7 ms·

Selfie Deaths in the Outdoors

71 points by joegahona 8y ago

LarryDarrell 8y ago
I was in the Grand Canyon a week ago, and the amount of posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends was astounding. I couldn't help but think something very wrong has been let loose in society. It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk. Edit: To be clear, I'm not talking about lovebirds taking a selfie. My wife and I do that all the time. I'm talking about the sustained amateur photo shoots. We kept hearing over and over as we walked along, "Why can't I connect here? My instas aren't loading." It was bizarre.
- airstrike 8y ago
  I suggest you watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA and rethink your life
  - LarryDarrell 8y ago
    Ha! I'm the one who is lonely because I couldn't hike along the rim without interrupting a iPhone photo shoot every 100 ft? I'm sure I came off as a cranky old man, but I'm just making my observations from the last time I was there in the summer 2003. There's nothing wrong with having your picture taken, and it's a part of visiting places and sharing the human experience. But now the sheer volume has become comedic and weird. In this particular case, it's not a secret beach in Kauai. It gets a little bit more dangerous when clear novices in slippery sneakers are climbing out on rock structures to get a shot no one else has. It makes the whole thing more pronounced. I did a lot of traveling up to 2008, and then started up again in 2015. I'm older so I'm sure my biases evolved, but there are some clear differences. Digital cameras freed you from the tyranny of only having 24 exposures, but the self documentation going on now is more frantic and obsessive.
    - jvagner 8y ago
      I'll bite. If you're at the Grand Canyon for an hour, and spend 5 minutes taking photos/selfies, you've still got 55 minutes of the rest of the experience. A lot of things look silly when observed, as opposed to being experienced. Turn around during a concert and watch for a good while. The audience may look... strange. One of my big objections to Susan Sontag's "On Photography" is the common idea that if we take photos we don't experience the moment. I've got a child, and I've taken 30K photos of him since he was born (he's 15 now). When I fly through his photographic timeline, my memories of the moments around the photos are pretty vivid. I'm glad to have the record.
      - LarryDarrell 8y ago
        Fair enough! This might be the future we were working towards all along and it's just passed me by. For what it's worth, I have gigabytes of photos and I rarely go through them. When I do, the joy starts to turn into a slog. I've recently gotten back into film photography, and at the risk of sounding overly sentimental and bullshitty... I find the pictures I take now are more special and intimate.
    - watwut 8y ago
      They assume you are lonely, because you take issue with couples dating. They are there in equal amount for nature, pictures themselves aaand what you call mating ritual. The coupling seems to anger you. Yes, cheap digital photography is how young people show each other their feelings. They later watch pics to feel the same again. Or most just forget pics. In the past, passion was shown differently and in the future it will be different again.
    - airstrike 8y ago
      You're the one who's lonely because you refer to couples taking photos as "primates in some mating ritual gone berserk" which is a pretty disproportionate response to say the least. You're interpreting reality through the lens of someone who resents other people for their happiness. They're doing the Grand Canyon wrong, in your view, but you're oblivious to the fact that's... just your opinion, man. People can make what they want out of their trips and if they're happy and not causing harm to anyone else, who are you to shit on them? "Posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends" is a pretty clear tell that you're personally bothered by the whole thing, considering that many single people also take photos when they travel yet you choose to highlight dating once more. Anyway, I shared the link in earnest. It's an eye-opening take on what loneliness is, and it includes links to two allegedly great books on the topic. Best of luck.
- lovehashbrowns 8y ago
  > It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk. This is so condescending. They're primates in some berserk mating ritual because people like taking pictures of themselves with nature in the background? I'm also curious how you know they were dating but not married. Apparently, "sustained amateur photo shoots" is a good indicator of who they are as people or human beings? How does the Mona Lisa fit into all of this? That portrait in front of nature is okay because it's a painting? Because she was married?
misthop 8y ago
