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Selfie deaths: 259 people reported dead seeking the perfect picture
The quest for extreme selfies killed 259 people between 2011 and 2017, a 2018 global study has revealed.
Researchers at the US National Library of Medicine recommend that 'no selfie zones' should be introduced at dangerous spots to reduce deaths.
These would include the tops of mountains, tall buildings and lakes, where many of the deaths occurred.
Drowning, transport accidents and falling were found to be the most common cause of death.
But death by animals, electrocution, fire and firearms also appeared frequently in reports from around the world.
Selfies: A boon or bane? (open, DOI: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_109_18) (DX)
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At Least 259 People Died Trying to Take Selfies Between 2011 and 2017
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(1)
nominal egg:
New Yorkerese for expensive.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:14AM (2 children)
Natural selection, bitches.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:14AM
I think we on the contrary need to setup designated selfie spots in the most
dangerousvisually stunning of places to encourage this phenomenon.(Score: 2) by Lester on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:31AM
Yeah! Good candidates for Darwin Awards [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nerdfest on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:20AM (2 children)
"and nothing of value was lost".
If I end up going out in a blaze of misadventure it's going to be something way cooler than taking pics of myself making duck lips. It'll also probably involve a lot of fire.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:04AM
Yup. The headline should really read:
I personally have beaten at least a dozen of these selfie cretins to death with their own selfie sticks in the last year alone, but it hasn't even made a dent in their numbers. Maybe we need to declare some sort of hunting season on them...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @06:56PM
Typucal internet tough guy response. Derision to make yourself feel superior. Try not to trip on any stairs or get hit by a bad driver, cause we will totally blame you for being stupud :D
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:22AM (3 children)
What problem?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @11:14AM
They were only taking pictures. If they'd been taking video, we could better educate people on the real costs of narcissism.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:28PM (1 child)
The clean-up costs money.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:10PM
vs. the longer term drag on the rest of humanity for these darwin award winners? I don't think so...
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:44AM (2 children)
So many beautiful young lives being lost to Photography. Horrible "carnage" in Canada this summer. When 3 Vloggers died in the Canada waterfall (RIP!!!). They heard water falling -- tinkle tinkle -- they thought streaming. We love streaming, right? And we don't know if they were vlogging when they died. Maybe they were. And maybe they weren't. But, probably they were. Obama loves the selfies. As everybody knows. Remember the Nelson Mandela funeral, the memorial? Snap snap snap. But even Obama said these folks went TOO FAR, he banned them from our precious Federal Lands because they took too many pictures at Yellowstone. Where we have the most MAGNIFICENT geysers in the world. Huge eruptions.
And I did a Sub to remind you all, be careful. Canada, dangerous. Waterfall, dangerous. Look out, watch what you're doing, what's going on around you -- not just in the View Finder. Or you might die for Social Media. We love Social Media, we don't want to die for it, right? But, VERY BIASED SoylentNews Editors told me "no"!! #StopTheBias [twitter.com] And I think we had a lot of SoylentNews readers dieing because they didn't read that one. foxnews.com/world/2018/07/06/three-social-media-stars-die-after-falling-100-feet-over-waterfall-while-hiking-police.html [foxnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:10AM (1 child)
Believe it or not, there's more than one waterfall in Canada. You'll need to be a little more specific about where you think there was carnage. And what's with the tearing you reference?
"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind."
-- Sir Terry Pratchett
(Score: 3, Touché) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:20AM
@FoxNews [twitter.com] is great, they say it in 1st. sentence. Shannon Falls. They call that one Shannon Falls. Possibly Shannon fell, I don't know. Megan definitely fell. And Alexy and Ryker. They died HORRIBLY. 3 beautiful young lives lost to Social Media. To Videography. Sad!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:57AM (6 children)
This is utterly retarded. 259 over a seven year period is less than 40 people worldwide per year. So we're advised to create and issue a ban over a significant amount of real estate for that? How many sources of death are there that kill that many people? How many huge bans on our behavior should we thus implement?
For example, there's vastly more deaths on mountains from bad weather, falls, etc than selfies. Should we ban people from mountains altogether?
(Score: 3, Funny) by BsAtHome on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:37AM (3 children)
No, your are doing it wrong. We must ban mountains. Problem solved!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:00PM
You city dwellers keep thinking mountains are cute, but Paul Bunyan flattened them for a damn good reason. They cause harm, both directly to humans and indirectly by killing our livestock.
We even blew up Mount Monadnock just to wipe out a mountain range. The mountain is still blown up 2 centuries later.
At this point, reintroducing the mountain is like introducing an invasive species. One might as well release lions and tigers and hippos and tse-tse flies and bot flies and the guinea worm. Heck, go for smallpox too!
People who support mountains are a special kind of traitor. It's not really against a country. It's against humanity itself. We tamed the wilderness so we could live safely, and some people want to undo that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:06PM
It will take miners many decades of work, but they are working hard today to do exactly that. Plains states from sea to shining sea! :)
Well, assuming the mountains can be resold for more than it costs to level them of course.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Monday October 08 2018, @03:59AM
You are doing it wrong. Obviously we need to make a law to force all phones with camera capabilities must have GPS enabled, the phone must check its location at all times against a database, the camera must be disabled if a person is in a known dangerous selfie location and if a person does try to take a picture near one of these locations then their phone must report them.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:07AM
I agree completely, 40 a year is a ridiculous rate if we want to clear the world of them. We need to start advertising the following selfie spots: Edges of cliffs, tall structures without safety nets, active volcanoes, and deep chasms. Maybe handling out free alcohol alongside said location would make it easier for the selfidiots to remove themselves from the gene pool.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:30PM
Welcome to the world of politics. It doesn't matter that people die every day from all kinds of other things. It SOUNDS like a big issue, someone has spit out official scary looking numbers, common people/voters identify with the issue but can't do the math, and somebody can make money "addressing" this issue. Somewhere there is probably some relative of one or more of these consumertards that died taking selfies bitching that "something should be done, thinkofthechildrenyoucantbetoosafeverryscarystuffpollywannacracker", so let's make them happy by earning us some government money.
