The story used to introduce this story is the death of an experienced backcountry hiker who, after losing a bet, packed a bikini to the top of a mountain and took a selfie, then decided it would be a fun thing to do on the regular after getting positive attention for it. She was an experienced hiker before this. She did not hike for the purpose of taking selfies. She did not hike in a bikini. She was not taking a selfie when she fell. She was fully clothed and wrapped in an emergency blanket when she froze to death. I haven't read a single mention of any evidence that she was an unskilled or irresponsible hiker period let alone anything related to the bikini pictures. Calling this "selfie-related" and putting her in the same category as irresponsible narcissists and drunk morons is shamefully insulting.
This story is not outright dishonest, unlike the typical mass media story [1] that says she climbed mountains in her bikini and then immediately follow that up with the story of her falling and freezing to death, leaving readers with an image of a stupid girl prancing up a mountain half-naked without appropriate gear. Still, I hope they get roasted by their readers for it and forced to publish an apology.
This is a downright grotesque lead-in for the story. I suppose the implied connection is something about how being an "adventure sports personality" creates pressure to continually up the ante, but frankly that's garbage too. Wu was an experienced hiker in a park in the country where she grew up, and I haven't seen anyone seriously claim she was pushing her boundaries for a story or a photoshoot. A solo traverse is dangerous, sure, but expert hikers who aren't "adventure sports personalities" do similar things all the time. And sometimes die in similar accidents, because bad weather and bad falls are in no way selfie-based risks.
There's no story here beyond bad luck and the inherent dangers of remote, rugged places, so for ostensibly dignified outlets like the Washington Post to headline their pieces with "Bikini Hiker" was lurid and unfair. But seeing Outside do it, even with a more accurate story, is much nastier. This is their beat, and they're usually much better at discussing these risks than non-dedicated journalists. Anyone who keeps track of dedicated hikers and climbers knows that these incidents happen, and happened long before selfies got involved. So Outside ought to know better, and with any luck their readers do know better.
It's a very weird attitude commonly seen among the segment of the population who never travels in the mountains or backcountry. Schadenfreude and twisting the actions of climbers to make it seem as though their judgment were obviously flawed. A lot of dumb, ignorant stuff does indeed take place in the mountains, and that sometimes results in death, but some incredibly experienced & competent people die too and are tarred with the same brush. See the tragic deaths last week of David Lama et al. which was greeted by many a news article comment decrying "adrenaline junkies" and how foolish they were to climb during the month of April due to avalanche risk (the commenters apparently ignorant of the entire field of snow science). This is turning into a rant, but to sum it up I really just wish people would extend basic benefit of the doubt to people who die or are injured in the great outdoors before taking the opportunity to pop off and turn their deaths into some kind of joke or morality tale.
That whole attempt to analyze Wu (and the others profiled) by talking to social media experts is stunningly unfair.
Honnold got his start free soloing because he didn't have a climbing partner, then continued later because it let him climber faster and more easily. Wu's past is less documented, but to all appearances she was seriously hiking and mountaineering long before her rise on social media, no different than any other mountaineer who hones their skills and then later lands a sponsorship. Bypassing those histories in favor of talking about "personal brands" and selfie-induced selective attention is incredibly unfair. The comparisons between professional and amateur photographers taking risks make some sense here, but there's no such narrative for these two. The risks they run aren't related to their photography, and there's no copycat epidemic of solo mountaineers and climbers.
Better to talk about Wu alongside other hikers lost in Yushan, or even alongside other serious 'celebrity' mountaineers like Scott Fischer. It's not a story that has any place in this piece.
This story is not outright dishonest, unlike the typical mass media story...Still, I hope they get roasted by their readers for it and forced to publish an apology.
It's immaterial whether we like or dislike people who also say so. We need to face this fact: Far too much "news" media in 2019 is shamelessly sensational and devoid of fact checking and journalistic ethics. The "Fake news" phenomenon has two sides. On one hand, there are fly-by-night small content creators popping up, and many of these are click-bait trash or are propaganda tools used to manipulate the public. On the other hand, there is a dying legacy media who is falling afoul of their fading business model and the same incentives the modern Internet creates. If it weren't for the fading credibility of the latter, the former wouldn't be a problem. We need to call out both!
