Everybody likes taking selfies, but with the proliferation now in some circles, there’s competition to have the best one or take a selfie that’s different from everyone else’s. And sometimes, that impulse can be fatal.
Early Sunday morning, a man was watching a running of the bulls event in Spain when he left the protected area to take a selfie with the running bulls. As he filmed two bulls fighting, a third came from behind and gored him as onlookers watched helplessly. He later died in the hospital.
That’s not the first time someone has been trampled by bulls while trying to take a selfie; the same thing happened in France, only the man in question lived.
Last August, a Polish couple crossed a safety barrier in order to take a selfie on a cliff as their children watched. The two slipped and fell to their deaths. Their children were taken in by Polish diplomats.
It’s actually kind of ridiculous how many similar fatal selfie incidents there are.
In Mexico, a man was playing around with a borrowed gun and attempted to take a selfie with it to his head. He didn’t realize it was loaded and it accidentally went off, killing him. In a similar fashion, a Russian woman found a gun in the office where she worked and also tried to take a selfie with the gun to her head, when she accidentally pulled the trigger.
And in other ill-advised actions, there have been two separate incidents of people becoming seriously injured or dying while trying to take a selfie from the top of a train. Two teenage girls climbed on top of an old freight train without realizing it was in use. The two of them accidentally touched a live track and endured thousands of volts of electricity. Metro UK reports the girls had 70 per cent burns on their bodies as well as fractures, and both were in critical condition at the time of the incident in June. A man in Peru also climbed a train he assumed was not in use, and also touched the live track, which killed him.
Once again, in Russia, a woman leaned against a fence on a bridge to take a picture of herself when the fence gave way and she fell to her death.
And just remember, sometimes if you’re distracted by taking selfies, you’re not the only one at risk of being hurt. Last April, a woman updated her status to say she was happy while listening to Pharrel Williams’ “Happy.” One minute later, she was killed in a car accident when she hit a recycling truck and her car burst into flames. The driver of the truck was unharmed. Police ruled out alcohol, drugs, and speed as a factor in the crash, but linked it to distracted driving when her friends came forward to say she had Facebook activity around the time of the crash.
I wanted there to be some sort of lesson in the column this week, but it sounds very condescending to say “Maybe try not to take a selfie in front of a raging bull?” But apparently that’s something that needs to be said. If you want to get an extreme selfie to show all 900 of your Facebook friends, please think of another way to get your Internet accolades and prioritize your safety over the attention you’d get online.