The article touches on, but doesn't really differentiate, the actions or artists/athletes and someone taking a "dangerous" selfie because they were there. They call out Gigi Wu, Victor Thomas and Alex Honnold - all three do this with purpose, and planning (Alex Honnold especially. To bring him into this topic is odd to me. <SPOILER> He had practiced the El Cap climb roped in countless times, until he had every hand hold memorized, and understood intimately that he could die. </SPOILER> That is all very different than the person who sees a shot where they are, and takes an uncalculated risk, because the photo is just there to take.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  The use of the Gigi Wu story was unfair to begin with, but it became far weirder when it was set up for some kind of contrast with Honnold. > Is Gigi Wu’s summit project really all that different than the stylized images we love to see in glossy magazines like Outside? Do we put it in the same category as, say, elite athlete Alex Honnold’s epic free climb of El Capitan That's a nasty rhetorical trick, because they are in the same category, but it's not the one the story set up for Wu. Solo traverses and free soloing are both risky but established practices, and neither is a product of selfies or modern media culture. John Bachar was setting the precedent for Yosemite free solos 30 years ago, and solo hiking is too old to date. Wu and Honnold aren't average people getting hurt imitating experts, they're experts who happened to gather fame for risks they were already taking. Neither of them deserves to be present in a story about people endangering themselves for the sake of social media.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Honnold is mentioned in the article because he is routinely featured on outsideonline.com (an "old media" personality), Wu is in there as a representative of the social media personalities measured in followers gained through extreme pictures. The fact that she did not die from a careless selfie folly is what forms a chain of closeness between the easily ridiculed thrill selfie crowd and the "serious outdooring" celebrated by outsideonline.com. I read it as an element of self-reflection: "it's not as polar as we might like to think".
Confusion 8y ago
How many people died similar deaths in the outdoors before mobile phones? How many where neither a phone nor camera is, or was, involved? Without numbers to compare the reported numbers against, this tells us nothing.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  Sure. But people who are not having their photo taken are more likely to be looking out than those who are backing towards dangerous footing to get a good selfie.
  - misthop 8y ago
    I wouldn't make that assumption. Plenty of people are moving around to get the perfect view, and are still not paying attention to how risky the situation is. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments, vertigo can play a part - and that is _more_ likely to happen when looking at the vista than when maneuvering for a photo.
- JudgeWapner 8y ago
  how many more people go outside and behold nature's beauty who wouldn't have done so without the social media drive? I'm sure it's been the primary reason many people go to scenic places.
dkarl 8y ago
The story used to introduce this story is the death of an experienced backcountry hiker who, after losing a bet, packed a bikini to the top of a mountain and took a selfie, then decided it would be a fun thing to do on the regular after getting positive attention for it. She was an experienced hiker before this. She did not hike for the purpose of taking selfies. She did not hike in a bikini. She was not taking a selfie when she fell. She was fully clothed and wrapped in an emergency blanket when she froze to death. I haven't read a single mention of any evidence that she was an unskilled or irresponsible hiker period let alone anything related to the bikini pictures. Calling this "selfie-related" and putting her in the same category as irresponsible narcissists and drunk morons is shamefully insulting. This story is not outright dishonest, unlike the typical mass media story [1] that says she climbed mountains in her bikini and then immediately follow that up with the story of her falling and freezing to death, leaving readers with an image of a stupid girl prancing up a mountain half-naked without appropriate gear. Still, I hope they get roasted by their readers for it and forced to publish an apology. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bikini-hiker-gigi-wu-dead-taiwan-yushan-national-park-nantou-county-a8739081.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bikini-hiker-g...
- gatherhunterer 8y ago
  The author explains exactly what happened and still refers to it as a “selfie-related death.” That is atrocious.
  - infinitezest 8y ago
    By the same logic, the death was also "oxygen-related".
