Sublime selfies: To witness death

Abstract

Selfies have become more dangerous than sharks, if the 15 reported selfie deaths in 2015 are compared to the eight shark attacks in the same year. Determining the exact parameters for a selfie death or death by selfie is difficult; in some cases, one may argue that the selfie is not the cause of death but in fact only occurs tragically before the event. The focus of this article falls on those selfies that were taken in pursuit of experiencing a sublime encounter with mortality and that in the end succeeded in evoking that looming encounter. It is argued that the obsession to experience the inexplicable is, however, not a recent endeavour, and the sublime is a useful aesthetic category to unpack the phenomenon of selfie deaths. In the analysis, three categories are identified to interpret the subject, namely, selfies unknowingly taken before death, selfies of death where the taker’s death is almost witnessed and selfies with death where the taker stands by while someone else dies. The emphasis falls on the analysis of selfies of death that overlaps with the sublime experience almost entirely, and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between selfie and sublimity.