On the other hand, there are also "startups" in the news media space who are doing good work and are prospering. It's vital that our society develops enough of an immune system to quiet down the click bait trash.
(EDIT: This cannot take the form of big tech firm censorship! It's just a 2019 technological twist that private companies now have power commensurate with governments. The effect is the same.)
There needs to be more calling out of the mainstream media. In particular, as a member of the Left, I have to say there needs to be calling out by the Left when the mainstream follows the lead of bad actors on the Left. Much of the loss of credibility of the mainstream media comes from a lack of calling out bad information from that direction. Note the strength of the namecalling and the high level of acrimony if that ever happens. There's a level of defensiveness there.
Trying to understand why the author took this tact, my guess is rather than dragging the experienced professionals down to the level of the amateur selfie takers, they were trying to hoist the rep of the amateur selfie takers to that of the professionals, which is intellectually dishonest in this story. The question the story is asking is "why do people do this?" and the answer it's trying to prove is "because they're pros just out there doing their thing," when the real answer is probably closer to the very unsurprising "they're narcissists who really don't deserve any more consideration than a pitiful headshake." But that doesn't make a very interesting story, does it?
I see this sort of "let's take a new look at this thing we all have a preconception about" approach to podcasts too, which start with a point and try to gather all the evidence they can to support it. It's obnoxious and dishonest and should not be considered comparable to an objective and well-researched article.
I am generally very concerned leary of libel claims for media but that level of knowing misrepresentation seems to actually rise to it actually being worth considering for once instead of "offended person with big ego and disposable income for a lawyer".
I wonder statistically about outdoor activities like that what is the probable and average life expectancy impact - since while it has hazards all should respect being active is also better for your health than sitting at home.
This is true for quite some studies for bike commuters. The risk of accident is probably higher than getting public transport or walking (I don't know with respect to using a car; but that's less common in most places here in Europe), but the improved health conditions are worth it on average.
In the first example, the author is trying to claim that the woman died on a quest to take a selfie in a bikini. That woman was a mountain climber. She died trying to summit a 10,000 foot plus mountain. It seems disrespectful to focus on the selfie aspect and place her in the same category as a man who tried to take a selfie with a wild bear.
> It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment.
Yeah, because they are. I have never once thought about risking my life for a selfie. The only thing the author offers to explain why this isn't true is that some selfie deaths occur while the photographer is engaged in “non-risky” behavior. That would make them accidents. Whether someone was holding a phone when an unforeseeable accident befalls them seems pretty irrelevant.
Overall I'm not sure 259 people dying in six years worldwide can be called an epidemic, especially when you consider that they may have died this way even without handheld cameras to document it. It seems very silly to call it “our obsession” with photographing risk-taking when obviously the overwhelming majority of people do not do this.
This is not a new phenomenon. When I visited the grand canyon (pre cell phone) every gift shop carried a book called "Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon". Most of the deaths were from people urinating into, gazing into, or walking too close to the edge but a whole chapter was dedicated to people who walk in while taking photographs.
(Also good to know that apparently you can have a dizziness spell gazing into a deep void like that, a large chunk were people who stood on the edge, looked in, got dizzy and fell over)
While it's definitely an issue, I'd caution against blaming technology.
The article touches on, but doesn't really differentiate, the actions or artists/athletes and someone taking a "dangerous" selfie because they were there.
They call out Gigi Wu, Victor Thomas and Alex Honnold - all three do this with purpose, and planning (Alex Honnold especially. To bring him into this topic is odd to me.
<SPOILER>
He had practiced the El Cap climb roped in countless times, until he had every hand hold memorized, and understood intimately that he could die.
</SPOILER>
That is all very different than the person who sees a shot where they are, and takes an uncalculated risk, because the photo is just there to take.
The use of the Gigi Wu story was unfair to begin with, but it became far weirder when it was set up for some kind of contrast with Honnold.
