Stretching above the scrum at the Sydney Opera House is the "selfie stick" - an extendable pole for taking endless photos of you and you and you. You, too, Niklas Riutta, 21, of Finland, standing with your back to the Harbour Bridge, skin scalding and stick held high.

"When you have your selfie stick in your hand you can get the perfect shot of yourself," he says. "You don't need to ask anyone to take your photo."

Great trick: Alex Kyling and Linda Keizer use a selfie stick at the Opera House. Credit:Wolter Peeters

There are hundreds of people here taking photographic self-portraits and not talking to each other. Rising over them are long metal poles clamped to smartphones or GoPro cameras, making a mockery of our failure to have arms twice as long as our bodies.

Selfie stick sales have soared across Southeast Asia and are growing in popularity here and in Europe. They're the latest craze in the emerging selfie economy - which has also seen people having plastic surgery or posing with man-eating tigers to look better in their own photos.