Every once in a while, death doesn’t get the message that it is being defied. No selfie is worth losing your life over
Recently, a Taiwanese bikini model, famous on social media service Instagram for taking selfies in swimwear on the top of mountains, fell down a ravine and died. While she was an experienced climber and was in proper gear, she took huge risks just to post pictures for her ‘fans.’ There is a whole host of free climbers, mostly from Russia, who climb skyscrapers to perform death-defying stunts on the top. But every once in a while, death does not get the message that it is being defied. And in India, we might have Alia Bhatt jumping around declaring ourselves ‘selfietans’ but every week we hear of a selfie tragedy because people go to incredible lengths to take unusual pictures, like standing beside a railway track with a locomotive approaching without realising that one miscalculation and your head and body could find themselves permanently separated.
Here is the thing, young people do very stupid things and that has been true since humans first walked the earth. But to die while trying to take a selfie is not only symbolic of the vain times that we live in, it is also a waste of life. Because you are putting your life at risk for a few hundred, occasionally a few thousand likes. The stupidity of the situation boggles the mind, but such is the way of the world today. In fact, recently, after the Signature Bridge opened in Delhi, the Government had to make a selfie spot and stop people from stooping all over the bridge. While there is nothing wrong with taking a selfie, the obsessed kinds are often putting others at risk as well by setting templates for mimickry and imitation in an infectious world of social media. You see this all the time but also thank your lucky stars that selfie sticks, which people waved around like swords, have gone out of fashion. Maybe one can hope that selfies go the same way, but given human vanity, one doubts that, thought it has never been worth it. Selfies and cameras to take such images are a fact of modern life. You cannot possibly ban them but it should be contingent upon mobile phone manufacturers, who are advertising bigger selfie cameras and new software, to educate people about the potential risks of taking selfies in dangerous places. If nothing else, tell young people not to put their own lives or the lives of others at risk when collecting “viral” memories. It is the right thing to do because death by selfie is a problem and it is time that we start addressing it.