have succeeded in the plan we came up with together, to come out on the other side as their two parents who live in two houses who give them two teams to love them up two times as much. And now that you know it's possible - please consider our way if you find yourself on this road, or share our message if we can help remind them that it's possible to love your kids more than you hate/distrust/dislike your ex (which we have felt at times on the journey but for the record we do actually like each other). Nice work #teamneuman#divorceselfie
A photo posted by Jessica Crowley Hanson (@jsshanson) on Oct 10, 2014 at 10:06am PDT
BuzzFeed collected these photos after noticing a handful of people had posted photos on Instagram tagged #divorceselfie. But if you look at the timestamps on each of the Instagram photos, you can see that they were all taken over the course of 18 months.
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And when you searched #divorceselfie on Instagram after the BuzzFeed post was published earlier this month, there were only 60 photos. (There are about 161 photos with that tag now.)
Now dozens of media outlets have written about it:
While Shannon Neuman's photo is going nuts on Facebook, not all Instagram photos tagged with #divorceselfies are actual divorce selfies.
The caption on this photo reads:
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Celebrating 43 years of marriage today! In a world where a#divorceselfie is celebrated, I'm thankful for Dennis and his commitment to me, the Lord and our family. #WeStillDo#Marriage