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Facebooking Woman Takes A Long Walk Off A Short Pier

from the status-update:-wet dept

Wed, Dec 18th 2013 7:55pm — Timothy Geigner

The stories of people paying such rapt attention to their phones or GPS have somehow tapered off lately. There was a rash of them a while back, what with people falling into manholes or ending up on the wrong side of a continent, but we've been suspiciously without such an occurrence for some time. Did the general population somehow uniformly raise their IQ points a few notches? Did tech companies build in some kind of idiot-proof safeguard? Did one of our esteemed pharmaceutical companies develop a stupid vaccination?

Well, if any of that has indeed happened, it must not have hit Australia, where one woman decided to see if she could play out a 1950's insult in today's time by taking a long walk off a short pier. The culprit in this mishap is her smart phone and that damned Facebook app.

Senior Constable Dean Kelly of the water police said officers found her floating metres from the pier.

"She was still out in the water laying on her back in a floating position because she told us later that she couldn't swim," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted him as saying. "She still had her mobile phone in her hand and initially she apologised... she said 'I was checking my Facebook page on the phone and I've fallen in'."

See, that cute picture of her niece's friend's dog eating a lovely veal shank she'd cooked that night was too important to peer away from, resulting in one too many steps on a pier and a whole lot of wet. Now, I'm no expert, but it would seem to me that if I couldn't swim, the place where I'd be most interested in paying attention to my surroundings would be on an ocean pier. Also, if this is how this non-swimming woman behaved in this setting, what level of oblivious does she reach when she's going about her normal day.

Still, if you were worried about that phone of hers, fear not.

Victoria police, meanwhile, said in a statement that there was no need for a lost property report because the woman "kept hold of her mobile phone throughout the entire ordeal".

That's the kind of dedication that is sorely lacking in the world today. Especially amongst those that should probably be exempted from the gene pool.

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Filed Under: attention, social media
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28 Comments

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That One Guy (profile), 18 Dec 2013 @ 6:05pm

That can't be right...
Someone that distracted, living in Australia, and they haven't fallen victim to the dozens, if not hundreds of ways that continent has to kill people living there?
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2013 @ 8:09pm
  
  Re: That can't be right...
  I love calling Australia home.
  
  Not only will most of our animals kill you either slowly and painfully or quick and easy, some of the locals are still silly enough to try and do it themselves!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - G Thompson (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 1:14am
    
    Re: Re: That can't be right...
    Yep Australia has 99% of the worlds most poisonous snakes, spiders, and marine critters.
    
    I love it here.
    
    As for this woman... had to be a Victorian LOL
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 1:22am
      
      Re: Re: Re: That can't be right...
      She's from the 19th century?
      
      Would that also explain darryl's origins?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - gkh, 19 Dec 2013 @ 4:03am
      
      Re: Re: Re: That can't be right...
      Actually, she was an overseas tourist - not a local.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - robert spano, 19 Dec 2013 @ 11:36am
      
      Re: Re: Re: That can't be right...
      Brazil also has some nasty spiders and the worst part is that they hijack Banana shipments and end up in North America preying upon unsuspecting fruit purchasers.
      
      at least there is an antivenom for the Sydney Funnel Web Spider. http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/venanimals/ven_spidbrazwand.html
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Ehud Gavron (profile), 18 Dec 2013 @ 6:33pm

Old beer commercial pun... revisited...
When you're out of slits... you're out of pier.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2013 @ 10:08pm

Although I usually enjoy Techdirt, making stupid jokes about a near-tragedy seems over the top.
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- Rikuo (profile), 18 Dec 2013 @ 11:24pm
  
  Re:
  Except in this case, the woman deserves it. She pays so much attention to Facebook, that she loses all awareness to the world around her. It reminds me of another story a couple years back of a woman who worked in a shopping mall, who was walking in that mall paying so much attention to her phone that she ended up walking into a fountain in the middle of the floor...then proceeded to sue the mall because of her own stupidity.
  Here it is
  http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110121/03491612760/woman-threatening-to-sue-mall- because-mall-video-captured-her-text-and-walking-into-fountain.shtml
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- PaulT (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 1:03am
  
  Re:
  What other angle is there? Do you also get offended by the Darwin Awards when they highlight people who were actually successful in killing themselves through their own stupidity?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- G Thompson (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 1:20am
  
  Re:
  The difference between comedy and tragedy is that comedy is when you see some other idiot hurting themselves or saying something stupidly.. tragedy is when you do it yourself.
  
  PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR COMMENT IS PURE COMEDY!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- art guerrilla (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 6:16am
  
  Re:
  although i usually enjoy comments, this one offends me...
  
  ...and i'm going on with my life in
  3
  2
  1
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mega1987 (profile), 18 Dec 2013 @ 10:20pm

nominee?
Is that woman going for a Darwin's award?

going off the pier while checking her FB page and not knowing how to swim...

can anyone double check if that's even feasible for the nominee?
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- Travis, 19 Dec 2013 @ 8:18am
  
  Re: nominee?
  To get the Darwin, a person has to be "removed from the gene pool". She may qualify for an "Honorable Mention" though (people who survive such mistakes).
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2013 @ 11:18pm

Well, small wonder darryl lives in Australia.
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Andrew Lee, 19 Dec 2013 @ 12:01am

She's still too wet behind the ears to be facebooking while walking.
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Ninja (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 1:52am

Dang, we almost had a Darwin Award here! Natural selection didn't act fast enough. Now imagine if the phone was waterproof? I'd guess the headline would be "Woman found thousands of kilometers from home country after being distracted by waterproof phone" and the woman saying "Once my battery died I noticed I was drifting in the middle of the ocean, it was so scary!".

Human stupidity knows no frontiers!
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 4:35am
  
  Re:
  There is no such thing as natural selection anymore. The weak are packed full of meds and other nonsense and the strong are considered bullies and such.
  
  Welcome to life.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 5:35am
    
    Re: Re:
    Your claim may be applicable, in a limited scope, to the humans and livestock located in first world countries but it certainly does not apply elsewhere.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 8:53am
    
    Re: Re:
    You've neglected to define "weak" and "strong", so it's hard to comment on most of what you said. However this part: "There is no such thing as natural selection anymore" is 100% untrue regardless.
    
    Natural selection is working just as much now as ever. It selects for those traits that are best adapted to the environment in which the species is operating. Things like medical care, etc., do not stop natural selection, they merely change the environment and so change the traits being selected.
    
    Natural selection defines "weak" as "poorly adapted to the environment" and "strong" as "well adapted to the environment." In the right setting, a pasty, physically underdeveloped, asthmatic nerd can be the strongest.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - nasch (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 5:56pm
    
    Re: Re:
    There is no such thing as natural selection anymore.
    
    In addition to what John said, humanity is evolving faster now than it has in the past.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - btrussell (profile), 25 Dec 2013 @ 1:10am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Exactly!
      
      How many people took long walks off of short piers even just 100 years ago?!!
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 4:34am

Police should start charging the people they help when it's due to their sheer stupidity. Why do the rest of us pay for those iconic morons?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 4:40am

Maybe she should try facebooking and chewing gum at the same time, since she can't seem to walk and facebook at the same time.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2013 @ 5:41am

Is this a pier or a dock?

Most tourist type piers have railings. The railing is a convenient place to carve up your bait and it helps you remain standing when you're pissed.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 11:19am
  
  Re:
  It's a pier. A pier is the raised structure that is over the water. A dock is the space between piers, or the space alongside a pier where boats can moor. In the US, though, common usage treats both these words as synonyms.
  
  Most piers do not have railings.
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Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 19 Dec 2013 @ 8:20am

The Register's coverage added that there may have been sharks in the water.

But I have to add that there was one difference between this and most of the other "distracted by tech" stories I've read. In this case, at least the woman just came right out and admitted she screwed up. She didn't blame the tech, or her unfamiliarity with the area, or the sun in her eyes, or the government for putting an ocean right where people are going to stumble over it by accident. How often do you see people doing that these days?

She also didn't panic when she fell in, but did the best thing she could, lie still and wait for rescue. Training or natural aplomb? I'm somewhat impressed either way.

Sure, laugh at her mistake. But give her credit, she handled it well and owned up. If she hadn't, you'd have made fun of her attempts to shift the blame. Since she did, credit where credit is due, please.

El Reg
http://m.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/19/omfg_i_like_fell_into_shark_infested_waters_while_looking_a t_facebook/ in case I screwed that up, no preview feature in Techdirt Mobile.
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Jim, 19 Dec 2013 @ 11:21am

waterproof phone
I hope she had iOS7, so her phone is waterproof.
Jim
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