Althouse: Climbing out to precarious, vertiginous places toward Instagram fame.

September 2, 2014

Climbing out to precarious, vertiginous places toward Instagram fame.

Beautiful, unsettling pictures.

What could go wrong?

13 comments:

iowan2 said...: Growing up on a farm and later working for a firm that constructed grain handling facilities I was always looking for the highest point and going there. As a kid that's the barn roof and tops of silos. Later grain legs 150 feet tall. I guess a smart phone would have gotten me noticed.

Most people are squeamish about heights. So those of us that don't think about height, or seek it out are the odd duck.

Age (mortality) have tempered that, but not eliminated it. Still like the high vantage point, not willing to take the risk to get to some of them. This guy seem pretty tame. More about access than actual risk.; 9/2/14, 5:40 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: If Charles Darwin had a facebook account, he'd be liking a lot of these pictures.; 9/2/14, 8:34 AM
Known Unknown said...: I'm going to take amazing stock photos and just photoshop myself in and get lots of followers. I'm pretty decent at photoshop.; 9/2/14, 8:43 AM
rhhardin said...: Instagram is a favorite of mine because it displays nothing on my computer.

I like when a proprietary format rejects itself.; 9/2/14, 8:51 AM
Wince said...: Are those backpacks or base jumping parachutes some of them are wearing?; 9/2/14, 8:54 AM
rhhardin said...: There's no particular reason that high places are dangerous, except most people have acrophobia and start leaning.

If you don't have it, you're good.

Walking on an I-beam lying on the ground isn't difficult. Why should it be if it it's a thousand feet up? Except that your knees are buckling.; 9/2/14, 10:49 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: rhhardin said...

Walking on an I-beam lying on the ground isn't difficult. Why should it be if it it's a thousand feet up? Except that your knees are buckling.

When my kids were younger I'd go to the playground with them, and there were railroad ties bordering areas. We'd walk on them. It wasn't difficult. Every so often you'd lose concentration and lose enough balance that you'd have to step off. No knee buckling required.

I'm not particularly afraid of heights, and did a good bit of rock climbing in college. Pretty much every year somebody would die, because they weren't using a rope*. They weren't using a rope because what they were doing wasn't difficult.

*Technically, they would die because they hit the ground at a high rate of speed, but you know what I mean.; 9/2/14, 11:16 AM
FleetUSA said...: It will make national news only when one of the idiots falls off. Darwin award applicants.; 9/2/14, 12:19 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: "There's no particular reason..."

There are two particular reasons though: wind and birds.

Sure, both can be present at ground level, but both are more pronounced at higher altitudes.

Now more in-depth, we could consider exacty what structures are supporting us 1000 feet off the ground and why they might introduce other particular reasons why your theory is holey.; 9/2/14, 2:17 PM
Q. said...: Should be paired with this story:

http://www.boggleup.com/10-selfies-taken-moments-before-death-16.html; 9/2/14, 3:11 PM
Larry J said...: Q: While most of the people at your link are Darwin Award candidates, two of the pictures were from passengers on planes that crash or were shot down. They did nothing stupid to cause their deaths. Two of them didn't even die. The article is more than a bit misleading.

Taking selfies is generally nothing more than harmless narcisism. Getting killed for a selfie is the height of stupidity.; 9/2/14, 3:47 PM
Dick Stanley said...: That's insane.; 9/2/14, 5:55 PM
Anonymous said...: Was something like this what was really happening when the ppl bleached or raised a white flag on the Brooklyn Bridge and activated all the terrorist alerts?; 9/2/14, 7:50 PM