3 ms·

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

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 7y 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 7y 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".

Bartweiss 7y 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 7y 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".