FOR SOME TIME now, Paris Hilton has been a must follow on Twitter for a variety of reasons.

Mostly, though, because she often makes herself the centre of memes and takes absolutely no sh*t:

Paris Hilton / Twitter Paris Hilton / Twitter / Twitter

But this week she used her account to tweet out a rather audacious claim: that in 2006 she invented the selfie with Britney Spears. She also had photographic evidence to back up her claim

@ParisHilton @ParisHilton

Joking? Probably, but that didn’t stop everyone rowing into her mentions to provide contradictory evidence.

Here’s Bill Nye taking a selfie in 1999

Twitter Twitter

And another shot, supposedly from 1910, outdoing Britney and Paris by a casual 96 years

@love_roses9 @love_roses9

The replies just became a full documentation of medieval* selfies

@shmicholas @shmicholas

@Rokingm @Rokingm

@135mm_EHV @135mm_EHV

*pre-smartphone

^that’s thought to be by 30-year-old Robert Cornelius, taken back in 1839 in Philadelphia.

What developed was a list of every old selfie that’s ever seen the light of day

@geomac24 @geomac24

@geomac24 @geomac24

And it was really entertaining trip through history

@JacobKai13 @JacobKai13

A true teachable moment for all

@CatherineNBarde @CatherineNBarde

@space_orphan @space_orphan

BBC got back to her with some light reading on the history of the selfie

BBC Newsbeat BBC Newsbeat

Maybe this is what she wanted

@Aanth @Aanth

@PC_Angry @PC_Angry

So it’s safe to say she didn’t invent it, but we’re all much better informed on the selfie’s glorious history now.

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