4 ms·

You have to wonder, how many of them would be doing this (or any other "crazy" thing) if there were no cameras, no YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram Live, etc.?

• JshWright 9y ago
  I don't know how many people are doing it for the "internet fame" (my gut instinct is that it's a small percentage), but I'm sure there are many people who got into the sport in the first place because they watched it on the internet.
  • kogepathic 9y ago
    > I don't know how many people are doing it for the "internet fame" (my gut instinct is that it's a small percentage) I don't have any numbers, but as with anything else (e.g. Russian dash cams) I don't feel that the behaviour of people has really changed. The difference now is everyone has a camera strapped to them, and with social media it's much easier to hear about someone who died doing X than in previous decades. BASE jumping is a dangerous sport. The advent of live streaming and HD cameras small enough to strap to your helmet and hand haven't changed this, but rather raised the profile of a failure.
    • logfromblammo 9y ago
      People were white-lining with their crotch-rocket motorcycles at 135 mph before cameras got small enough to mount on their helmets. They used to just be a page 3 story in the local newspaper. Now their final rides are re-posted to every "rekt" thread. Perhaps eventually, enough people will absorb the lesson that doing a dangerous thing is dangerous, and will stop trying to make the "oh shit" glands above their kidneys express their "we're about to die" juice. I have seen enough of those videos that I'm pretty sure that the way I will die is by my tiny commuter sedan being forcibly disassembled by a heavy tractor-trailer or large SUV that crosses the center line. Humans are such fragile things. Why would you intentionally do things that might get your brains splattered across a rock, when we only have another 40 to 60 years to go until you can make a backup almost as good as biology provided?
    • bartread 9y ago
      To some extent I agree, but there are fads and fashions. I'd say the massive growth in popularity of, not just BASE, but other extreme sports, is down to publicity (in various forms) and accessibility. There's now so much content online that if, say, you've ever been skiing it's pretty hard to avoid seeing some BASE jumping footage, and then you get to thinking, "that looks pretty cool," and then some of those people decide to try it. My take on BASE jumping is that it is kind of cool and exciting but not something you should take up if you have any kind of aspirations or ambitions in any other area of your life because the risk profile is simply too extreme. You can ski your whole life and unless you're constantly doing hardcore back-country, probably, the worst thing that might happen to you is a broken leg. Even that's too much for some people. Contrast that with BASE jumping, where if you do it for long enough it seems like the chances of dying for any other reason drop almost to zero. But people see how cool it is and don't necessarily assess the risk. And then there's the fact that to achieve any kind of success/celebrity, even enough to just about eke out a living, you have to keep pushing to ever more extreme feats. Filming that is part and parcel of ekeing out that living. And of course, as a side-effect, it increases interest in the sport and gets more people into it.
• jsjohnst 9y ago
  Considering many were doing it long before YouTube and Facebook existed, I'm not sure I'd blame the delivery platform.