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    That whole attempt to analyze Wu (and the others profiled) by talking to social media experts is stunningly unfair. Honnold got his start free soloing because he didn't have a climbing partner, then continued later because it let him climber faster and more easily. Wu's past is less documented, but to all appearances she was seriously hiking and mountaineering long before her rise on social media, no different than any other mountaineer who hones their skills and then later lands a sponsorship. Bypassing those histories in favor of talking about "personal brands" and selfie-induced selective attention is incredibly unfair. The comparisons between professional and amateur photographers taking risks make some sense here, but there's no such narrative for these two. The risks they run aren't related to their photography, and there's no copycat epidemic of solo mountaineers and climbers. Better to talk about Wu alongside other hikers lost in Yushan, or even alongside other serious 'celebrity' mountaineers like Scott Fischer. It's not a story that has any place in this piece.
dontbenebby 8y ago
This is not a new phenomenon. When I visited the grand canyon (pre cell phone) every gift shop carried a book called "Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon". Most of the deaths were from people urinating into, gazing into, or walking too close to the edge but a whole chapter was dedicated to people who walk in while taking photographs. (Also good to know that apparently you can have a dizziness spell gazing into a deep void like that, a large chunk were people who stood on the edge, looked in, got dizzy and fell over) While it's definitely an issue, I'd caution against blaming technology.
La-ang 8y ago
Anything for the Gram Likes :D
bfrydl 8y ago
In the first example, the author is trying to claim that the woman died on a quest to take a selfie in a bikini. That woman was a mountain climber. She died trying to summit a 10,000 foot plus mountain. It seems disrespectful to focus on the selfie aspect and place her in the same category as a man who tried to take a selfie with a wild bear. > It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment. Yeah, because they are. I have never once thought about risking my life for a selfie. The only thing the author offers to explain why this isn't true is that some selfie deaths occur while the photographer is engaged in “non-risky” behavior. That would make them accidents. Whether someone was holding a phone when an unforeseeable accident befalls them seems pretty irrelevant. Overall I'm not sure 259 people dying in six years worldwide can be called an epidemic, especially when you consider that they may have died this way even without handheld cameras to document it. It seems very silly to call it “our obsession” with photographing risk-taking when obviously the overwhelming majority of people do not do this.
tjr225 8y ago
As someone heavily emotionally invested in the public outdoor spaces of the United States - I really wish the larger outdoor retailers/services/etc would put more emphasis on respecting places "digitally." It's great that more people are getting out and enjoying the outdoors but you have to worry that we could be hugging something we love to death. Anyway, there is a small movement to create an 8th Leave no Trace principle: https://8thlnt.wordpress.com/ https://8thlnt.wordpress.com/ - and that is to be mindful of what we do digitally in the outdoors. Another good article on the subject: https://lnt.org/new-social-media-guidance/ https://lnt.org/new-social-media-guidance/ & https://www.racked.com/2018/8/27/17719792/outdoor-influencers-leave-no-trace-bears-ears https://www.racked.com/2018/8/27/17719792/outdoor-influencer... In any case, I've seen what people do to trails/nature/wilderness and its pretty depressing. Just last weekend I went hiking with my friend and his friend in the Olympic Peninsula. Friend's friend has 35k Instagram followers all from taking photos of himself and his dogs outdoors and to my great dismay he left his dog poop right on the trail within the first half mile of the hike!
- misthop 8y ago
  Something similar is done in caving. Cave locations are generally not shared. You learn where a cave is when someone who has been there takes you to cave it. There is sort of a secret society aspect to it, but it is maintained to keep both practitioners and the caves safe.
  - genericone 8y ago
    The Spelunker's Code
- LesZedCB 8y ago
  outside online actually had another article about tagging locations of photos on instagram, and how those locations weren't able to deal with the subsequent influx of guests. https://www.outsideonline.com/2160416/instagram-ruining-great-outdoors https://www.outsideonline.com/2160416/instagram-ruining-grea...
  - 8y ago
injidup 8y ago
"Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic" 259 deaths over 6 years is hardly an epidemic and probably statistically insignificant as a cause of death.
- justwalt 8y ago
  Anything to sell a story, right? It’s not even necessary in this case. A selfie-induced death is interesting enough without a manufactured tale of an “epidemic.”
- baud147258 8y ago
