Culture Watch: When selfies are the BETTER behavioral option, we know we're in cuckoo-land

Ils sont fous, ces Français: This business of lovey-dovey couples attaching a lock to a bridge and then throwing the key in the river -- I'm just hearing about it this very hour. So this is my first opportunity to say that these people are stark, staring nuts and need to be institutionalized.

by Ken

The Frisky's Claire Hannum is turning into our chief scout into The World of the Crazy. Recently, you may recall ("Culture Watch: Are selfie-maniacs propelling a sharp rise in homelessness among black cats?"), she tipped us off to this trend first documented in the U.K. of people not only shunning black or partially black cats but actually dumping them off at the "returns" windows of their local animal shelters -- not because the would-be owners are superstitious but, apparently, because the black and partially black cats don't photograph well in selfies! (The one consolation, as I pointed out, is that people with such advanced mental disease are clearly not fit owners for these pussies.)

Now Claire is tipping us off to behavior that, at least in the minds of French authorities, makes selfie-fying a significant step up on the scale of sociopathology, in a post called "Paris Says Chill Out with the Love Locks Because Selfies Are More Romantic."

Love locks on the Pont des Arts

Paris is getting fed up couples placing padlocks on the Pont des Arts railing and tossing the keys into the river to demonstrate their undying love for each other. Romance is great and all, but the locks accumulated over the years until they weighed in at 45 tons and caused the bridge to collapse in June. The bridge had to be evacuated and closed. When the Pont des Arts became so covered in locks that there was no more space, couples moved their antics to other bridges and even started to put locks on the Eiffel Tower. French ecologists are starting to get really worried about the pollution effects of all those nasty keys that were thrown into the river.

According to the Guardian, the city government doesn’t want “to become repressive” by punishing all the shmoopy lovers who continue leaving locks. Instead, the city is trying to nudge tourists to take selfies instead with a cutesy awareness campaign. Posters will go up hinting for couples to post selfies to Twitter with the hashtag #lovewithoutlocks. That sounds about as unromantic as it gets, but there seems to be little we humans love more than taking pictures of ourselves, so it seems like a plausible idea in theory. The padlock trend, which I’d figured was a really old tradition, has only been around since 2008 and is thought to have begun in Italy and eastern Europe. Campaigners see the locks as vandalism and is continuing to push for them to be totally banned. The real question here is what’s more important — the two teenagers on a summer fling who want to commemorate their “forever love” or preserving centuries-old architecture? (I swear I’m not really that bitter, just trying to create some perspective!) [Guardian UK, Beta Beat]

Now, in the case of the black-cat-shunners, I pulled my punch on the subject of selfie-mania, partly out of deference to a sweet-sounding young lady in England who was quoted saying how much she enjoys taking selfies with her pussycat while at the same time registering unmitigated horror at the behavior of black-cat-rejecting cat fanciers. That suggested at least the possibility that not all people who are hooked on selfies are either evil or nuts.

I think, though, that we really have to revisit this issue. I really don't see any way that a preoccupation with selfies can be squared with a clean bill of mental health. Maybe we don't need to pursue extreme remedies, at least not right off -- perhaps starting with a campaign along the lines of "Hooked on Selfies? Get Help!!!"

But these "love lock" wackos, demonstrating that degree of desperation to prove that they exist, and to pretend that there's a good reason why? They really need to wake up and smell the coffee, and I don't mean soon, but now.

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