Since the advent of camera phones, a pervasive phenomenon has taken hold in teenage, but especially Staples, culture: the selfie.

For those who are not enlightened on what exactly a selfie is, it is when people hold their phone or camera up and takes a photo of themselves.

Once seen as the domain of tourists, however, with the release of the new iPhone with a second camera, the selfie has been reborn.

But the debate over the moral value of a selfie is still something to be contested, especially at Staples.

Some students view selfies as a means of identifying one’s whereabouts.

Selfies “show where you are if you’re somewhere interesting,” says Larissa Lieberson ’15.

Other students see selfies as a way to assert friendships.

According to Sydney Newman ’15, one takes selfies to “show you’ve been there, mark your territory on [someone else’s] phone.”

The variations of the selfie are endless: the Photobooth snapshot, the cameraphone photo, and even the occasional mirror pic.

But recently one type of selfie has become recently popular.

“The duck face is popular in my grade,” says Lieberson.

What exactly is a duck face?

“It’s all about pursing your lips, keeping your eyes very wide,” says Maeve Flaherty ’12.

Staples students use their own adaptations of the duck face.

“They look up to the sky and purse their lips and use a peace sign,” says Tom Karrel ’12

Whether or not the duck face is a desirable face to make is a controversial issue.

“Girls think they actually look pretty with their lips like that,” says Flaherty.

“[Girls] think they look good,” says James Maracante ‘15, but “the boys think it’s annoying; they shouldn’t do it because it’s weird.”

With the recent Facebook purchase of Instagram, a popular venue for the chronic selfie-taker, the future of selfies may be in jeopardy.

However, not all girls take selfies with the intention of uploading them to a social media outlet, such as Facebook or Twitter; some take them for their own personal enjoyment.

“I don’t ‘mupload’ a lot of them,” Brianne Birch ’12 said. “But there’s alot on my phone of just me, for fun.”

Flaherty agrees that selfies should not be posted on Facebook and they are just something funny to look back on and laugh at.

While it’s socially acceptable to have them on cell phones, “If you actually end up uploading them, then it’s kind of weird,” said Sam Oberlander ’12.