A man takes a selfie with a homeless woman in Central district, Hong Kong. Photo/AP
A man takes a selfie with a homeless woman in Central district, Hong Kong. Photo/AP
There's a lot to love and laugh about when it comes to selfies.
At the top of the list is the chance to catch your best angle in the most flattering light on a 'good' day before releasing the image to the masses.
Then there's the amusement that follows for those who view the picture and accompanying caption that implies it was all effortless - when it was clearly anything but.
There's a lot to hate about them too. Critics have long labelled the selfie a symbol of vanity and extreme narcissism. But there's a much darker side to the trend with voyeuristic "grief tourists" whipping out their cameras and posing alongside the dead and dying, essentially reducing the tragedies and disasters to mere spectacles. Grief tourism - the act of travelling to the scene of a tragedy or disaster - is fast becoming a worldwide phenonomen.
The Institute for Dark Tourism Research (iDTR)'s Dr Philip Stone said the "moral boundaries and ethical relativity" of tourists visiting "macabre" sites were often questioned but that the act told "us more about life and the living".
"There is an obvious and inherent suggestion that tourists who visit sites of death, disaster, or the seemingly macabre are somehow disturbed or ghoulish by their act of visitation," Dr Stone said.
"(But) there are no dark tourists to dark tourism sites - only individuals who are interested in the social reality of their own life-world."
A photo this week emerged of a man taking a selfie with a homeless woman in Central district, Hong Kong.
A man takes a selfie with a homeless woman in Central district, Hong Kong. Photo/AP
The image showed the woman lying on cement, wrapped in blankets, with bottles of liquid and other items scattered around.
Her eyes were closed as the man held his selfie stick upright and snapped the picture. But it's not the only photo of its kind to have raised eyebrows in the face of human suffering and tragedy.
Westminster Bridge terror attack
A man found himself on the sharp end of Twitter hate after being caught taking a selfie at the site of the London terror attacks earlier this year.
Footage taken on Westminster Bridge showed the unidentified man armed with a selfie stick with waiting ambulances in the background.
— Aleksandar Todorov 💻 (@alextodorov1995) March 22, 2017
He appeared to be talking to the camera, but it was unclear whether he was filming a Facebook Live video or a member of the media.
The man's actions were slammed as inappropriate with one Twitter user saying it was "everything that is wrong with modern society in one picture."
Suicidal man on Brooklyn Bridge
Don't jump - until I get this picture lined up!
America's selfie obsession reached a new low when a woman snapped a selfie with a man believed to be suicidal on the Brooklyn Bridge in the background.
With scores of onlookers watching the dramatic 10am rescue by police, the woman turned her back to the scene, angled her phone toward the bridge and snapped a shot.
"I'd rather not," she said when asked for her name. She then hustled out of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The unidentified man was saved by officers.
Grenfell Tower fire
Tourists flocked to the charred remains of Grenfell Tower to take ghoulish selfies after dozens of its residents were killed in an inferno.
The site - where 79 people died - led west London residents to erect signs around the blackened 24-storey building urging people to stop engaging in "grief tourism", the New York Post reported.
Wayne Kilo Lewis, who lived near Grenfell for almost 30 years, told The independent local residents were outraged over the insensitivity of those taking selfies of the disaster.
Corpse
A student sparked outrage for posting a smiling selfie with a dead body to Instagram after an excursion to a university biology department in February 2014.
The female high school student posed in front of the body with a big smile, snapping a picture with her smartphone as someone else lifts a sheet off the corpse, exposing the face and chest.
The selfie was snapped during a visit by anatomy students to the University of Alabama Birmingham's biology department, where they learned about the body donor program for medical research.
Instagram selfie photo of a student posing with dead body. The unnamed student is seen grinning broadly as the corpse is covered with a sheet in the photo, which was taken during a school trip to the University of Alabama designed to teach pupils about an anatomical donor program. Photo/Instagram
Mobile phones were banned for the tour, and sheets covering the bodies were not supposed to be removed, the university said.
The girl posted the shocking picture to social media and then removed it - but not before a fellow student took a screenshot. That student showed the photo to her older sister, who alerted school officials and local media.
In a statement, The University of Alabama said the selfie was disrespectful and disappointing, and that they would review procedures to ensure it doesn't happen again.
