siiky
2023/08/30
2023/08/30
2023/11/09
post,environment,society,psychology,nature
But what happens when our pursuit of the perfect selfie starts damaging nature – or even ourselves? Many people have been severely injured or killed by taking risky selfies and photos in dangerous locations. Indian researchers catalogued 259 selfie-related deaths worldwide as of 2018.
Good riddance as far as I'm concerned!
And the search for the perfect selfie can injure animals like quokkas, crayfish and glow-worms, protected plants and even First Nations rock art. Selfies have even become a biosecurity threat.
> We noticed a massive increase in the number of people, and the kind of visitor that we were getting. We’re getting a lot more people who are maybe urban based, didn’t spend a lot of time in national parks, weren’t particularly familiar with the concept of bushwalking
> You know, it’s all just to get that photo, really. That’s it. People definitely, more so now than ever, I think, are coming for the photo. They’re not coming for a bushwalk and to look around at the trees and to experience nature.
The antithesis of Walden.
> They break the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) rules [on drones], every flipping day, they annoy the people, the guests, the wildlife […] I’ve got eight crashed drones in the park currently [risking] environmental harm to the park if they catch fire or the batteries leak in the World Heritage area, in the creeks where the rare crayfish are.
> Someone goes swimming, puts it on social media and suddenly there’s 100 people a day coming to go wild swimming where the platypus and the glow-worms live. And in a wet year, suddenly all the vegetation around the rock pool is trampled, it turns into a muddy mess
> I was horrified the other day noticing promotions for these Figure Eight pools. I just thought, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. How many times have we told the tourism industry to stop it?”
Perhaps the thorniest challenge for land managers is accommodating increased interest while keeping people safe. That’s because selfie-seekers sometimes deliberately avoid safety measures like fences.
It is defenitely not! If they don't care for their surroundings, fuck them.
> They want to get a photo without a fence in it. Look at me with my toes over the edge of the crumbly sandstone cliff.
> Once we improved the view and the photo shot, people were happy to take the photo from the platform. But when the view was impeded from the platform, they would undertake risky behaviour and stand on top of a 300ft cliff, right on the edge, to get the photo.