Everyone loves a good selfie, right? I mean, they’ve basically become a pop culture institution at this point. Wherever you go on your daily routine, you’re likely to run into one or two individuals taking a selfie with their frothy latte or while on a walk in a historic part of town. And if you’re on a vacation or holiday somewhere? Forget it – it’s all selfies, all the time. Whether you’re actually trying to capture yourself and the background without needing to ask someone to take a shot, or you simply want to document a day where your hair is on point, selfies are something that everyone is guilty of engaging in.
But with all those selfies comes something important – selfie etiquette. Basically, there are certain situations where it’s just plain rude to whip out your phone and take a selfie, no matter how good you look. Sometimes it’s so you don’t annoy the people around you, but sometimes, it’s a bad idea to take a selfie because it’s incredibly dangerous. Sometimes, individuals end up taking dangerous selfies by accident, because they’re not paying attention to their surroundings. Other times, daredevils need to capture selfies when they’re atop high structures – the shakier the better. At any rate, with every few hundred normal selfies, there are a few that take things to a whole new dangerous level. Here are 15 of the most dangerous selfies ever taken.
15 Risk In Rio
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Lee Thompson, the man pictured in this selfie, is the founder of a British adventure travel company called The Flash Pack. Naturally, someone who makes his living running an adventure travel company loves a little adventure himself. The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, stands about 124 feet tall. It’s something you take a picture of from afar – unless you’re Thompson. He managed to convince the Brazilian tourism board to allow him to climb the landmark. He worked with a team, of course, and within 30 minutes was able to summit the statue and take a selfie with Christ the Redeemer.
14 Fearless Fighter
[caption id="attachment_11848" align="alignnone" width="1000"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
You would think that when you’re hurtling along the clouds, miles and miles above the earth, strapped down in gear and going likely hundreds of kilometers an hour, you would have both hands tightly on the 10 and 2 o’clock positions on the steering wheel, and your eyes on the road….er, sky…. Right? Well, not this Royal Danish Air Force pilot. He took dangerous selfies to a whole new level when he snapped a shot of himself mid-flight in a fighter plane. This isn’t a commercial pilot who has one or two co-pilots in the cockpit with him. He’s flying solo, and totally disregarding the rule to keep his eyes on the road.
13 Take Me Out At The Ballgame
[caption id="attachment_11849" align="alignnone" width="900"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
When it comes to dangerous selfies, a baseball game isn’t exactly the most fear-inducing locale, right? Everyone is just there to enjoy a few home runs, perhaps a ballpark dog, and have a good time. That’s usually the case – but every now and then, something goes wrong. An American reporter by the name of Kelly Nash was at a batting practice for the Boston Red Sox. While at a real game, most fans would have their eyes firmly on the field following the ball, she didn’t think too much of turning her back to the field to take a quick selfie. Her selfie captured a ball hurtling right by her head, missing her by about an inch. Eyes on the field, Kelly!
12 Burning Hot
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It takes a fairly adventurous person to venture close to an active volcano – after all, spewing lava has the power to completely decimate anything that crosses its path, humans included. However, a dangerous adventure isn’t enough for George Kourounis – he has to get it on film so he can show everyone all the places he’s been. Kourounis is dressed for the situation, granted, in a suit that makes him look like a robot, but still – he’s basically right at the mouth of a bubbling volcano that could very well burst at any moment. The real question is, what kind of phone is he using that can withstand the heat likely coming from the volcano?
11 Crane Crazy
[caption id="attachment_11851" align="alignnone" width="858"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
Adventurer James Kingston likely has no fear of heights, and enjoys capturing that perfect shot – but this selfie takes things to a whole new level. No, he’s not snapping a shot of his perfect hair-do or even his face – from where he was at, he recognized that the view from above was way better than the view of himself. So, when he was hanging off a crane on the top of the South Bank Tower in London, this adventurer from the U.K. snapped a selfie. And take a close look – you can see two legs and one dangling arm, which means he’s hanging on from crazy heights with just one hand. Lucky that palm didn’t start to sweat!
10 Crane With A View
[caption id="attachment_11852" align="alignnone" width="858"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
If you’ve seen any of British free runner James Kingston’s photographs, you’ll know he isn’t one to take simple selfies. For Kingston, if it doesn’t have an element of extreme danger, it’s just not a shot worth taking. This selfie proves that. Some people use the selfie stick to capture larger groups of people, or to get a better picture of an outfit. However, Kingston scrambled up some type of crane structure in Bangalore, and snapped a selfie with the use of the stick. The view is absolutely breathtaking, a panoramic shot of everything around him, but honestly – we’re just concerned with how he’s going to get down.
9 Two Of A Kind
[caption id="attachment_11853" align="alignnone" width="858"] via: Yaroslav Seheda/Solent News[/caption]
Sure, you can take an extremely dangerous selfie of a solo adventure – but isn’t everything more fun when you have a friend by your side? Russian adventurer Yaroslav Seheda decided to capture a crazy selfie with a friend. In order to get the perfect shot, they free-climbed up a building in Kyiv, Ukraine, and took a silly thumbs-up shot that captured both them and the background. Take a closer look at those roads down below them – those cars look so tiny that they’re almost not recognizable as cars. Yeah - that’s how high they are.
