ANDY Warhol said that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” but it seems that for many, 15 seconds is all they want or can get.
At any major sporting event there will always be someone photobombing – deliberately getting into someone else’s photo.
Every piece of coverage of the England/Italy soccer final showed someone jumping in front of the person reporting the event and most of them seemed overly excited and in many cases affected by alcohol. This was a minor annoyance that interrupted the reporting.
The problem is that it can be dangerous as shown by the silly person who held a sign in front of cyclists in the first stage of the Tour de France, causing a large number of riders to fall over at speed and the eventual withdrawal of three riders due to injuries they received then. They were a coward and ran away rather than helping, but the law has caught up with them. This was a major annoyance and dangerous.
We also read stories of people wanting fame from their great Instagram photo and taking major risks, sometimes fatally for that photo. This is a minor nuisance but can be fatal.
What’s wrong with just being a normal person and leaving a normal and safe life? I’’m not famous, nor do I want to be and yet I live a happy life.
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Let’s battle COVID sensibly
The COVID pandemic and the search for solutions has been the dominant item in the news for most of 2020 and 2021 but not all of the approaches are sensible.
The best and most used approaches are the several types of vaccines that are now available based scientific research; isolating when you have COVID or may have been in contact with someone who had it; and recording your visits so that COVID tracing officials can see where you and others have been if there is a breakout.
As with any problem there can be stupid and dangerous solutions, as well as people promoting false solutions and conspiracies.
Perhaps the stupidest idea was the one suggested by US ex-President Donald Trump of using bleach either by injections or consuming it. A number of people have been harmed and some have died from this. He wasn’t being “sarcastic”, he was being stupid. An Australian ex-celebrity was fined for promoting a machine that could use lights to supposedly stop the virus.
There have also been some well-intentioned although probably silly approaches as well. The initial idea of no cheering at the Japan Olympics has been bypassed by having no crowds at all.
The Seoul government has banned gyms from having music at over 120 beats a minute or treadmills going above 6km/hr so that people won’t sweat. A far better answer may have been to actually close the gyms for a while.
Work together on sensible, scientific approaches do the right thing by the whole community. (dfitzger@melbpc.org.au)/PN