> Is Gigi Wu’s summit project really all that different than the stylized images we love to see in glossy magazines like Outside? Do we put it in the same category as, say, elite athlete Alex Honnold’s epic free climb of El Capitan
That's a nasty rhetorical trick, because they are in the same category, but it's not the one the story set up for Wu. Solo traverses and free soloing are both risky but established practices, and neither is a product of selfies or modern media culture. John Bachar was setting the precedent for Yosemite free solos 30 years ago, and solo hiking is too old to date. Wu and Honnold aren't average people getting hurt imitating experts, they're experts who happened to gather fame for risks they were already taking. Neither of them deserves to be present in a story about people endangering themselves for the sake of social media.
Honnold is mentioned in the article because he is routinely featured on outsideonline.com (an "old media" personality), Wu is in there as a representative of the social media personalities measured in followers gained through extreme pictures. The fact that she did not die from a careless selfie folly is what forms a chain of closeness between the easily ridiculed thrill selfie crowd and the "serious outdooring" celebrated by outsideonline.com. I read it as an element of self-reflection: "it's not as polar as we might like to think".
They recently banned the sale of MEK here in the United States (it's used mainly as a paint stripper), arguably due to its inhalation danger. It was extremely volatile, and in an enclosed space (indoors), it could cause someone to die.
Which it did, of course.
I'm pretty sure it was far fewer deaths than this over a period of 30-40 years, yet for some reason, it was deemed to be highly dangerous and pulled from the market (IIRC, you can still get it for industrial uses - consumer use has been banned).
Just to be clear, I'm saying the same thing I believe you are; that statistically the numbers are insignificant. I find it ludicrous that in the case of MEK, it was used as an excuse to pull the product (to be replaced by far inferior other products on the market) - though I tend to wonder if that was the only reason (I tend to wonder if it didn't have to so with our "war on some drugs", as such a fluid could be used for the making of meth, I imagine).
I doubt any laws will be enacted in the case of "selfie deaths", though - even though if you compared the numbers with the "death from MEK inhalation", you'd see that people are far more likely to die from a selfie than from stripping paint with MEK.
The annoying thing is that laws don't even have to be passed directly against you to still impact you.
As far as I can tell, there's no law requiring "air duster" manufacturers to add bitterant to their products to prevent inhalant abuse. But despite that, it is in pretty much all of their products. It has become nearly impossible to purchase uncontaminated dusters.
If you use a lot of it, it will get into the air and you will taste it. If you use it to clean a keyboard or mouse, the bitterant transfers to your fingers, and then on to your lunch.
It's a kind of disgusting example of how diseases get transferred, now that I think about it...
Lastly, you should NOT use it to clean flour out of the crevices of your kitchen mixer.
As someone heavily emotionally invested in the public outdoor spaces of the United States - I really wish the larger outdoor retailers/services/etc would put more emphasis on respecting places "digitally." It's great that more people are getting out and enjoying the outdoors but you have to worry that we could be hugging something we love to death.
Anyway, there is a small movement to create an 8th Leave no Trace principle: https://8thlnt.wordpress.com/ - and that is to be mindful of what we do digitally in the outdoors.
In any case, I've seen what people do to trails/nature/wilderness and its pretty depressing. Just last weekend I went hiking with my friend and his friend in the Olympic Peninsula. Friend's friend has 35k Instagram followers all from taking photos of himself and his dogs outdoors and to my great dismay he left his dog poop right on the trail within the first half mile of the hike!
Something similar is done in caving. Cave locations are generally not shared. You learn where a cave is when someone who has been there takes you to cave it. There is sort of a secret society aspect to it, but it is maintained to keep both practitioners and the caves safe.
I share your wish and think that people are coming around to the idea of respecting places digitally.
I've noticed that Big Agnes, for example, is pretty discrete about the locations in their catalog. Last year there was a picture of a hot springs in an Idaho wilderness area and the caption was simply "secluded hot springs".
As one of the people who started the 8th LNT "movement" (really just a haphazard attempt by myself and two friends to create a coherent "policy" stance to bring the multitude of conversations about social media impacts together under one banner) I appreciate you bringing that idea up and linking to the articles you did.
LNT likely will never add an 8th principle (and in hindsight I wished we'd called the "movement" something else), but they were very responsive the idea and acknowledged the problems -- hence the social media guidelines they released. I think the fact that they did that was really courageous of them, given the potential for backlash by the "don't tell me what to do online" crowd.
