Picture this - the world’s gone selfie mad

YOU know when you read a newspaper headline and it takes a moment for it to register?

Well, I read one the other day that took a full minute to sink in.

And this is it …

“Since 2011, 259 people have died while taking selfies!”

According to the American Journal Of Family Medicine, 159 of these selfie deaths occurred in India, followed by the United States (14 deaths) and Pakistan (11).

The most common selfieinduced death was from drowning, and the second was . . . wait for it . . . while trying to take a selfie in front of a moving train!

Let me clarify for any of you in doubt.

The trains in question weren’t moving away from them; they were moving towards them.

The researchers admit the figure is probably much higher than 259, because many deaths aren’t linked to selfies.

For example, if someone falls from a great height or is swept out to sea by huge waves, their smartphones tend to go missing.

In our narcissistic selfie society everyone with a smartphone thinks they’re a star (It’s partly your fault Mister Cowell!).

Selfie-takers think the world hungers to know where they are and what they’re doing, 24/7.

Over a year ago I wrote an article about how a theatrical performance I attended was spoiled by a self-obsessed couple (and don’t write in and tell me a couple can’t be selfobsessed, because they definitely were).

They were sat in the row immediately in front of me. Before the show (and all through the intermission) they took selfie after selfie of themselves, in basically the same pose.

No. I don’t know why, either. Had they been upstairs in the balcony and stepped back a little too far in their eagerness to photograph themselves, there might have been two more added to the 259 in the headline.

But, at least, I would have enjoyed the show in peace.

The world has gone mad, for sure.