Got to protect people from themselves. This world isn't getting any smarter. At the rate things are going, soon leaving our cages at all will be banned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:19AM (4 children)
So we are dealing with people so effing stupid they are doing things so dangerous they are dying. But they won't do it if we just put up some signs.
You know how this will work out. We will spend millions and millions arguing over where the signs should go, buying signs and paying to maintain the signs. The idiots will ignore the signs and still get themselves killed but now anytime an idiot dies somewhere *without* a sign the next of kin will get a huge check because there wasn't a sign, there will be a fresh frenzy of sign buying and installing to minimize liability, rinse and repeat. Eventually all public areas will simply forbid all photography and ruthlessly enforce it on non-idiots because of a quite rational fear of lawfare.
Where will the madness end up? Look at a ladder. Covered in warning stickers and still half the wholesale price goes to liability coverage for the manufacturer, people still do stupid things and injure themselves or die, they sue anyway and usually collect a check and if they killed themselves in a new way we get a fresh round of new stickers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:15AM (3 children)
Warning labels on chainsaws, "Not for internal use." What does NOT have warning labels today? That is a fairly recent development. Looking back, I'd have to say it's more than thirty years ago, but definitely less than fifty, probably around 40.
Child proof medicine caps? When the elder two of my three sons were 2 and 3 years old, Granny couldn't get her medicine bottles open. She would hand a bottle to one of the boys, who would promptly open the bottle, and hand it back to Granny.
https://www.accountablescience.com/will-everything-sold-in-california-come-with-a-warning-label/ [accountablescience.com]
https://www.thethings.com/15-people-reason-put-warning-labels-everything/ [thethings.com]
Cracked.com was first hit on my little search - but noscript had a long list of sites that wanted approval, so I just shut it down. If you're brave, you might try http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_48_if-everything-in-life-came-with-warning-labels/ [cracked.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:54PM
Warming labels have absolutely NOTHING to do with preventing injury or death, and EVERYTHING to do with liability.
Everyone knows you can't fix stupid, but you sure can try not to lose your business to it in costly, endless judicial litigations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:10PM (1 child)
> Cracked.com was first hit on my little search - but noscript had a long list of sites that wanted approval, so I just shut it down.
So... a warning label? :D
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:44PM
You're shooting for funny, but I'll treat it seriously.
Not warning labels, per se. I've already told noscript that it should refuse scripts on a large number of sites. Noscript then informs me when one of those sites are trying to run a script on my computer. In turn, I must either forego the "pleasure" of viewing that page, or I must tell noscript to allow the scripts.
In general, I choose to not view that page. Why countermand my own orders, when there is little chance of any reward for doing so?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:35AM (3 children)
Not a selfie, she was posing for a professional wedding photographer, I expect with a medium format camera.
She stood near the edge of some rocks next to Butterfly Cove in Monterey, fifteen or twenty feet up from where the sea surface would be on a calm day.
Which it was not. I expect that's why she thought it would be quite cool to pose all by herself at that particular spot as her new husband, wedding party and loved ones looked on.
I have to be quite careful not to dwell on this too deeply. From time to time I do and so am overcome with grief despite that I've never known any of them
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:36AM (1 child)
You don't say what happened. But I'm thinking, eaten by Great White Sharks. Monterey Bay is infested with them terribly. Big problem there. Monterey Bay Aquarium, they captured some Great White Sharks, they were showing them to everybody. But, no more. People got too scared. Well, they should be scared. Lot of folks dieing from shark bite. Or they don't die. But they get arms, legs, tits, heads bitten off. Guy goes in the water for a swim. Or surfing. Going in, he's a man. The shark comes at him and he's not a man anymore. HORRIFIC!!!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday October 07 2018, @11:59AM
dragged her out to sea.
I expect there was some rescue effort. There's a coast guard station not far from their but in seas that rough, also being fully clothed in a long dress doubtlessly she would have drowned in just a few minutes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:09AM
Like this couple [cloudfront.net], you mean?
(Score: 2) by deimios on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:41AM
Around these parts a tourist died while she tried to do a selfie with a wild bear. The bear was not amused.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:52AM
they did not die at the
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:08PM
Makig such a big deal about an insignificant percentage of the population engaging in stupid behavior is equally as stupid. Some people are always finding reasons to limit other peoples freedom and treat them like children. Also, a significant percentage of the population takes selfies, an even greater percentage of the population dies, there is bound to be overlap in these groups.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday October 08 2018, @12:09AM (2 children)
Please tell me that they died before they had a chance to have kids and pass on their stupid genes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:00PM
Thank god no accident can ever take out your apex predator alpha genes amirite? What would the world do with one less cynical douche bag?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @09:41PM
Doubtful. Happily a lot of these cases seem to to wedding pictures so yay