8 Target in Red
[caption id="attachment_11854" align="alignnone" width="900"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
It’s no secret that bull-fighting is an extremely dangerous sport. The men who are in the pen with those wild bulls are trained, and know exactly how to jump out of the way and scramble to safety. However, during the 2014 San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, a certain man decided he wanted a bit more adventure and unpredictability in his bull racing experience. He donned a red sweater (I mean, why?) and began running in front of the bulls, who quickly started chasing him. He managed to somehow take a selfie while he was sprinting, but everyone around him was likely pretty upset about his crazy plans. Police were even seeking him later for endangering the lives of everyone around him in his selfish quest.
7 Bear Buddies
[caption id="attachment_11855" align="alignnone" width="858"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
Okay, people, let’s just say this one time – wild animals are wild animals. They are not house pets who you can wrangle into your silly selfies. Despite that, increasing number of people have been desperate to capture a selfie with all types of animals, including… wait for it… bears. Sure, the bear in this selfie is several yards away, and seemingly distracted by something, but regardless – it’s a bear. One sudden noise or loud text coming from that phone and he or she would start charging in an instant, and rip anything in its path to complete shreds.
6 Gravity Defying
[caption id="attachment_11856" align="alignnone" width="858"] via: telegraph.co.uk[/caption]
Space is an incredible and mysterious thing, and the human race has always been fascinated with the discoveries that astronauts make when they move beyond the earth’s atmosphere and into the great unknown. From exploring Mars to landing a man on the moon, mankind has done a fair bit of journeying into space. Of course it’s natural that modern astronauts would want to document their adventures with a selfie, right? There’s no doubting that this selfie is absolutely breath-taking, but let’s be serious – all we’re thinking about is that heart-pounding moment in Gravity when Sandra Bullock gets detached from her harness and ends up spiralling into the great black unknown.
5 Steep Steeple Selfie
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The extreme stunt site Mustang Wanted has become notorious for its crazy images, and among a sea of dangerous selfies, this is one of the most memorable. You may not recognize what the gentleman pictured is standing on, having only seen them from below – it’s one of the spires that sits atop a church in the Gothic architecture style. Oh, and did we mention it’s 325 feet in the air? He has one hand on the camera and one hand on the spire, but that looks like a fairly thin piece of metal – if that thing snaps off, that’s a very long way to fall.
4 Fearless Friends
[caption id="attachment_11859" align="alignnone" width="1100"] via: nypost.com[/caption]
The group selfie is a tough thing to master, but according to these two daredevils, it doesn’t even count if you’re just in a café or on the streets. No, for a truly great selfie, you need to introduce an element of danger. The two young men are pictured on the top of the Princess Tower in Dubai, an extremely tall residential building. How tall? About 1350 feet – just take a look at how many skyscrapers you can see around the shot, and how tiny those boats in the water look. The question is, how on earth did they get up there in the first place?
3 Bear In The Woods
[caption id="attachment_11860" align="alignnone" width="1100"] via: nypost.com[/caption]
Okay… we’re starting to wonder what exactly it is about ‘bears are incredibly dangerous wild animals who can rip your face off’ that people aren’t seeming to understand. Yes, they’re incredible creatures, but if you want to escape with all your limbs in tact, you should maybe not startle or disrupt them with a selfie. The guy taking the selfie is making a faux scared face, but let’s be serious – that bear could charge at any second. A lesson for every selfie taker out there – just don’t take selfies with bears. Stop. Seriously.
2 Cliff Diving
[caption id="attachment_11861" align="alignnone" width="900"] via: nypost.com[/caption]
Most people have probably jumped off some kind of cliff at some point in their life into the sparkling waters below. Sure, many people keep it to fairly reasonable distances, with cliffs that don’t necessarily jut out the furthest, but it’s often a once in a lifetime kind of experience. However, when you do get the courage to make that leap, you need to put all your energy into jumping as far away from the rocks below as you can – not waste it trying to get the perfect selfie. Admittedly, it’s pretty impressive that she managed to hold a selfie stick and a fairly decent pose while hurtling through the air. We just hope that this photo ended with a splash and not a crunch – and, of course, that whatever is at the end of that selfie stick was waterproof.
1 Jaws
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We get it – the ocean is an absolutely incredible thing, and when you finally get a chance to go beneath the surface and take a peek at some of the life forms swimming around in the water, it can be thrilling. However, don’t forget where you land on the food chain. The man in this shot is all geared up for underwater adventures, but he doesn’t seem to spot the huge shark lurking behind him in the shot. Sure, maybe he’s a friendly giant who just wants to photo-bomb a silly human. But at the same time… all we can hear is the Jaws theme tune. And we all know how that turned out.
Sources: nypost.com, telegraph.co.uk, mashable.com
