THE FIRST PHOTOBOMBER

struck in 1853! And other 'new' fads that are actually ancient history

- Jacopo della Quercia

It's no secret that almost every fad eventually loses its appeal. (We're looking at you, post-lockdown mullet!) However, some trends seem to have always been around because, well, they have always been around, at least as far as we can remember-and then some.

Photobombing

In case you haven’t noticed, people have been taking a lot more pictures since the invention of the smartphone. As a result, countless individuals go out of their way to make chance encounters as memorable as possible—for themselves. The word ‘photobombing’, meaning popping up in a photo uninvited, first appeared online in 2008 and was enshrined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2015.

The oldest known example of this odd behaviour took place in the early 1850s, when a woman named Sally sat alongside a Mrs. Reed for a photographic portrait by Mary Dillwyn. We know these details because they were written on the picture, which we still have in the National Library of Wales. The ladies are dressed fashionably: high collars, dark dresses, and shawls and bonnets that look as if they once belonged to Whistler’s mother. What we don’t know is why the smug young girl with the grinning face in the top-left corner peering around a screen decided to upstage their portrait.

Reboots

Stop us if this sounds familiar: “Hollywood frequently digs up old plots, remaking successful movies of the past … and inevitably watering them down. This sterile rehashing and stealing of stories ... is significant.” If you think that comes from an angry critic reviewing the latest iteration of Planet of the Apes, think again. Social critic Trent Hutter wrote the complaint in the 1950s.