I'm also very emotionally invested in public lands (I moved cross-country to be closer to some of the wildest places in the lower 48 five years ago) and think that most people who are see the fact that social media impacts wild places, often negatively.
Bummer about your friend's friend, but just goes to show just because people project an "outdoorsy" vibe doesn't mean they really care at all.
Thanks again for linking to the articles you did, makes me happy to see someone else out there "gets it". Hope you have some great hikes this summer.
outside online actually had another article about tagging locations of photos on instagram, and how those locations weren't able to deal with the subsequent influx of guests.
I don't think so, although I can see where you might get that impression. There's a lot of nuance involved in this issue and once you delve a bit deeper into it you'll see that it definitely isn't NIMBYism at work.
Ultimately, it's about resource protection and making sure that places don't suffer too greatly from the impacts of having a huge surge in visitors after people see them on Instagram.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of some of the criticism of being discrete about posting vulnerable outdoor locations on social media as being NIMBY or elitist is the fact that once places become super popular (Conundrum Hot Springs, wilderness areas near Portland, etc.) they almost inevitable end up becoming areas where permits are required and limited amounts are available-- thus actually limiting the number of people that can go there and making it more of an "elite" experience.
There is plenty of public land for everyone to spread out on and enjoy, but real issues arise when too many people go to the same exact place (and are often uninformed about how to properly interact with a natural landscape, because the only "research" they did was see a photo on Instagram and then plug the location into Google Maps on their smartphone).
> Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic
> 259 people died between 2011 and 2017
43 deaths per year is ABSOLUTELY NOT an epidemic. Sorry to be harsh, but it is a (minor) rounding error in accidental death statistics. I wouldn't even consider it newsworthy.
Sure. But people who are not having their photo taken are more likely to be looking out than those who are backing towards dangerous footing to get a good selfie.
I wouldn't make that assumption. Plenty of people are moving around to get the perfect view, and are still not paying attention to how risky the situation is. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments, vertigo can play a part - and that is _more_ likely to happen when looking at the vista than when maneuvering for a photo.
how many more people go outside and behold nature's beauty who wouldn't have done so without the social media drive? I'm sure it's been the primary reason many people go to scenic places.
I don't think that there's any reason to shame people for taking adventure selfies, any more than we 'shame' people for climbing everest¹ or people who run marathons.²
Often it's not even the selfie itself that causes the accident. Just being in these places/environments increases risk of death obviously, but that's not newsworthy.
1: 6.5% death rate among people who summit. Probably higher overall, but I couldn't find a statistic for that.
> That’s exactly what happens when we take a selfie: our attention is focused on the camera and the shot, not where we are placing our feet or what’s around us. We literally have no idea that we are about to step off a cliff or tumble over a waterfall. Put another way, we don’t intend to engage in risky behavior; we just don’t realize we’ve wandered into that realm until it’s too late.
While this may be true, the ability to determine a situation might be unsafe before the act of taking the selfie isn't diminished. When I visited the Grand Canyon, there were people sitting on the edge of precipitous drops, carefree. I chose to not even come within 50ft. of the drop simply because the potential risk far outweighed any potential gain. By going to the edge I risked death, for what? A view down the canyon? There are extraordinary views from a very safe distance. My life is worth more than any photograph.
Typical media alarmism. A few years ago it was "GPS is going to kill us all because people keep driving off cliffs following it". Journalists are always quick to exploit a minor tragedy to the utmost in the pursuit of page views.
It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment
... but hang on while I try to convince you that 259 deaths (supposedly) in 6 years (‘11 - ‘17), a time period beginning immediately following the launch of Instagram, is an epidemic we should all take a moment away from our families and work to be concerned about.
I realize the article is disingenuous as others have pointed out, but going back to selfies, I just don't understand them. I've taken thousands of photos while living in various places around the world, but they rarely ever have me in them (usually only if a friend wants one of us as a group):
I think there is value in questioning why we care so much about photos of us in exotic places, and how that desire has grown with the advances of digital photography, phone cameras and social networking/sharing. But this article fails to ask or comment on those questions.
