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My selfie with Brooklyn Bridge suicide dude
NY Post, December 4, 2013
Don’t jump — until I get this picture lined up!
America’s selfie obsession reached a new low on Tuesday when a woman snapped a cellphone self-portrait that also captured a suicidal man on the Brooklyn Bridge. With scores of onlookers watching the dramatic 10 a.m. rescue by cops, the crass camerawoman turned her back to the scene, angled her phone toward the bridge and snapped a shot. The scarf-clad blonde even cracked a thin smile.
When approached by The Post afterward, she suddenly became camera-shy.
“I’d rather not,” she said when asked for her name. She then hustled out of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The shot of the unidentified man — who was saved by officers — has instantly earned a place in the rogue’s gallery, not far behind Anthony Weiner’s infamous crotch shot and Amanda Bynes topless breakdown photos.
Selfies have become so wildly popular that the term was named word of the year for 2013 by the Oxford Dictionary.
The craze includes not just celebrities at their worst — average people have also become viral phenomena.
One of the most notorious came in The Bronx in May, when Bahsid McLean, 23, murdered his mom, Tanya Byrd, then posed with a picture of her severed head.
In October in Florida, high-school junior Malik Whiter snapped a selfie in a classroom while his teacher was seen going through labor in the background.
Από την άλλη πλευρά, του Ατλαντικού και της συζήτησης:
Don't hate the woman behind the 'world's worst selfie'
Jonathan Jones, theguardian.com, Thursday 5 December 2013
By taking a photo of herself in front of a suicidal figure on the Βrooklyn bridge she has become a scapegoat for our worst fears about the modern age
It's the most selfish "selfie" ever! While police officers tried to talk down a man who was preparing to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman in the park below took out her phone and posed for the type of photograph that recently gave the Oxford English Dictionary its word of the year.
[...]
Is the Post's amazement and disgust and the internet's agreement that this is "the worst selfie ever" a simple reaction to a misguided snapshot? It's more than that – for here is the proof of the emotionless, shallow nature of this solipsistic cameraphone craze that everyone was waiting for. The selfie had it coming.
This woman has been held up as a villain of our times when all she did was follow convention. She is, in fact, doing what the culture told her was the right thing. The selfie has been celebrated as a popular artform: it is the socially proper thing to do. Sharing every aspect of your life with your cameraphone is cool, intimate, social and … Oh, wait a minute, it's idiotic, navel-gazing, dehumanising …
Both descriptions are arguably true. Life in the 21st century is inherently ambiguous: not for nothing is Heisenberg a popular name for babies (yeah, Heisenberg was a physicist fascinated by uncertainty before a chemistry teacher turned drugs supplier took the name in the TV programme Breaking Bad). So many contemporary phenomena into which millions throw themselves can be seen as on the one hand modern, democratic, liberating instruments of progress and yet on the other hand, with equal validity, as time-eating cybermats of the apocalypse.
[...]
Worst selfies ever
ΝΥ Post, November 7, 2013
My selfie with Brooklyn Bridge suicide dude
NY Post, December 4, 2013
Don’t jump — until I get this picture lined up!
America’s selfie obsession reached a new low on Tuesday when a woman snapped a cellphone self-portrait that also captured a suicidal man on the Brooklyn Bridge. With scores of onlookers watching the dramatic 10 a.m. rescue by cops, the crass camerawoman turned her back to the scene, angled her phone toward the bridge and snapped a shot. The scarf-clad blonde even cracked a thin smile.
When approached by The Post afterward, she suddenly became camera-shy.
“I’d rather not,” she said when asked for her name. She then hustled out of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The shot of the unidentified man — who was saved by officers — has instantly earned a place in the rogue’s gallery, not far behind Anthony Weiner’s infamous crotch shot and Amanda Bynes topless breakdown photos.
Selfies have become so wildly popular that the term was named word of the year for 2013 by the Oxford Dictionary.
The craze includes not just celebrities at their worst — average people have also become viral phenomena.
One of the most notorious came in The Bronx in May, when Bahsid McLean, 23, murdered his mom, Tanya Byrd, then posed with a picture of her severed head.
In October in Florida, high-school junior Malik Whiter snapped a selfie in a classroom while his teacher was seen going through labor in the background.
Από την άλλη πλευρά, του Ατλαντικού και της συζήτησης:
Don't hate the woman behind the 'world's worst selfie'
Jonathan Jones, theguardian.com, Thursday 5 December 2013
By taking a photo of herself in front of a suicidal figure on the Βrooklyn bridge she has become a scapegoat for our worst fears about the modern age
It's the most selfish "selfie" ever! While police officers tried to talk down a man who was preparing to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman in the park below took out her phone and posed for the type of photograph that recently gave the Oxford English Dictionary its word of the year.
[...]
Is the Post's amazement and disgust and the internet's agreement that this is "the worst selfie ever" a simple reaction to a misguided snapshot? It's more than that – for here is the proof of the emotionless, shallow nature of this solipsistic cameraphone craze that everyone was waiting for. The selfie had it coming.
This woman has been held up as a villain of our times when all she did was follow convention. She is, in fact, doing what the culture told her was the right thing. The selfie has been celebrated as a popular artform: it is the socially proper thing to do. Sharing every aspect of your life with your cameraphone is cool, intimate, social and … Oh, wait a minute, it's idiotic, navel-gazing, dehumanising …
Both descriptions are arguably true. Life in the 21st century is inherently ambiguous: not for nothing is Heisenberg a popular name for babies (yeah, Heisenberg was a physicist fascinated by uncertainty before a chemistry teacher turned drugs supplier took the name in the TV programme Breaking Bad). So many contemporary phenomena into which millions throw themselves can be seen as on the one hand modern, democratic, liberating instruments of progress and yet on the other hand, with equal validity, as time-eating cybermats of the apocalypse.
[...]
Worst selfies ever
ΝΥ Post, November 7, 2013