  > statistically insignificant as a cause of death To be sure, I think it should be compared to the number of deaths in the same situations.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    > in the same situations. But without the risks "added by taking selfies", as it's the point of the article.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  They recently banned the sale of MEK here in the United States (it's used mainly as a paint stripper), arguably due to its inhalation danger. It was extremely volatile, and in an enclosed space (indoors), it could cause someone to die. Which it did, of course. I'm pretty sure it was far fewer deaths than this over a period of 30-40 years, yet for some reason, it was deemed to be highly dangerous and pulled from the market (IIRC, you can still get it for industrial uses - consumer use has been banned). Just to be clear, I'm saying the same thing I believe you are; that statistically the numbers are insignificant. I find it ludicrous that in the case of MEK, it was used as an excuse to pull the product (to be replaced by far inferior other products on the market) - though I tend to wonder if that was the only reason (I tend to wonder if it didn't have to so with our "war on some drugs", as such a fluid could be used for the making of meth, I imagine). I doubt any laws will be enacted in the case of "selfie deaths", though - even though if you compared the numbers with the "death from MEK inhalation", you'd see that people are far more likely to die from a selfie than from stripping paint with MEK.
Causality1 8y ago
Typical media alarmism. A few years ago it was "GPS is going to kill us all because people keep driving off cliffs following it". Journalists are always quick to exploit a minor tragedy to the utmost in the pursuit of page views.
nkrisc 8y ago
> That’s exactly what happens when we take a selfie: our attention is focused on the camera and the shot, not where we are placing our feet or what’s around us. We literally have no idea that we are about to step off a cliff or tumble over a waterfall. Put another way, we don’t intend to engage in risky behavior; we just don’t realize we’ve wandered into that realm until it’s too late. While this may be true, the ability to determine a situation might be unsafe before the act of taking the selfie isn't diminished. When I visited the Grand Canyon, there were people sitting on the edge of precipitous drops, carefree. I chose to not even come within 50ft. of the drop simply because the potential risk far outweighed any potential gain. By going to the edge I risked death, for what? A view down the canyon? There are extraordinary views from a very safe distance. My life is worth more than any photograph.
gerbilly 8y ago
I don't think that there's any reason to shame people for taking adventure selfies, any more than we 'shame' people for climbing everest¹ or people who run marathons.² Often it's not even the selfie itself that causes the accident. Just being in these places/environments increases risk of death obviously, but that's not newsworthy. 1: 6.5% death rate among people who summit. Probably higher overall, but I couldn't find a statistic for that. 2: Death rate of 0.8 per 100,000 people.
CzarnyZiutek 8y ago
selfie death = natural selection
djsumdog 8y ago
I realize the article is disingenuous as others have pointed out, but going back to selfies, I just don't understand them. I've taken thousands of photos while living in various places around the world, but they rarely ever have me in them (usually only if a friend wants one of us as a group): https://journeyofkhan.us https://journeyofkhan.us I think there is value in questioning why we care so much about photos of us in exotic places, and how that desire has grown with the advances of digital photography, phone cameras and social networking/sharing. But this article fails to ask or comment on those questions.
njharman 8y ago
> Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic > 259 people died between 2011 and 2017 43 deaths per year is ABSOLUTELY NOT an epidemic. Sorry to be harsh, but it is a (minor) rounding error in accidental death statistics. I wouldn't even consider it newsworthy.
jbeckham 8y ago
Am I the only one that was expecting a site similar to the Darwin Awards?
ryanmarsh 8y ago
It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment ... but hang on while I try to convince you that 259 deaths (supposedly) in 6 years (‘11 - ‘17), a time period beginning immediately following the launch of Instagram, is an epidemic we should all take a moment away from our families and work to be concerned about.
reneberlin 8y ago
Darwinious. The author.
- reneberlin 8y ago
  The author suspected pageviews / pageimpressions. By the numbers of deaths to population division: clickbait. I guess the age of the author between 23 and 26. More peiple die by struggling themselves in their bed by accident. Nuf said. Sorry for the direct rhetoric approach - but instead of commenting on bs inthink the thinkers on HN could use use their brainlard on more positive, insightful and entertaining topics. Me, waking up now.
  - reneberlin 8y ago
    Talking to myself. Emm ... yes, sir. Better than waiting or scrolling on a glass-surface other than a bottle of beer, either.

