People Who Click Pictures of Accident Victims Should Be Ashamed

ANI recently tweeted a very disturbing picture of people clicking accident victims as they lay struggling for life. These people chose to take snaps of the grisly scene instead of making efforts to help them. Eventually, the three victims succumbed to their injuries before help could arrive.

Barmer: Three people who met with a road accident, succumbed to injuries even as onlookers clicked pictures and selfies instead of helping them. #Rajasthan (10.7.18) pic.twitter.com/h83Ejv0zw0

— ANI (@ANI) July 11, 2018

It seems as a society we have collectively become empathetically numb. Our desire for fifteen minutes of fame or capturing something rare or sensational on our smartphones have clogged our sense of sympathy completely. Today, if someone lies bleeding and is in need of immediate help, or if someone is being paraded naked for act just having an affair, people don’t turn their eyes in aversion. They point their cameras to other’s misery, looking for a better angle to get a “million dollar” shot.

Where are our sensibilities?

It is alarming how the obsession for clicking photographs or selfies seems to have taken over our lives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives while trying to click selfies. This craze has cost people in need valuable minutes, which often led to death, like in this case.

THE GRISLY DEATH OF EMPATHY

• Youth faces backlash on social media, for posting photographs of accident victims, instead of trying to help them.
• The desire for fifteen minutes of fame and bragging rights for exclusive pictures is killing our sensitivities.
• Such people deserve to face legal consequences for their insensitive actions.
• There is also a need for educating people on the etiquettes of social media sharing.

Obsession is a small word for this insensitive conduct.

What do such people think they would earn, which would be more important than someone’s life? Ignoring someone’s cries of help is also a crime deserving legal consequences.

People in our country need a detox from this selfie obsession and perhaps it’s time for the government to conceive and execute digital sensitisation programs across the country. It is of immediate need now, that people understand to prioritise social media fame, internet addiction, the selfie craze and compassion. There is an etiquette to sharing content on social media. Grisly selfies with dead bodies, videos of girls getting molested are deplorable. It is inhuman to shoot and share such content. But seems like not many people want to understand that.

As selfies have now been banned in certain places to avoid accidental deaths, we should also ban taking selfies under certain situations.

If heavy fines and legal trouble are the only language some insensitive people understand, then so be it. It will take a long time to educate the massive Indian population which operates smartphones and uses the social media today.  The best punishment for them would be a ban from social media platforms. We must unanimously pledge to not share graphic videos on social media. Because it is this sharing and hype that viral videos garner, which propels people to insensitive conduct in times of need. Once people come to realise that such videos will only earn them backlash, both legal and social, probably then they would choose humanity over the urge to click pictures.

Picture credit: mangalorean.com

Also Read : Taking Selfies Amidst an Emergency Is Not Cool People!

Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section.  The views expressed are the author’s own.