Selfies are cool, and really cool selfies are really cool. Can you blame a kid for wanting to get that really cool selfie? Well, yes. Yes you can when the price of being really cool is the destruction of an object that’s managed to survive intact for a couple of hundred years until some selfish fool decided that his pic was more important.
Via HuffPo:
Most museums have pretty strict rules when it comes to taking pictures and touching valuable, breakable objects. So you’d think actually climbing up and sitting on a statue wouldn’t even cross your mind. Right?
Wrong. In the quest for the ultimate selfie, one student at a museum in Milan, Italy, actually broke a statue after climbing onto its lap.
The good news, to the extent there is a good news side to this monumental stupidity, is that this wasn’t the original original of The Drunken Satyr, but a 19th Century copy at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, while the 2nd Century BC original remains unbroken at Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome. Some comfort, right?
The quest for cool, for viral, for fame and adoration, is strong with young people. After all, if there can be such a thing as a Kim Kardashian, why not you? And cool takes some risk. After all, if everyone could do it, they wouldn’t be cool.
What the hell was this guy thinking? That a male student* in his search for cool would risk harm to this statue is incomprehensible. Sure, photobombing can be pretty cool, except for the people who just want a nice pic and don’t appreciate some jerk’s stupid mug in their image (unless you’re a famous celebrity, in which case they may well appreciate it, because celebrity is cool).
Please, don’t destroy things in the quest for cool. It’s not just disgraceful, but heartbreaking to think that objects that have survived for centuries are deemed of so little value that a young person would risk their ruin for a cool selfie.
Please, don’t do this.
* Turley’s post states that the student was American. While that would come as no surprise, I’m unable to find anything to verify this.
H/T Turley
Don’t tase me bro! I thought Greco-Romans liked to wrassle!
PS- You’ve got two ‘originals’ before ‘of the Drunken…’
Yes, there are two “originals” before the Drunken Satyr. Your powers of observation are astute, indeed.
In my view, a two hundred year old copy of a more than 2000 year old original is worthy of being considered an original as well, as opposed to some tchotchke of no importance. And so, the damaged statue is an original, while the 2000 year one is the original original.
A spokesman for The International Brotherhood of Drunken Satyrs has announced that the original original original, who modeled for the original original sculpture in 200 BC, is still sleeping off his hangover and will be unavailable to comment for the foreseeable future.
On a more sober note, when a lunatic destroys a great work of art we call it a tragedy. When organized armies destroy great art for their political ideology, we call it a crime against humanity. Is there even a word that adequately describes the act of a fool searching for cool?
A fool who fails in cool is known as a tool in my neck of the woods.
Such an underachiever. A true selfie aficionado would would have chosen to climb the spires of the Milan Cathedral.
And rest comfortably atop, I hope.
This is clearly the first known instance of a teenage boy acting reckless in order to impress his peers. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
“It’s not just disgraceful, but heartbreaking to think that objects that have survived for centuries are deemed of so little value that a young person would risk their ruin for a cool selfie.”
Of course you’re going to side with the statue, if only out of self-interest.
Ouch.