71 points by joegahona 8y ago

I was in the Grand Canyon a week ago, and the amount of posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends was astounding. I couldn't help but think something very wrong has been let loose in society. It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk. Edit: To be clear, I'm not talking about lovebirds taking a selfie. My wife and I do that all the time. I'm talking about the sustained amateur photo shoots. We kept hearing over and over as we walked along, "Why can't I connect here? My instas aren't loading." It was bizarre.

airstrike 8y ago
I suggest you watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA and rethink your life
- LarryDarrell 8y ago
  Ha! I'm the one who is lonely because I couldn't hike along the rim without interrupting a iPhone photo shoot every 100 ft? I'm sure I came off as a cranky old man, but I'm just making my observations from the last time I was there in the summer 2003. There's nothing wrong with having your picture taken, and it's a part of visiting places and sharing the human experience. But now the sheer volume has become comedic and weird. In this particular case, it's not a secret beach in Kauai. It gets a little bit more dangerous when clear novices in slippery sneakers are climbing out on rock structures to get a shot no one else has. It makes the whole thing more pronounced. I did a lot of traveling up to 2008, and then started up again in 2015. I'm older so I'm sure my biases evolved, but there are some clear differences. Digital cameras freed you from the tyranny of only having 24 exposures, but the self documentation going on now is more frantic and obsessive.
  - jvagner 8y ago
    I'll bite. If you're at the Grand Canyon for an hour, and spend 5 minutes taking photos/selfies, you've still got 55 minutes of the rest of the experience. A lot of things look silly when observed, as opposed to being experienced. Turn around during a concert and watch for a good while. The audience may look... strange. One of my big objections to Susan Sontag's "On Photography" is the common idea that if we take photos we don't experience the moment. I've got a child, and I've taken 30K photos of him since he was born (he's 15 now). When I fly through his photographic timeline, my memories of the moments around the photos are pretty vivid. I'm glad to have the record.
    - LarryDarrell 8y ago
      Fair enough! This might be the future we were working towards all along and it's just passed me by. For what it's worth, I have gigabytes of photos and I rarely go through them. When I do, the joy starts to turn into a slog. I've recently gotten back into film photography, and at the risk of sounding overly sentimental and bullshitty... I find the pictures I take now are more special and intimate.
  - watwut 8y ago
    They assume you are lonely, because you take issue with couples dating. They are there in equal amount for nature, pictures themselves aaand what you call mating ritual. The coupling seems to anger you. Yes, cheap digital photography is how young people show each other their feelings. They later watch pics to feel the same again. Or most just forget pics. In the past, passion was shown differently and in the future it will be different again.
  - airstrike 8y ago
    You're the one who's lonely because you refer to couples taking photos as "primates in some mating ritual gone berserk" which is a pretty disproportionate response to say the least. You're interpreting reality through the lens of someone who resents other people for their happiness. They're doing the Grand Canyon wrong, in your view, but you're oblivious to the fact that's... just your opinion, man. People can make what they want out of their trips and if they're happy and not causing harm to anyone else, who are you to shit on them? "Posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends" is a pretty clear tell that you're personally bothered by the whole thing, considering that many single people also take photos when they travel yet you choose to highlight dating once more. Anyway, I shared the link in earnest. It's an eye-opening take on what loneliness is, and it includes links to two allegedly great books on the topic. Best of luck.
lovehashbrowns 8y ago
> It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk. This is so condescending. They're primates in some berserk mating ritual because people like taking pictures of themselves with nature in the background? I'm also curious how you know they were dating but not married. Apparently, "sustained amateur photo shoots" is a good indicator of who they are as people or human beings? How does the Mona Lisa fit into all of this? That portrait in front of nature is okay because it's a painting? Because she was married?

misthop 8y ago

The article touches on, but doesn't really differentiate, the actions or artists/athletes and someone taking a "dangerous" selfie because they were there. They call out Gigi Wu, Victor Thomas and Alex Honnold - all three do this with purpose, and planning (Alex Honnold especially. To bring him into this topic is odd to me. <SPOILER> He had practiced the El Cap climb roped in countless times, until he had every hand hold memorized, and understood intimately that he could die. </SPOILER> That is all very different than the person who sees a shot where they are, and takes an uncalculated risk, because the photo is just there to take.

