Most selfie-obsessed cities: Dubai, Abu Dhabi on list?

In a month when Ellen DeGeneres instigated the most retweeted ‘selfie’ the world has ever witnessed and consequentially broke Twitter in the process, it was only a matter of time that someone zoomed in on a list of obsessive cities that have transformed this self-indulgence into an art form.

A recent study by Time Magazine calculated the most selfies per capita amongst cities around the globe, with Dubai and Abu Dhabi also snapping their way into the coveted top 100 list.

In a list that saw the financial centre of the Philippines, namely Makati City, along with Pasig, emerge as the selfie capital of the world with 258 selfie-takers per 100,000 people, Dubai and Abu Dhabi emerge at spots 63 and 87, respectively and surprising several cynics in the process.

Dubai only has 41 selfie-takers per 100,000 people or 586 selfies by 467 users, while the capital has 33 per 100K or 249 selfies by 201 users.

Saudi Arabia had three of its major cities make it to the list, albeit nowhere in the top 100 with Jeddah at rank 375, Dammam at rank 386 and Riyadh at rank 405.

To investigate the geography of selfie-taking, Time built a database of more than 400,000 Instagram photos tagged ‘selfie’ that included geographic coordinates.

In total, 459 cities were ranked to determine the selfiest places on the planet, with Manhattan at 202 selfie-takers per 100,000 people and Miami with 155, snapping up spots two and three in the hot 100 list.

Interestingly, several US cities feature in the top 15, including Anaheim and Santa Ana, California at position four with 147 selfie-takers, along with San Francisco at 11th spot (91 per 100K), Boston at 13 (88 per 100K), Newark at 14 (84 per 100K) and Honolulu at 15 (82 per 100K).

Meanwhile, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia rounded up the top five spots with 141 selfie-takers per 100,000 people.

Asia continued to feature in the top 10 with Cebu City from the Philippines and Gerogetown in Malaysia also making the cut at positions nine and 10, just behind Manchester, England and Milan, Italy.

Time Magazine stated it examined of hundreds of thousands of selfies – the low-fi, self-shot photographs that are intensely popular among younger social media users – to calculate which city produces most selfies per capita in the world.