While in Spain, participating in a bull run, a man was killed by one of the bulls, a teenager died while touching live wires and a tourist from Japan fell down the stairs of the Taj Mahal. These are three out of twelve victims that died while taking a selfie with a selfie stick in 2015. Since tourists can't stop themselves from taking selfies while being reckless, tourist sites are doing it for them by banning the selfie stick.
Many think it's worth it to put themselves at risk for the sake of a good picture and a truckload of Facebook and Instagram likes. In the quest for the best photo, tourists began taking selfies with bears. This became such an often occurrence that the Denver park had to forbid selfie sticks until bears ceased to be so active.
The Nevada Department of Wildlife, the US Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife had to issue warnings against taking selfies with bears at Taylor Creek, Lake Tahoe, going so far as to threaten with shutting it all down if tourists wouldn't respect their warning.
In the summer of 2015, many amusement parks felt compelled to ban the infamous selfie stick from their premises. Among them were Six Flags and Disney. Among the many incidents that involved the taking of selfies and led to getting rid of the sticks, was stopping a roller coaster at Disney California because of a passenger who wanted to take a picture mid-ride.
USA Today states that music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza, Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby and even many museums felt the need to get rid of the selfie stick because of reasons of safety or simply because they might ruin the experience of others.
The MissTravel.com website ran a survey that included 58 thousand travelers and two out of five of these pointed towards the selfie stick as the most annoying thing they could face during their trips. Close seconds were food with strong smells on airplanes and taking advantage of overhead compartments.
Unfortunately, the process of taking selfies is not only damaging to people. Also in 2015, a group of tourists keen on the selfie stick managed to disrupt the yearly sea turtle nesting and breeding in Costa Rica.
Even so, there are elements of the tourism industry that see the encouragement of taking selfies as profitable, such as a large number of hotels and luxury resorts that make use of the publicity.