I was in the Grand Canyon a week ago, and the amount of posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends was astounding. I couldn't help but think something very wrong has been let loose in society. It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not talking about lovebirds taking a selfie. My wife and I do that all the time. I'm talking about the sustained amateur photo shoots. We kept hearing over and over as we walked along, "Why can't I connect here? My instas aren't loading." It was bizarre.
> It really made me feel like I was observing primates in some mating ritual gone berserk.
This is so condescending. They're primates in some berserk mating ritual because people like taking pictures of themselves with nature in the background? I'm also curious how you know they were dating but not married. Apparently, "sustained amateur photo shoots" is a good indicator of who they are as people or human beings? How does the Mona Lisa fit into all of this? That portrait in front of nature is okay because it's a painting? Because she was married?
Ha! I'm the one who is lonely because I couldn't hike along the rim without interrupting a iPhone photo shoot every 100 ft?
I'm sure I came off as a cranky old man, but I'm just making my observations from the last time I was there in the summer 2003. There's nothing wrong with having your picture taken, and it's a part of visiting places and sharing the human experience. But now the sheer volume has become comedic and weird. In this particular case, it's not a secret beach in Kauai. It gets a little bit more dangerous when clear novices in slippery sneakers are climbing out on rock structures to get a shot no one else has. It makes the whole thing more pronounced.
I did a lot of traveling up to 2008, and then started up again in 2015. I'm older so I'm sure my biases evolved, but there are some clear differences. Digital cameras freed you from the tyranny of only having 24 exposures, but the self documentation going on now is more frantic and obsessive.
If you're at the Grand Canyon for an hour, and spend 5 minutes taking photos/selfies, you've still got 55 minutes of the rest of the experience.
A lot of things look silly when observed, as opposed to being experienced. Turn around during a concert and watch for a good while. The audience may look... strange.
One of my big objections to Susan Sontag's "On Photography" is the common idea that if we take photos we don't experience the moment. I've got a child, and I've taken 30K photos of him since he was born (he's 15 now). When I fly through his photographic timeline, my memories of the moments around the photos are pretty vivid. I'm glad to have the record.
Fair enough! This might be the future we were working towards all along and it's just passed me by.
For what it's worth, I have gigabytes of photos and I rarely go through them. When I do, the joy starts to turn into a slog. I've recently gotten back into film photography, and at the risk of sounding overly sentimental and bullshitty... I find the pictures I take now are more special and intimate.
You're the one who's lonely because you refer to couples taking photos as "primates in some mating ritual gone berserk" which is a pretty disproportionate response to say the least.
You're interpreting reality through the lens of someone who resents other people for their happiness. They're doing the Grand Canyon wrong, in your view, but you're oblivious to the fact that's... just your opinion, man. People can make what they want out of their trips and if they're happy and not causing harm to anyone else, who are you to shit on them?
"Posing girls perched on off-trail ledges being photographed by their boyfriends" is a pretty clear tell that you're personally bothered by the whole thing, considering that many single people also take photos when they travel yet you choose to highlight dating once more.
Anyway, I shared the link in earnest. It's an eye-opening take on what loneliness is, and it includes links to two allegedly great books on the topic. Best of luck.
They assume you are lonely, because you take issue with couples dating. They are there in equal amount for nature, pictures themselves aaand what you call mating ritual. The coupling seems to anger you.
Yes, cheap digital photography is how young people show each other their feelings. They later watch pics to feel the same again. Or most just forget pics. In the past, passion was shown differently and in the future it will be different again.
The author suspected pageviews / pageimpressions. By the numbers of deaths to population division: clickbait. I guess the age of the author between 23 and 26.
More peiple die by struggling themselves in their bed by accident. Nuf said.
Sorry for the direct rhetoric approach - but instead of commenting on bs inthink the thinkers on HN could use use their brainlard on more positive, insightful and entertaining topics.
This story is not outright dishonest, unlike the typical mass media story [1] that says she climbed mountains in her bikini and then immediately follow that up with the story of her falling and freezing to death, leaving readers with an image of a stupid girl prancing up a mountain half-naked without appropriate gear. Still, I hope they get roasted by their readers for it and forced to publish an apology.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bikini-hiker-g...