Everybody, step away from Instagram.
If you thought that social media was out of control before, consider this: More people are dying each year from selfies than from shark attacks.
Obviously, your front-facing camera on your iPhone 6 isn’t killing you in the same way a great white shark would, but it’s the execution of the selfie that is sealing your fate.
Standing on a cliff to get that perfect mid-afternoon sun in the background? You might fall.
Pulling out your selfie stick while driving? Yeah, you’ll probably crash.
In fact, there have been 12 confirmed selfie-related deaths so far in 2015, but only eight deaths from sharks. The most common method of accidental selfie death? Falling, closely followed by being hit by a moving vehicle when attempting to capture the way your hair looks in the sunlight.
In May, a 21-year-old man, was on the edge of a cliff in Lembongan Island in Bali when he backed up too far while trying to take a selfie. A wave knocked him over, he fell two metres into the ocean. He had been holidaying with eight mates at Sandy Bay beach.
Also, in May, a 21-year-old Russian woman shot herself in the head while attempting to take a selfie with a hand-gun. The gun had been left unattended at her office by a security guard in Moscow, so naturally, the woman pointed it at her temple to pose for a selfie. Holding her camera in one hand and the gun in the other, she accidentally pulled the trigger on the gun. The woman survived the incident – which is fairly miraculous considering she fired a 9mm gun at her temple at close range. She is now in a serious but stable condition.
Top Comments
Oh for ***** sake if someone else took the photo it's a PHOTO not a selfie!
So if it's a photo of you in the distance dangling off a cliff it's not a selfie its a PHOTO!
The clue is that if both hands are in shots it's not a selfie.
If it's a picture of your bum from five miles away it's also not a selfie (or belfie), unless of course you have trained yourself to fart with such force and in a very directional way that you can activate the camera!
Ok, so repeat after me PHOTO, PHOTO, PHOTO. And if you have never heard that word before look it up in a dictionary or history book that was published before the world went mad and started referring to vogue cover shoot style photos with a crew of ten people as a "selfie"
AAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Instructional lesson and rant over!
Seriously the story of Narcissus. So self absorbed that he ends up accidentally killing himself.
And they are all eligible for the annual Darwin Award.