Deathly Selfies

How about this statistic? More people in 2015 have died while taking a selfie than have died in shark attacks. That's right. The score is 12 selfie deaths to 8 shark attack deaths.  Selfie deaths are more about stupidity than about innocently being attacked by a shark. One example is the guy who was killed as he took a selfie of himself with a loaded gun. Yep! He shot himself while snapping the photo. Talk about realism in selfies.

I have always believed that the more stupid the person the more likely to be a selfie addict. To make my point more clear we need only look at three other selfie incidents this year. They include a man who was gored to death taking a picture during a bull run in a Spanish town, and two men who accidentally blew themselves up in the Russian Ural mountains when posing with a live grenade. Also this year in Russia  a 21-year-old woman in Moscow who shot herself in the head while pointing a 9mm pistol at her temple. Uh, I will resist in asking you if you think the world is worse off having lost those morons to their selfie inanity.

If there is a selfie idiocy center of the universe it might be Russia. Apparently Russians believe the old Oscar Wilde adage, "To love one self is the beginning of a life long romance," because an extraordinary number of Russians are killing or hurting themselves by practicing reckless selfie-ism (that might not be a word, but it fits). Earlier this year, Russian authorities issued a selfie safety campaign  after hundreds of selfie injuries were reported.

The Russian interior ministry's initiative included a leaflet, video and a beware of selfies web site. “Unfortunately we have noted recently that the number of accidents caused by lovers of self photography is constantly increasing,” a government aide said at the time. “Since the beginning of the year we are talking about some hundred cases of injuries for sure.”

More and more people are putting themselves into dangerous situations in a bid to get the most sensational or outrageous pictures to share on social media. I guess for some there is nothing better than a selfie of your head exploding as you snap a picture of yourself with a loaded gun. In particular, selfie addicts are taking their pictures with animals, and are taking them at great heights. It kind of makes me wonder if selfie stupidity is just another way nature thins out the large herd of idiots that make life a challenge for all of us.