Fatal selfies: No guarantee or warranty against human stupidity

Fatal selfies: No guarantee or warranty against human stupidity
Fatal selfies: No guarantee or warranty against human stupidity
Written by:

The News Minute| August 12, 2014| 3.40 pm IST

There are those warnings on television that say “Don’t try this stunt at home” or paper coffee tumblers which say “Hot liquid inside can scald”.
Are we stupid, people ask, when they read statutory warning signs stating the obvious.

Think again. We may soon need to warn ourselves about selfies, the current fad, as every week or so brings news of someone dying because of a selfie. A Polish couple on a holiday in Portugal plunged to their death last weekend after they slipped off a cliff apparently taking a selfie with their two children. The family was taking pictures while at the cliffs at Cabo da Roca along the west coast when the parents tripped and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, The Mirror reported. The bodies were recovered the following day while the children have been placed in the care of Polish diplomats till further decisions.

In Kerala, a 14-year-old boy, who was electrocuted while trying to take a selfie on top of stationary a train, died late last night.

Shihabuddin, a student of class 9, had climbed on top of a goods train which was parked at the Shoranur railway station last Tuesday and got badly electrocuted from an overhead electric line.

In May this year, a 15-year old, identified as Edwin, son of Chiyyaram Pulikkottil Vincent was run over by a speeding train while posing for a selfie on a track.

And there’s the bizarre –people taking selfies while witnessing an accident or still other taking photographs of burning buildings or obstructing relief and rescue operations typically during a fire in a high-rise.

If the anonymity of the internet allows people to say things they would never say face to face, the selfie culture has gone a step further by showing that give human beings a gadget and they will find a way to distort or destroy what it was originally supposed to do.

There is no guarantee or warranty against human stupidity, not even in the face of death.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The News Minute
www.thenewsminute.com