It's official, the Selfie has become an actual virus on society

There’s been reports of selfie-crazed people getting gored by animals, breaking priceless pieces of art, and now meeting their deaths because they can’t resist that picture of their face.

These stories are coming in by the truckload too, the need to take that selfie is trumping all common sense and throwing the general knowledge of safe use of photography out the window.

Please, if you want to take a selfie, take a look at your surroundings and make sure that there’s no potential hazards in any direction. Unfortunately this is likely to not only continue, but get worse :rolleyes:

To selfie, or not selfie, what is the question?

Natural selection? I don’t see an issue with self obsessed people who are oblivious to warnings meeting their death from their own faults. Just as long as they don’t take anyone with them.

I’m also a little bit bitter right now, I recently lost a friend due to someone else texting and driving.

Or tourism boards can start creating zones that forbid the creation of selfies and actually enforce it by making violators pay a fine.

It might be worth having a separate rule for that, selfie taking is showing to be more dangerous than general photography.

Choose wisely. That’s all. It only shows how much one really understands.

Don’t play ignorant. It’s nothing new… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
In our language we still use the word - but meaning is a bit diluted - to clean; if one gets dirty (unfair, greedy…) this is the word that explains an action taken to be clean (fair, justified) again… in our culture selfies are rare & usually ignored or mocked.
Considering selfies, it is comprehended as an egoistic greed for attention to self, consequently stealing attention from others, which in fact causes imbalance in forces of an ego & self awareness. Devaluing personality. Theft of human value.

Don’t regulate. Teach!

It’s kind of like the shampoo bottle labels, “do not drink”. Let’s be honest, if you’re going to take a selfie with a wild animal, you probably have no business being alive.

Speeding tickets don’t stop people from speeding and DUIs don’t stop people from driving drunk.

I’d say that the tourist simply met with a very, very tragic accident, that could just as easily have happened if he had not been holding his cell-phone at all. :frowning:

There is tourists and there are Tourons, There is a reason why tourist traps have an expression like “Come on vacation, Leave on probation” And that reason is tourists when they travel just seem to shut off half their brain for some reason. And those reasons are normally too much excitement, Not enough sleep. Too much fatigue from the long trip and anxiety about the life they left behind. Hell this list could go on for a while.
But tourists getting themselves into stupid is nothing new.

Now on the other hand, A law to make selfies illegal. Do we honestly trust our lawmakers with this one. Why should the thousands of people who manage to take photo’s of themselves with out killing themselves (sadly) be penalized? I mean yeah it will most likely improve dating sights dramatically, from the resultant lack of anymore photos of people in the bathroom mirror while there is a deuce in the crapper behind them, But what if it is a serious photographer who sets their camera on a tripod and puts a timer on it? What if its someone doing a shot and their reflection is captured in a window? Well lawmakers are intelligent enough to make laws that don’t suck right, I mean hell its not like a poorly worded law will end up with the police charging a teenager as an adult for having a nude photo of himself. <insert paradox joke here>
You can ask any enlisted vet about what happens when you use administrative measures to fix stupid.

One who says these types of things need to realize that a person’s death affects more than just the guy himself (what about his family, his friends, are you going to dance on the guy’s grave in front of his mourners)?

Plus, it’s not that big of a leap from that point to simply pushing a guy who seems full of himself down a set of stairs under the guise that you are doing it for the good of the species (and making it look like an accident to avoid jail time). I would be careful with such statements.

Plus, there have been cases of smart people doing dumb things and dumb people wising up, so the person who died may have actually made good contributions to his society.

There are more dangerous things in life than taking a ‘selfie’. Wearing flip-flops for example http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1298471/Flip-flops-injure-200-000-year-costing-NHS-astonishing-40m.html

Or more seriously http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2013/make_walking_safe_20130502/en/ Walk Safe

It’s society that produces idiots, you know who your parents are and who they work for :eyebrowlift: and what their interests are for them, for you… for others?

edit…
Tragicomedy

Life is not always pleasant and clean, And there is only so much you can be expected to take from your life, To protect the idiots. If the idiot values their family then perhaps they could become an active participants in their own well being.
And yes, Some people become very very upset when you suggest to them that perhaps they should pop their head out of their ass. And there is the normal excuses and reasons that they will give, But I have to ask this unpleasant question. And I ask this as someone who has retired from working in industrial area’s where the risk of loss of life due to an idiot being themselves was a very real concern.

If someone is so much of a fucktard that they can’t take a picture of themselves with out ending their own lives due to thinking that a selfie with a lion is a good idea, Then I have to ask How Many Other Lives Have They Endangered Over There Life? If you want an idea of what I am talking about you can do some reading here

https://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/dep_fatcat.html

There is a saying that OSHA regulations are written in blood, And that is very much true. Almost Every other rule that OSHA has is because some idiot somewhere along the way, could not be bothered to give two fucks and pop their head out of their ass and consider the consequences of their actions.

So yeah, I don’t want anyone to die a needless death, But I would rather it be an idiot who kills themselves, Then an idiot who kill’s someone else. I will tell you from first hand experience that one of the worst things to explain to a loved one is that your daddy is not coming home, Because the boss’s son is a fucking retard.

If you don’t want to start down the road of today’s culture becoming one of death, then we need to do what we can to make sure that people who don’t follow common sense do not get themselves into a situation where they die.

You stated yourself that you felt bitterness because a friend of yours paid the price of texting and driving (which you see warnings of not to do all over the media), by that logic you should’ve been celebrating his removal from the gene pool and saying it is good news for the species. Instead however, it hit home and it saddened you, so it might be a case of not caring if someone dies ignoring safety tips until it is someone you personally know.

