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Here’s How Many People Die Each Year Trying to Get Famous on Instagram
Those living an Insta-worthy life become sources of entertainment and escapism for those who aren’t.
Between 2011 and 2017 hundreds of people died while trying to take selfies in order to get famous on Instagram. But even the 259 “deaths by selfie” don’t tell the full story of Instagram — Sarah Frier’s book, No Filter, does.
It was named the 2020 Financial Times Business Book of the Year, as well as the McKinsey Business Book of the Year, and it tells the story of the app’s founding in 2010, all the way through to its acquisition by Facebook for $1 billion, and on to Instagram’s astounding capacity to not only change how we see the world and ourselves, but also its influence on how we behave and make choices.
That may sound farfetched, but Instagram today is big business, and the app has literally changed the way individuals behave, businesses compete, and the tourism industry operates.
When people are literally willing to die in order to get the perfect shot for “the ‘gram,” you have a massive cultural force operating on your life.
Sarah Frier does a really good job of providing the history and context of Instagram, the intentions of its original founders (to use filters to make real life even more…
