It takes discipline to climb a mountain and not tell anyone about it. Not the friends on Instagram, not the colleagues on LinkedIn and certainly not the double-headed group on Whatsapp. The omnipresence of digital channels makes it less likely that something like this will still happen today. And anyway: people need an audience for what they do. As a result, it wasn’t understandable for everyone, but it was somehow human how a Canadian woman took pictures of herself with her cell phone even when her life was in danger.
Near the city of Ottawa, the woman left the road with her car and slid onto the frozen Rideau River, eyewitnesses said the broadcaster CTV News. Apparently the ice couldn’t support the weight of the vehicle. Selfless helpers quickly set out with kayaks and ropes to rescue the woman. Meanwhile, the woman climbed onto the roof of her car and did what now causes some to shake their heads: she took a picture of herself and her misery.
Is that disrespectful to the helpers? That’s how you can see it. But as far as we know, she didn’t sabotage them. So you could also say that the woman has just made the best of her predicament: an image file that she can laugh about one day. She became a gawker, but only on her own account. It’s no more unsympathetic than the witness who was so angry at the woman whose car sank in the river that she in turn became a gawker and took a photo of the selfie to tweet outrage.
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