Don't Take Selfies in Expensive Art Galleries

The video in this post has been kicking around for a couple days but I just can't resist it.

A woman at an art gallery in Los Angeles thought it would be a wonderful idea to take a selfie against a backdrop of expensive art sitting atop a series of pedestals.

You know what happens next. She screws it up and the pedestals fall like dominoes. She caused $200,000 in damage to the artwork.

It's her fault, of course, but in hindsight, with all that expensive art, the gallery probably should have stabilized the pedestals better so they wouldn't fall over so easily.

As is always the case with this type of story, especially when the camera angle is lined up so perfectly, it's possible this was all a stunt. 

Who knows?

Here's the video:

Fight Rages Over Ballot Box Selfies

If these people are taking selfies, they might get in trouble.  

If you're like many Americans, you're proud of voting.

Some of us are so proud that we take selfies of ourselves in the voting booth,  making our selections between candidates. Then we post these photos to social media, natch.

Turns out, such selfies can get you in trouble. They're illegal in a lot of states.

However, maybe not for long, if New Hampshire of all places becomes a trendsetter.

It was illegal to take voting booth selfies in the Granite State. According to Consumerist, the New Hampshire law states:

"No voter shall allow his or her ballot to be seen by any person with the intention of letting it be known how he or she is about to vote or how he or she has voted.

The law was amended in 2014 to include "taking a digital image or photograph of his or her marked ballot and distributing or sharing the image via social media or by any other means.

The New Hampshire attorney general wanted to enforce this law because he figured it could turn into a form of voter intimidation.

But when three New Hampshire voters got in trouble to taking selfies, they sued, and won.

Last year, Consumerist reports, " a U.S. District Court judge said the ban on selfies was an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech that does not further a compelling government interest."

In other words, there was no evidence that people were using ballot booth selfies to force other people to vote a certain way.

The state appealed, saying, in part, that the selfies were tantamount to campaigning in a voting place, which is a no-no.

But a federal court ruled this week that a voter's First Amendment rights to free speech outweighed any concerns over campaigning.

Restrictions on showing other people your ballot harken back to the old days of corrupt union bosses making sure workers voted the way the bosses wanted them to. They had to show the bosses their ballots, until states passed laws banning the practice.

Where I live in Vermont, voting booth selfies are not explicitly banned, Vermont Public Radio said two years ago. But the law here does ban showing other people your ballot with info on how you voted or intend to vote. That would probably include photographs.

However, VPR says there are no known recent cases of anybody in Vermont  getting in trouble for voting booth selfies.

Laws vary from state to state, so you'd better check your law before you take that selfie just in case.

Cool Video Shows Selfies Teen Took Every Day For Seven Years

One of thousands of selfies this guy took of himself
over more than seven years. It's all now compiled on video.  

Hugo Cornellier of Montreal is either one of the world's biggest narcissists or one of the most patient people with an idea.

Or maybe both.

Every day, from the age of 12 to 20, Cornellier took a selfie. Every. Single Day. For more than seven years. That, by my calculation, is more than 2,500 selfies.

He compiled them all in what is now a viral YouTube hit.

It's fascinating to watch Cornellier turn from a boy to a man.

Watch:

Let's Take Happy Selfies At The Site Of A Tragedy, Say Idiots

Awful people having fun with a selfie stick
at the site of the East Village blast and fire
in New York City.   

There they were, seven beaming women crowded together in the middle of  New York Street, sparkling smiles aimed at a camera on a "selfie stick."

You can see they're having a grand old time. Girls night out! What fun!

Behind them, you see lots of emergency vehicle, and a little more in the background, bright lights aimed at smoking rubble as firefighters search for bodies.

Oh, that's grim. Must be make believe, a movie set, right? Why else would these women be smiling?

It turns out, I guess it's fun to have a joyous time at the site of a tragedy.

The seven-women selfie was taken right near the site of that huge explosion and fire in New York City's East Village. You saw it on the news. The one that caused a spectacular fire. The one that leveled three buildings, killed at least two people and injured many more. The one that left dozens of people without a home and/or without a job.

Neighbors who live in the disaster zone say they don't like all the gawkers checking the scene out. I get that, but I also get how people want to see for themselves what happened. But how is this fun?

The selfie popped up the Twitter feed for EventPhotosNYC Friday evening.  I guess EventPhotosNYC on Twitter is meant to capture all the fun and frolic the Big Apple has to offer.

Obviously there was an immediate backlash on EventPhotosNYC to the seven women tragedy/happy selfie, and that spread super fast afterward through New York and beyond.

On the Twitter feed we had reactions like "Everything wrong in NYC summed up in one photo." and "Disaster porn selfies: The new hobby of the soulless."

The New York-focused news and entertainment website Gothamist got ahold of it, and rightly talked about how awful these people are.

Then these seven stupid women hit the big time. The front page of the tabloid New York Post.  The headline: "Village Idiots."

I'll say.

The seven women weren't the only ones taking happy selfies at the disaster site. Apparently a number of people have done it. I have no idea what they're thinking. Or not thinking.

As Gothamist noted, the behavior of these women, and the other people who took happy selfies at the explosion/fire site,  has to be pretty bad if none other than the New York Post is calling the selfies at the blast site "tasteless" and "heartless."

It shouldn't be spelled out like this, but there are apparently an incredible number of stupid people out there. But here goes:

Don't have fun and frolic at a disaster site. If you must go, try to help. And be respectful.

Geez!