Shucking Oysters: The Self-Inflicted
By Alex Allen
WARNING: The following contains explicit depictions of potentially distressing subject matter.
The first recorded case of death while taking a selfie was in Utah’s Spanish Fork Canyon in 2011. Three teenage girls, two sisters and a friend, oblivious to the Union Pacific train hurtling towards them, were huddled together for a self portrait by the train track. The train killed two of the girls instantly while the third died later of her injuries. Sadly, since then, there have been so many unnecessary injuries and deaths involving oblivious selfie thrill-seekers.
A Canadian tourist had both of her hands bitten off by a shark at Turks and Caicos Islands and had to have one of her arms amputated below the wrist and the other halfway up her forearm. A Russian tourist died in Sri Lanka while she was hanging on a train car’s foot board, on the Podi Menike railway line. The woman’s head was smashed and she died at the hospital of her head injuries. A British tourist died in Segovia, Spain, while he lost his balance, falling backwards on a ledge leading to the Postigo del Consuelo with views of the Segovia aqueduct, and died at the scene. An American man who tried to scale a metal fence at the Colosseum in Rome became impaled on it and remained impaled for more than 20 minutes until rescue could free him. After receiving 80 stitches, he survived – barely. A Chinese businessman was grabbed and dragged by a large walrus at a wildlife park in Rongcheng city. It was apparently playful behaviour, but the walrus drowned both the man and a zookeeper who tried to help.
All to get the perfect selfie shot, all for that fleeting five minutes of fame and glory. For many social media influencers, iconic selfie-taking is big business, and getting that oh-so-daring shot is one sure way to stand out in an over-crowded market. As Ned Levi wrote, “It seems as though the competition for social media followers, likes, loves, and comments is too often turning smart adult brains into mush and causing deaths and serious injury.”
Sources suggest that there were over 500 selfie fatalities last year. According to one study, falls from heights are the most common in selfie-related incidents, followed by drowning. It used to be only the self-obsessed, celebrity-seeking, reality TV-show-wannabe folks took selfies. Not anymore, with almost five billion smartphone users globally – and all having a built-in camera and inner influencer in them, that’s a lot of selfies.
Mark Griffiths, a British professor of behavioural addictions, ran a study in 2018 on “selfitis” (or selfie addiction) and it’s not a new phenomenon – “we’ve had storm-chasers for years. It’s a kind of bravado or machismo. The difference is now you can record it.” Griffiths notes that taking and sharing selfies is also tied to self-esteem, especially in adolescents and young people. “You get a feeling of validation when your selfie gets hundreds of likes. That motivates people to compete with one another for attention and look for something which gives them the edge.” Even with deadly consequences, such fragile ego contests continue in popularity.
In her book The Selfie Generation, Alicia Eler charted the rise of selfies, from becoming Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2013 to transforming pop psychology, marketing, and visibility for desperate and insecure people. In 2014, selfie was officially accepted in the game of Scrabble. Today, selfies have become as normalized as tattoos. The essential purpose and meaning of a selfie remains the same. What has changed is where and when people snap selfies.
Once again we can thank the Kardashians for this modern twist on narcissism. In the early 2010s, Kim Kardashian pioneered the selfie. “I can look at any photo of myself and can tell who did my hair and makeup, where I was and who I was with,” she gushed in her unapologetically titled coffee table book, Selfish. An updated volume offers 64 new pages of some of Kim’s favourite selfies – from her “throwback images and current ultra-sexy glam shots” to celebrity selfies with Serena Williams, Hilary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Ever the opportunist, Kim could be seen at the Sanchez/Bezos wedding spectacle selfie shooting herself with abandon, no doubt for her next book, Look at Me, Looking at Me.
Beyond tourist destinations, the world of culture has also been getting concerned about selfie intrusion. British art critic, Jonathan Jones, warned sternly that selfies are a “spiritual menace” to museums and galleries. Rather than allowing “an extraordinary moment to infuse our spirit,” it’s all about recording being there. The experience has become more important than the experience itself.
In The Guardian, Kenan Malik observed with irony, you’re one of six million people that visit the Mona Lisa at the Louvre each year and, “What do you do? Look more closely at that enigmatic smile? Wonder at the subtle gradations of light and shadow in Leonardo’s rendering of the face? Admire the illusion of depth? No, of course not. You turn your back on the painting, whip out your phone and take a selfie. And then you move on to your next prize.”
NaAsiaha, “Ny” Simon, CEO of NaAsiaha Simon & Associates Public Relations and Planning Firm, in Ohio, has over 19,000 selfies in her cell phone and proudly shares how empowering her selfies have been in her life. Her favourite selfie is the group or celeb selfie, not the self-compassion selfie where you’re showing your warmness towards yourself and others, but the one where you’re just showing yourself off to others. Selfies are “our power and it represents our substance,” she enthuses. Yes, I agree, vacuous and desperate.
