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Selfies Kill More People Than Shark Attacks
HughPickens.com writes: The Independent reports that so far this year more people have died while trying to take a 'selfie' than from shark attacks. So far, 12 people have lost their life while trying to take a photo of themselves but the number of people who have died as a result of a shark attack was only eight. Some recent selfie-fatalities: A 66-year-old tourist from Japan recently died after falling down some stairs while trying to take a photo at the Taj Mahal in India, a Mississippi woman was gored to death by a bison while visiting Yellowstone National Park, and in August a man trying to take a selfie was gored to death during a running of the bulls in Villaseca de la Sagra, Spain. Some groups have been trying to get on top of the wave. In June Disney banned selfie sticks in its amusement parks. And foreseeing the selfie crisis in a very specific way, New York State passed a bill in June 2014 to prohibit people from having their photo taken (or taking it themselves) while "hugging, patting or otherwise touching tigers."
Next month on the Discovery Channel!
A deadly epidemic reaches around the globe and across cultures:
See it all on...
Selfie Week!
If you get attacked by a shark take a selfie. That way your chance of death will be lower.
The less narcissistic pricks the better.
Seriously, while a couple of the accidents listed are acts of God and could have happened anyway, many of them, from the human gene pool perspective, deserved to die.
Putting a gun to your head while taking a picture? Turning your back on bulls and or bisons? Having to be told to NOT touch or hug tigers? I do agree with Disney on their policy however, as a selfie-stick on a ride is most likely to hurt somebody behind the person taking the shot.
Sorry, for the sake of the human species, these people should be allowed to remove themselves from the reproductive population.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The guy who posted this never bothered checking out his own links. If you read the story about the guy gored to death by a bull, he was filming two bulls fighting, not actually taking a selfie. Also, the bison death seems unrelated to selfies... so that would mean shark attacks come out ahead, yeh! The sharks win!
Selfies don't kill people.
People taking selfies kill people.
Kind of.
The intresting common point here is that somehow people seem to think that activities like petting or hugging tigers, bull running, walking on railroad tracks or the ledge of a wall somehow become magically less dangerous and not completly suicidal if you're wielding a cellphone/camera.
In "normal" live, people just know how incredibly stupid this is. But give them a camera and they're still doing it against better knowledge.
bickerdyke
that selfies have Jumped the Shark?
...I'll be here all week.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
A shark attack is a direct mechanism of death — a thing that produces actual, physical harm. A selfie, on the other hand, is what health statisticians might classify as an “underlying mechanism” or an “intermediate mechanism,” depending on the exact circumstances: a thing that’s involved in, and maybe precipitates, an accident, but doesn’t actually cause any physical harm. (Unless your phone electrocutes you or something, but that’s a different situation.)
That may seem like a small distinction, but it’s actually pretty huge. Let’s turn to the World Health Organization to see how it breaks down the issue. WHO gives the example of a woman tripping over something on the floor and hitting her head on the counter; you’d never say that the thing on the floor killed her — that’s just the underlying mechanism. (Also, stupid.) The direct mechanism was hitting her head, just as in most “selfie deaths,” the direct mechanism is being struck by a car, falling down, what have you.
We could, for the sake of argument, compare the number of deaths from falling down the stairs to the number of deaths from shark attacks. Or we could compare the number of deaths while taking selfies to the number of deaths while swimming in the ocean.
But if we did that, we’d come to the boring conclusion that selfie-related deaths are total anomalies: a microscopic sliver of the big ole Death pie chart, scarcely even worth mentioning.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Or maybe there is high correlation between people who take selvies and people who do dangerous, suicidal and stupid things.
Is this what we used to call DARWIN AWARD WINNERS!
Even before the Web, Usenet distributed texts yearly of the Darwin Awards, wonderful stories of people who took themselves out of the gene pool.
Selfies killing people?
Sound like a public service was performed.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I don't need a multi million dollar study to determine that if you have factory ships taking out all of the fish from the local region then you are going to get more shark attacks as they look closer to shore for food.
Want less shark attacks, have less factory ships.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You know, my fear is these people would be just as stupid without the camera.
I'm of the opinion that by the time you've, say, bought a selfie stick that you're sufficiently vain and vacuous that you really might not always be demonstrating any common sense.
Are the cellphones/cameras making people stupid? Or merely providing a way for existing stupid to manifest?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Awww, how typically Russian. Everything's forbidden.
I prefer the US model. Everything's allowed, let God/evolution (either is fine with me) cull stupidity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If someone falls into the ocean while taking a selfie, and gets eaten by a shark, does that count as a selfie death or a shark death?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Re:You're being pedantic...
I prefer to think of it as being "accurate".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Either way, it's got to be good for the gene pool.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because no one has fallen down stairs, or been gored by a bison, or gored during the running of the balls without a camera? What evidence do you have that people think things are less dangerous with a camera?
I would expect there to be a group of people who think doing those things is worth the risk just in and of itself. Then there'd be a group of people who think the risk is worth it for some incentive (from they get a cool picture to put on facebook, being paid a million dollars, walking on a ledge to reach their stuck child, etc). There's no change in their perception of risk though, just the usual as the incentive is increased more and more people think the increasing benefit outweighs the constant risk.
large scale wars tend to kill off a disproportionate number of healthy young males. Quite why this would have any evolutionary advantage is unclear to me.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is probably the best comment here