Three popular social media vloggers lost their lives July 3 when they fell nearly 100 feet over a waterfall while hiking Shannon Falls in B.C. The three, Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper, were known for their daring travel videos, which were posted on YouTube and Instagram. In a video posted in the week prior to their deaths, Scraper is seen dangling her feet as she sits on a tall trestle in B.C. Reports of an underwater camera found when the bodies were recovered, suggest the three where filming when the incident occurred. In 2017, Monalisa Perez,19, shot and killed her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz III, 22, in a YouTube video stunt the pair hoped would go viral. In March, Perez plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter. Reports of daredevil stunts gone wrong aren’t a new thing, with not one but two men falling to their deaths in China in 2017 – including Wu Yongning, 26, who called himself “China’s First Rooftopper.” He plunged 62 stories from the Huayuan International Centre in Changsha. Despite these highly publicized deaths, young people continue to risk their lives for fame and followers – after all, these platforms allow anyone with a camera and some tenacity to become part of the famous elite. And in our current social-media-obsessed culture, stardom is next to godliness. What these Insta-famous stars fail to grasp is the very real consequence of their actions, not only to their own safety and well-being, but to that of the millions of followers who emulate them.
