San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The dangers of social media ‘courage’
In the TV business, producers call the phenomenon “GoPro Courage.”
In social media, daredevils in the outdoors risk their lives when they film themselves in a mission to chase views, likes and friends on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
Young men will film themselves as they jump off cliffs, bridges and the brinks of waterfalls, swim with sharks, climb the faces of cliffs without ropes, and other encounters. Each seems to try and outdo the other. This is in the spirit of the teenage cult movie “Jackass” that starred Johnny Knoxville and other professional stuntmen, which set off a generation of replicators. Many do not have top-shelf outdoors training and yet engage with events that put them in danger.
“When you live on the edge,” the great Waylon Jennings once told me on a late night at Clear Lake, “you are subject to a fall.”
There is a huge divide between a “controlled risk,” as professional rock climbers call it, and stupid, said the Bay Area’s Hans Florine, whom Men’s Journal named the greatest climber in the world.
“People ask me, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Florine said. “The answer is that I’m doing it as a controlled risk. I feel safe.” But even Florine, who has climbed the Nose Route on El Capitan a record 100 times, had a piece of protection gear pop off on a training run this past May. As a result, he fell and broke his left ankle and right heel. In Yosemite, an average of two to three climbing deaths occur per year, according to park rangers.
Social media networks are filled with self-filmed encounters where people risk their life in the mission for more page views on social networks. Here are 10 of the more provocative recent encounters:
Hermit Falls: This past week, the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department warned people to stop jumping off the 50-foot ledge at Hermit Falls, and blamed selfies and videos for the rise in accidents. In one episode a man dislocated his shoulder, and a few seconds later the next jumper broke both of his legs.
McCloud Falls: A friend of mine, a pro kayaker named Storm, paddled over the McCloud River’s 50-foot Middle Falls at high water. Though the event was filmed, he didn’t tell me about it at the time because he didn’t want it publicized, to keep lesser-talented paddlers from danger. Then shortly later, another fellow I met by chance jumped off the brink here and broke his leg. Foresthill Bridge: On a Sunday night in July, three men jumped off the highest bridge in California, the 730-foot Auburn-Foresthill Bridge over the North Fork American River in Placer County, then deployed parachutes and successfully landed. In the darkness, they were tracked with a flashlight. After landing, they were arrested for trespassing. Yellowstone: In June at Fountain Paint Pot, a woman visiting the park from Santa Rosa was part of a group that approached a bison within 15 feet. The bison lowered its head and gored her. According to a park report, she was released from a medical center with a hip injury. Rangers said wildlife injured four tourists in a month, what has become a typical rate, often when people try to take photos at close range. Every summer, it seems, a bison will hook a tourist and toss him or her into the air. Dangling for hours: In May, a base jumper in British Columbia found himself hanging on a ledge for three hours when his parachute caught on an outcrop. In a moment of irony, because base jumpers are by nature antiauthority and antimainstream, he called for a rescue on his cell phone. Yosemite: Base jumpers in wingsuits take the death-defying leap from Taft Point on the south rim, that is, until something goes wrong. A mistake is a terrible thing to see. Yosemite National Park has banned the sport, and every summer, rangers say they prosecute three to four jumpers. In 2015, in a horrific video that was selffilmed, one of the most well known base jumpers in the world and a friend were killed during an attempt at an illegal flight.
Burney Falls: In July, a guy jumped off the brink of 129-foot Burney Falls, hit the plunge pool and disappeared. He never came back up.
Crane jump: In San Diego this month, a guy climbed a 500foot crane at a construction site and then jumped off with a parachute. It opened in time for a soft landing on the street, where police were waiting to arrest him for trespassing. Life on the edge: This year’s most famous social mediainspired tragedy occurred when two daredevils, reportedly preparing to film for the extreme YouTube channel called “High on Life,” were killed when they tried save a companion who fell into a river. The three of them were then swept over a waterfall. Swimming with sharks: Juvenile great white sharks eat small fish, not people, so Chronicle field scout Giancarlo Thomae said it is not much of a risk when he paddles his kayak among them near Seacliff State Beach in Monterey Bay. In one episode, he fell into the water and found himself among them, and in another, a video shows where a great white shark swam under his kayak. We’ve done several paddles together, and when the sharks show up, he’s been pushing for me to join him. The problems start, I told him, when they outgrow eating the little stuff — and you never know for sure when that will be — or “the adult in the room” shows up.
Tom Stienstra is The Chronicle’s outdoor writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom