You, Instagram master, can hold a smile or a pursed lip until the chickens come home to roost. If you can hold back a sneeze for more than half of a microsecond, you have will-power unmatched in this millennia. The snelfie, the sneezing selfie, is what Instagram was made for. It’s something that must be documented immediately, with few chances for redos. Unless it’s allergy season and then, by all means, photograph every one of your sneezes until you get the perfect moment.
The snelfie is also, by nature of this act, a welcome interruption to pretty faces and perfect vistas. A sneeze makes your face go bonkers-haywire. Your hand might fly up to cover the burst of snot, but you can see the surprise in alarmed eyes, the unattractive contortion of the brows, the panicked-yet-resigned wrinkle of the forehead.
Snelfies can come in many varieties. You can politely cover your mouth, or just launch into it, no holds barred. No matter if your headband matches your nails, no matter how dolled up you look, the snelfie will always make you look like you missed your face with a light punch as you uncontrollable launch spittle into the air.
You can label your snelfie, provide a definition, teach a class on the snelfie. You can involve a whole group of sneezing friends or shame one allergy-prone person for ruining what might have been a nice couple’s photo. If you’re by an open window, you can even make it look like someone’s hair was blown away by the power of your sternutation.
You can catch a sneeze in full thrust or post the calm before the storm. You can post a no-regrets snelfie, spraying that sneeze all over this world, or you can post an embarrassed snelfie that asks: Why, gods, must we eject phlegm like it’s an emergency every time?
This is also the rare occasion when a blurry Instagram won’t be annoyingly trying to be arty: You literally cannot hold a camera still because of the force of your sneeze. Blur it all up! See you in allergy town, kids.
