Why it matters to you
It’s always a good idea to thoroughly check your surroundings before taking a selfie.
Selfie addicts don’t always like to get just themselves in the frame. They like to get shots alongside their best buddies, too, as well as any famous folks that happen upon. Fancy art exhibits are also proving to be a popular subject for selfie fans, though the seemingly straightforward process of firing up a smartphone and hitting the shutter button appears to be a bit much for some.
Take this disastrous effort by a recent visitor to the Hypercaine installation at The 14th Factory in Los Angeles. In a video (above) that captured the incident, we see a woman at the top right of the picture crouching down to prepare for her all-important selfie in front of a room full of exhibits. She appears to lean back on one of the pedestals, which sends it tumbling onto the next one, and then … well, you know how dominoes fall, right?
A post shared by The 14th Factory (@the14thfactory) on Jul 13, 2017 at 3:58pm PDT
At least 11 of the displays fall over, though there could be several more out of shot. We don’t know if the woman managed to get her photo before the calamity occurred, though the shot afterward would surely have been more ‘grammable.
The value of the damage was put at a whopping $200,000, making it possibly the most expensive selfie ever taken.
Perhaps such a mishap was always on the cards after a recent LA Times review of The 14th Factory described it as “a series of wondrous, over-the-top sets for the perfect selfie” in a piece headlined, “Oh, the selfies you’ll make at L.A.’s 14th Factory, where the art is so social.”
Selfie disasters
Of course, as selfie disasters go, it’s not the worst we’ve heard about. Seriously tragic incidents from the past include a man who accidentally shot himself in the head — yes, he died — while posing for a so-called “gun selfie”; a woman who fell to her death from a bridge in Seville, Spain after losing her footing while trying to grab a photo of herself; a tourist at Peru’s famous Machu Picchu ruins who also plunged to his death while framing a selfie; and a guy who was posing for a self-portrait on a railroad track when he was struck and killed by a train.