Kathmandu: Social media is a chronicle of life, and sometimes death. So it should be no surprise that a site of great human and cultural loss in Nepal’s devastating earthquake is now barraged with the clicking of smartphones.
Near Kathmandu’s famed Dharahara Tower, a historic nine-story structure reduced to an enormous pile of red brick dust, dozens of people clambered around the debris clicking selfies and photos of their friends posing in front of the wreckage.
Pawan Thapa, a 21-year-old business student who arrived from the suburbs to try to help with the recovery effort, was dismayed by the scene. Some of those taking pictures were smiling for the camera.
“This is earthquake tourism. This is not right,” he said. “They are more interested in clicking their selfies than understanding that it is a tragedy.” Most of those taking pictures, however, did not appear to be tourists but locals capturing the devastation of their community, and the loss of a landmark that had helped define it.
Recently, there had been many incidents of people taking such ‘insensitive’ selfies.
The doctor who was performing a biopsy on Hollywood star Joan Rivers minutes before she died was accused of taking selfies with her lying in the operation theatre under anesthesia.
Last month, a Sri Lankan youth was criticised severely on social media for posting a selfie with his uncle’s dead body. Early this month, a female hunter from Utah, US, drew flak after posting smiling selfies with a hunted giraffe. Last year, American Psychiatric Association had termed the habit of clicking selfies and posting them on social media a mental disorder called ‘sefitis’.