Bartweiss 8y ago
The use of the Gigi Wu story was unfair to begin with, but it became far weirder when it was set up for some kind of contrast with Honnold. > Is Gigi Wu’s summit project really all that different than the stylized images we love to see in glossy magazines like Outside? Do we put it in the same category as, say, elite athlete Alex Honnold’s epic free climb of El Capitan That's a nasty rhetorical trick, because they are in the same category, but it's not the one the story set up for Wu. Solo traverses and free soloing are both risky but established practices, and neither is a product of selfies or modern media culture. John Bachar was setting the precedent for Yosemite free solos 30 years ago, and solo hiking is too old to date. Wu and Honnold aren't average people getting hurt imitating experts, they're experts who happened to gather fame for risks they were already taking. Neither of them deserves to be present in a story about people endangering themselves for the sake of social media.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Honnold is mentioned in the article because he is routinely featured on outsideonline.com (an "old media" personality), Wu is in there as a representative of the social media personalities measured in followers gained through extreme pictures. The fact that she did not die from a careless selfie folly is what forms a chain of closeness between the easily ridiculed thrill selfie crowd and the "serious outdooring" celebrated by outsideonline.com. I read it as an element of self-reflection: "it's not as polar as we might like to think".

Confusion 8y ago

How many people died similar deaths in the outdoors before mobile phones? How many where neither a phone nor camera is, or was, involved? Without numbers to compare the reported numbers against, this tells us nothing.

Taylor_OD 8y ago
Sure. But people who are not having their photo taken are more likely to be looking out than those who are backing towards dangerous footing to get a good selfie.
- misthop 8y ago
  I wouldn't make that assumption. Plenty of people are moving around to get the perfect view, and are still not paying attention to how risky the situation is. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments, vertigo can play a part - and that is _more_ likely to happen when looking at the vista than when maneuvering for a photo.
JudgeWapner 8y ago
how many more people go outside and behold nature's beauty who wouldn't have done so without the social media drive? I'm sure it's been the primary reason many people go to scenic places.

dkarl 8y ago

The story used to introduce this story is the death of an experienced backcountry hiker who, after losing a bet, packed a bikini to the top of a mountain and took a selfie, then decided it would be a fun thing to do on the regular after getting positive attention for it. She was an experienced hiker before this. She did not hike for the purpose of taking selfies. She did not hike in a bikini. She was not taking a selfie when she fell. She was fully clothed and wrapped in an emergency blanket when she froze to death. I haven't read a single mention of any evidence that she was an unskilled or irresponsible hiker period let alone anything related to the bikini pictures. Calling this "selfie-related" and putting her in the same category as irresponsible narcissists and drunk morons is shamefully insulting. This story is not outright dishonest, unlike the typical mass media story [1] that says she climbed mountains in her bikini and then immediately follow that up with the story of her falling and freezing to death, leaving readers with an image of a stupid girl prancing up a mountain half-naked without appropriate gear. Still, I hope they get roasted by their readers for it and forced to publish an apology. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bikini-hiker-gigi-wu-dead-taiwan-yushan-national-park-nantou-county-a8739081.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bikini-hiker-g...

gatherhunterer 8y ago
The author explains exactly what happened and still refers to it as a “selfie-related death.” That is atrocious.
- infinitezest 8y ago
  By the same logic, the death was also "oxygen-related".
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  That whole attempt to analyze Wu (and the others profiled) by talking to social media experts is stunningly unfair. Honnold got his start free soloing because he didn't have a climbing partner, then continued later because it let him climber faster and more easily. Wu's past is less documented, but to all appearances she was seriously hiking and mountaineering long before her rise on social media, no different than any other mountaineer who hones their skills and then later lands a sponsorship. Bypassing those histories in favor of talking about "personal brands" and selfie-induced selective attention is incredibly unfair. The comparisons between professional and amateur photographers taking risks make some sense here, but there's no such narrative for these two. The risks they run aren't related to their photography, and there's no copycat epidemic of solo mountaineers and climbers. Better to talk about Wu alongside other hikers lost in Yushan, or even alongside other serious 'celebrity' mountaineers like Scott Fischer. It's not a story that has any place in this piece.