No, I feel bitterness because my friend was hit my some college freshman who was texting while driving. He paid no price, His life was not given.

It was taken. His life and his tomarrows were taken by some kid who could not give two fucks to not fly though a stop sign at 60 miles an hour.

The Devil is in the details.

<edit>

And if he had died by his own stupidity, I would of called him a dumb ass, And poured out some rum on his grave.

Just because one calls it as they see it, Does not mean they are invested in what they see.

I don’t want others to protect idiots, I want idiots to pop their head out of their asses and do that job themselves rather then be a waste of community resources.
Idiots tend to be fairly oblivious to the law as well as common sense. You can pass the law to protect them, But it will be as effective as the texting while driving laws.

Does this mean we should stop passing them out then?

They are an alright deterrent, And a good source of income for the local government that issued them. We can’t fix stupid but we can tax it. Besides enough DUI’s and you go to jail for a while…Although to some that might improve their social lives.

Actually it probably does. Typically when there is a problem and one solution does not work then you try something different. Of course DUIs and speeding tickets may not solve their respective problems, but they do generate plenty of revenue.

I remember when a nearby city was suffering from the great recession their ‘solution’ to budget problems was to raise fines for traffic violations.

This isn’t about protecting people one perceives as idiots, this is about minimizing the amount of death that occurs due to people being distracted or not thinking straight.

In this case, if they have no business being alive, then it would have to apply to a rather good percentage of the global population and perhaps a good chunk of the people who are registered on this forum. There’s probably only a very tiny percentage of people who are ‘genetic idiots’ so to speak (think about it, have you never had a situation where you couldn’t think straight because you’re either tired, distracted, very excited, or very rushed? If you have, I think it is time for you to go for the benefit of evolution). Hey, if doing something that might be seen as stupid is a sign that you’re not evolved enough, that also counts virtually everyone who has posted in the Off Topic section of this forum.

It’s called having compassion for other people and showing love to them, but based on what I’ve read online, this type of thing is patently incompatible with views that state natural selection as the preferred law (heck it’s even been said that love and kindness are genetic mistakes, so apparently we’re not supposed to be treating each other in a civil and polite manner like we are now if things were done the way they were supposed to).

On top of that, I think one problem with society today is that many tend to try to divide humanity between (according to perception) idiots and smart people, well who is classed as an idiot and who is a smart person, perhaps we can go beyond the simple labeling game and admit that we all have done inadvisable things along with other tasks of substance? Your mental and cognitive performance is not something that is static, but something that can be affected day to day by many variables such as hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation, burnout, over-stimulation, trauma, shock, ect…

I don’t think handing out fines for taking selfies in certain areas would do anything to mitigate that issue.

The people who are willing to take a risk for that selfie in front of a wild animal are just the type of people willing to break the law in order to do the same. All it would do is prevent those who wouldn’t have done it in the first place from doing it. So ultimately all you’re doing is paying more people to police an area while not actually preventing anything they’re getting paid to prevent.

Actually it might even make the problem worse by encouraging rebellious types to do it simply because they were told not to.

Explain to me how making it illegal for people to take pictures of themselves, protects people in such a way that it out weighs the loss of freedom that every other person will have to endure?

And I am pragmatic with my compassion, I have a limited number of resources, I get X Dollars a month to live on, I have X hours a day and I have responsibilities and obligations.
And as someone with responsibilities and obligations, I do think twice when it comes to spending money on something. I ask myself if I can afford to buy this shinny thing and will it cause someone who I am responsible for to go hungry?
When I see that hitch hiker on the road, I sometimes pick them up, Not of I am going to work of course. That could hinder my other obligations.

When I see that cool thing I want to do, I do a moment of risk assessment, I ask how could this go wrong and how could I mitigate and ensure it does not.

When I go someplace I have not been before. I educated myself. I spend some time on google, I talk to others who have been there. Hell I take a moment to listen to the local who wants to be helpful. If there is signs I read them. And I take a moment to consider what they might mean.

When I am tired, I don’t drive. I don’t operate heavy equipment and if need be, I pull over and take a nap. And I make it a point to make sure that I am well rested when I will be obligated to drive.

And no, I don’t get distracted or rushed. That gets people killed. It is called discipline and it is not just that thing that samurai have in the movies. It is a trait that you cultivate. Its kind of like talent, Its not that gift that the gods gave you. Its the result of every day practice and mindfulness. Its the art of keeping your mind both on the task at hand and alert to the environment.

But you know what, Stupid is this thing that has almost nothing to do with IQ, I mean yeah someone with an IQ of 85 may take longer to learn something then someone with an IQ of 120, But stupid is more a lack of foresight and respect, Then a factor of IQ.

I don’t know if you have ever learned how to do a study on the root cause of an incident, But it is something to look into, And its why we have laws about speed limits, And say what you will they by and large do their job. Yes some people know they can skirt by at ten over, But the presence of that sign limits how much people do that.

Yes those laws about drunk driving do have an impact. Even when people break them it still by and large makes people more mindful about not getting caught. And the reason why those laws are in place is because there is a direct correlation between the action and the result.

Now when you start to outlaw the practice of people taking pictures of themselves, You now begin to tread on peoples freedoms. And yes freedoms come with responsibilities, The freedom of free speech does not negate your responsibility to not cause a stampede from raising a fire alarm.

But if your goal is to protect people, And that is an honorable goal, Find out what the risk factors are in taking a picture of yourself that leads to death. And lobby for awareness and action on that front.

And as far as compassion goes, I am pragmatic with it. I see no reason why I should starve because the person next to me does not want to spend their money on food.