Death by selfie!
A couple of hours ago, I was listening to the morning radio when I heard an amazing fact by the presenter. 249 people have died since 2011 while taking a selfie.
These days, a social media post would be quite boring without a perfect selfie and in recent times, there had been a steady rise of cases of individuals who have gone as far as putting their lives on the line just to have a thrilling photo or video.
Recently, I read about the unfortunate death of a bride-to-be who was involved in a car crash alongside her best friend. Her friend was at the wheels and the lady was about taking a selfie with a caption of her upcoming wedding. Well, you know how ladies get excited when a possible scenario of having a selfie presents itself. No sooner have they started taking photos that her friend lost focus of the road ahead. The two girls soon became the casualty of very ghastly accident involving a truck coming from the opposite direction.
A 21 year old beautiful lady was electrocuted and burned to death when she mistakenly held onto a bunch of naked wires while posing for a selfie while standing on a high fence. I think she's likely to have thousands of followers whose likes and shares keep urging her to keep exploring and experimenting.
We all could recall seeing a post or two in social media reporting a death as a result selfie gone wrong. It could be a girl standing on top of the a balcony several story building and falling off. Another person missing a step and falling from a cliff or a slippery Rock while trying to capture that thrilling moment. In most cases, the individual would have already uploaded the photo or video on a favorite social media accout before they fall to their death.
No need to mention that a huge majority of these people under to 30. You could call it youthful exurberance, excitement, energy, enthusiasm or even recklessness. Sometimes, I want to believe that they could under the influence of alcohol or a drug before coming up with such weird selfie ideas.
Sometimes grown up adults have also shown to have a similar fascination for photos just like their children. Recently heard the about the death of a business executive who was torn apart by a wild beast who had been his pet for some years. Well it turned out that the animal only liked to play but was not comfortable with photos.
All I can say is that the rate at which people deliberately put safety, rationality, maturity all for social media glory is really alarming.
*****************************
Thanks for reading
I felt sad of how it turn out for them. Social media really gives us a variety of ways to gain popularity or fame. But the fact that some only sees it as an entertainment without knowing how hard to get such kind of fame, I think this really is alarming. Safety should be the outmost priority.