It should come as no surprise – with the advent of the selfie stick and GoPro cameras – that the narcissism that drives millennials to take a selfie in the first place would drive them to do ever bolder and stupider things while taking the selfies. Inevitably, climbing high-rises and cliffs to get that perfect shot was going to end in tragedy, and it has. As Mashable pointed out last year, more people died from selfies than shark attacks in 2015, and the phenomena is now pervasive enough that there’s a Wikipedia page tracking the numbers. If you want a more in-depth look at these numbers, Priceonomics graphed the data the other day, making at least one thing clear: If you’re a 21-year-old male in India, think twice before taking that adventurous selfie.
If you think we’re being unfair targeting millennials here, just look at the numbers. We suspect it has something to do with Darwin on the Playground.
Zachary Crockett; Priceonomics.com
Sadly, this image was one of the last posts by Instagram user Drewsssik, who died a few weeks later doing a similar shot:
This man was not killed, but was wanted by police after the fact. However, another man was killed this way just a year later.
Introducing… the SMELLFIE!
We suspect no-one died taking this photo, but we included it just so we could introduce the term “smellfie” to describe it:
Again, no-one died here, but we thought we should point out one upside of the selfie stick: it can greatly enhance reception!