Self - less Selfies!
So at the end of the year we get bombarded by lists of all sorts, most of which are fun.
Who has the most money?
Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet.
Who made the biggest blunder of the year?
Steve Harvey gets the lifetime achievement award in my book, outdistancing Chipotle restaurants, Ashley Madison and anything Donald Trump or Lamar Odom or Kardashian.
How about Caitlin who joined the list of mononymously named people like Sting, Prince and Adele? Not sure what list she is at the top of but I am sure there is one (oh, I just can't help myself).
Lastly, we are all familiar with the list of ways we can be sure to achieve our New Years' resolutions without fail.
But the craziest list I saw was the one which chronicled people who actually died taking a selfie.
This is real. Google will get you there.
I can understand this in some way if some freak act of the devil happened during your narcissistic photo shoot. Consider being struck by open air lightening, or getting hit by a meteor slamming into earth. I can even accept stumbling on a land mine, while on vacation in Vietnam, as you searched for traces of Agent Orange but had to have a record of yourself doing it.
By the way: more people died while taking selfies in 2015 than from shark attacks.
For an unfair irony consider Jimi Heselden who died rolling off a cliff on the Segway he invented, or the founder of North Face, Douglas Tompkins, who died of exposure, in Patagonia of all places, in a kayaking accident. At least they did something with their lives and died doing something they loved with something they created. They have a legacy.
Here are some of the highlights from the list. While everyone on the list met the Grim Reaper, lets visit a few of them and consider motive.
Two young men died in the Ural Mountains as they pulled a pin from a hand grenade to take a selfie. This is true.
Motive: "Maybe it won't go off and that would be a cool selfie to put on Facebook."
I am constantly amazed by people who want to play with potentially lethal things to see what might happen, which brings us to the next two on the list.
A young Spanish man was electrocuted when he climbed atop a train to take a selfie. Apparently he and his friends decided the live wire above it wasn't "live". Note: that's what makes the train go, coal is dead.
Motive: "I just gotta find out if this thing really is live and take a selfie while I get the answer."
Next, a 15 year old boy shot himself while taking a selfie in which his other hand was holding a gun to his chin.
Motive: "Guns aren't dangerous, the second amendment tells us that."
Last one, how about the young man who died taking a picture of himself for the Selfie Olympics. He had previously taken a photo of himself in a Sponge Bob costume and received 200 likes. Stimulated, he tried to up the ante by hanging off the bathroom door and snapping a selfie. He fell, hit his head and you know what happened next.
Motive: the Selfie Olympics, I mean really, are you kidding me? Here is a link to The 10 Best Selfies From The Selfie Olympics via Wired magazine. http://bit.ly/1Pltjbg
The picture at the top of this post is a selfie of me in our spa enjoying the 60 degree weather during the first days of winter here in the Northeast. That’s the most dangerous thing about this picture, the elements, and how they have changed in my lifetime. This is likely the precursor of some Armageddon like weather event we will have to deal with soon.
I thought about what dangers I was exposing myself to with this selfie as I was writing this post. I wasn't charging the iPad so dropping it in the water would only kill the iPad.
Ok, I thought, I want the Pro anyway. Seemed safe so I did it.
You see the result and I am still writing so I made it safely to the other side.
At the end of the day here is my conclusion on selfies: If you are going to risk doing something so stupid that it might take you out of the picture, leave yourself out of the picture.
My best, Chris
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