dontbenebby 8y ago

This is not a new phenomenon. When I visited the grand canyon (pre cell phone) every gift shop carried a book called "Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon". Most of the deaths were from people urinating into, gazing into, or walking too close to the edge but a whole chapter was dedicated to people who walk in while taking photographs. (Also good to know that apparently you can have a dizziness spell gazing into a deep void like that, a large chunk were people who stood on the edge, looked in, got dizzy and fell over) While it's definitely an issue, I'd caution against blaming technology.

La-ang 8y ago

Anything for the Gram Likes :D

bfrydl 8y ago

In the first example, the author is trying to claim that the woman died on a quest to take a selfie in a bikini. That woman was a mountain climber. She died trying to summit a 10,000 foot plus mountain. It seems disrespectful to focus on the selfie aspect and place her in the same category as a man who tried to take a selfie with a wild bear. > It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment. Yeah, because they are. I have never once thought about risking my life for a selfie. The only thing the author offers to explain why this isn't true is that some selfie deaths occur while the photographer is engaged in “non-risky” behavior. That would make them accidents. Whether someone was holding a phone when an unforeseeable accident befalls them seems pretty irrelevant. Overall I'm not sure 259 people dying in six years worldwide can be called an epidemic, especially when you consider that they may have died this way even without handheld cameras to document it. It seems very silly to call it “our obsession” with photographing risk-taking when obviously the overwhelming majority of people do not do this.

tjr225 8y ago

As someone heavily emotionally invested in the public outdoor spaces of the United States - I really wish the larger outdoor retailers/services/etc would put more emphasis on respecting places "digitally." It's great that more people are getting out and enjoying the outdoors but you have to worry that we could be hugging something we love to death. Anyway, there is a small movement to create an 8th Leave no Trace principle: https://8thlnt.wordpress.com/ https://8thlnt.wordpress.com/ - and that is to be mindful of what we do digitally in the outdoors. Another good article on the subject: https://lnt.org/new-social-media-guidance/ https://lnt.org/new-social-media-guidance/ & https://www.racked.com/2018/8/27/17719792/outdoor-influencers-leave-no-trace-bears-ears https://www.racked.com/2018/8/27/17719792/outdoor-influencer... In any case, I've seen what people do to trails/nature/wilderness and its pretty depressing. Just last weekend I went hiking with my friend and his friend in the Olympic Peninsula. Friend's friend has 35k Instagram followers all from taking photos of himself and his dogs outdoors and to my great dismay he left his dog poop right on the trail within the first half mile of the hike!

misthop 8y ago
Something similar is done in caving. Cave locations are generally not shared. You learn where a cave is when someone who has been there takes you to cave it. There is sort of a secret society aspect to it, but it is maintained to keep both practitioners and the caves safe.
- genericone 8y ago
  The Spelunker's Code
LesZedCB 8y ago
outside online actually had another article about tagging locations of photos on instagram, and how those locations weren't able to deal with the subsequent influx of guests. https://www.outsideonline.com/2160416/instagram-ruining-great-outdoors https://www.outsideonline.com/2160416/instagram-ruining-grea...
- 8y ago

injidup 8y ago

"Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic" 259 deaths over 6 years is hardly an epidemic and probably statistically insignificant as a cause of death.

