Who's the Most Vain Celebrity on Instagram?

(Photos: Instagram)

There's something inherently narcissistic about social media. I mean, for the most part, services like Facebook, Instagram, and to a lesser extent Twittter are all about publicly broadcasting the good parts of your life. But the "selfie" has taken self promotion to another level. 

For celebrities, posting photos of themselves is part of building their brands, but that doesn't make it any less vain than the rest of us, does it? Given the ubiquity of celebrity seflies on Instagram, we thought it'd be interesting to see which star celebrates the self-portrait the most. Maybe then we'd have as close to an objective measure of celebrity vanity as possible. Most selfies = most vain. Simple enough. It's not exactly science, but it's as close as we're gonna get.

First, we had to narrow down the field, so we looked at the 10 celebrities with the most followers — after all, the more people you have seeing your photos, the higher the vanity quotient. The results created a list that's pretty interesting in its own right (especially if you ever had any doubts about the Kardashian family's popularity).

Top 10 Most Followed Celebs on Instagram:
1. Justin Bieber: 10,447,333 
2. Kim Kardashian: 9,482,267
3. Rihanna: 9,207,011
4. Kendall Jenner: 6,239,548
5. Taylor Swift: 6,042,866
6. Khloe Kardashian: 5,775,643
7. Beyonce: 5,772,049
8.  Kylie Jenner: 5,510,720
9. Kourtney Kardashian: 5,285,275
10. Harry Styles: 4,376,370

Second, we had to define "selfie." A traditional selfie means the subject of the photograph is also the photographer (which is why you see so many outstretched arms in the shots). For our purposes, we expanded the definition to include any photo in which the celebrity is clearly the sole focus of the photo, beyond activity, location, or environment. So basically everything about a traditional selfie but possibly taken by a second party.

For example, the left photo counts as a selfie even though Paris Hilton obviously didn't take it herself. The right does not because it's more candid and less about posing/mugging for the camera and more about, "Hey, look I went fishing.").
The only other stipulation was that any uploaded magazine covers/photos of the celebrity were discounted. Also, for musicians, concert/performance photos don't count towards the tally, even in the extreme close-up case.

With these rules in place, we then looked at the last 300 Instagram posts made by our list of 10 most-followed celebs and tallied up their selfies to see who came out with the most. Here's how that list turned out going from lowest to highest selfie rate (or least to most vain, if you want to stick by that measure).

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10. Harry Styles
Selfie Count: 5

9. Taylor Swift
Selfie Count: 15

8. Beyonce
Selfie Count: 21

7. Kourtney Kardashian
Selfie Count: 38

6. Khloe Kardashian
Selfie Count: 46

5. Kendall Jenner
Selfie Count: 48

4. Kim Kardashian
Selfie Count: 51

3. Rihanna
Selfie Count: 79

2. Justin Bieber
Selfie Count: 86
1. Kylie Jenner
Selfie Count: 87

There you have it — Instagram's selfie queen is Miss Kylie Jenner.