justwalt 8y ago
Anything to sell a story, right? It’s not even necessary in this case. A selfie-induced death is interesting enough without a manufactured tale of an “epidemic.”
baud147258 8y ago
> statistically insignificant as a cause of death To be sure, I think it should be compared to the number of deaths in the same situations.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > in the same situations. But without the risks "added by taking selfies", as it's the point of the article.
cr0sh 8y ago
They recently banned the sale of MEK here in the United States (it's used mainly as a paint stripper), arguably due to its inhalation danger. It was extremely volatile, and in an enclosed space (indoors), it could cause someone to die. Which it did, of course. I'm pretty sure it was far fewer deaths than this over a period of 30-40 years, yet for some reason, it was deemed to be highly dangerous and pulled from the market (IIRC, you can still get it for industrial uses - consumer use has been banned). Just to be clear, I'm saying the same thing I believe you are; that statistically the numbers are insignificant. I find it ludicrous that in the case of MEK, it was used as an excuse to pull the product (to be replaced by far inferior other products on the market) - though I tend to wonder if that was the only reason (I tend to wonder if it didn't have to so with our "war on some drugs", as such a fluid could be used for the making of meth, I imagine). I doubt any laws will be enacted in the case of "selfie deaths", though - even though if you compared the numbers with the "death from MEK inhalation", you'd see that people are far more likely to die from a selfie than from stripping paint with MEK.

Causality1 8y ago

Typical media alarmism. A few years ago it was "GPS is going to kill us all because people keep driving off cliffs following it". Journalists are always quick to exploit a minor tragedy to the utmost in the pursuit of page views.

nkrisc 8y ago

> That’s exactly what happens when we take a selfie: our attention is focused on the camera and the shot, not where we are placing our feet or what’s around us. We literally have no idea that we are about to step off a cliff or tumble over a waterfall. Put another way, we don’t intend to engage in risky behavior; we just don’t realize we’ve wandered into that realm until it’s too late. While this may be true, the ability to determine a situation might be unsafe before the act of taking the selfie isn't diminished. When I visited the Grand Canyon, there were people sitting on the edge of precipitous drops, carefree. I chose to not even come within 50ft. of the drop simply because the potential risk far outweighed any potential gain. By going to the edge I risked death, for what? A view down the canyon? There are extraordinary views from a very safe distance. My life is worth more than any photograph.

gerbilly 8y ago

I don't think that there's any reason to shame people for taking adventure selfies, any more than we 'shame' people for climbing everest¹ or people who run marathons.² Often it's not even the selfie itself that causes the accident. Just being in these places/environments increases risk of death obviously, but that's not newsworthy. 1: 6.5% death rate among people who summit. Probably higher overall, but I couldn't find a statistic for that. 2: Death rate of 0.8 per 100,000 people.

CzarnyZiutek 8y ago

selfie death = natural selection

djsumdog 8y ago

I realize the article is disingenuous as others have pointed out, but going back to selfies, I just don't understand them. I've taken thousands of photos while living in various places around the world, but they rarely ever have me in them (usually only if a friend wants one of us as a group): https://journeyofkhan.us https://journeyofkhan.us I think there is value in questioning why we care so much about photos of us in exotic places, and how that desire has grown with the advances of digital photography, phone cameras and social networking/sharing. But this article fails to ask or comment on those questions.

njharman 8y ago

> Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic > 259 people died between 2011 and 2017 43 deaths per year is ABSOLUTELY NOT an epidemic. Sorry to be harsh, but it is a (minor) rounding error in accidental death statistics. I wouldn't even consider it newsworthy.

jbeckham 8y ago

Am I the only one that was expecting a site similar to the Darwin Awards?

ryanmarsh 8y ago

It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment ... but hang on while I try to convince you that 259 deaths (supposedly) in 6 years (‘11 - ‘17), a time period beginning immediately following the launch of Instagram, is an epidemic we should all take a moment away from our families and work to be concerned about.

reneberlin 8y ago

Darwinious. The author.

reneberlin 8y ago
The author suspected pageviews / pageimpressions. By the numbers of deaths to population division: clickbait. I guess the age of the author between 23 and 26. More peiple die by struggling themselves in their bed by accident. Nuf said. Sorry for the direct rhetoric approach - but instead of commenting on bs inthink the thinkers on HN could use use their brainlard on more positive, insightful and entertaining topics. Me, waking up now.
- reneberlin 8y ago
  Talking to myself. Emm ... yes, sir. Better than waiting or scrolling on a glass-surface other than a bottle of beer, either.