In the first example, the author is trying to claim that the woman died on a quest to take a selfie in a bikini. That woman was a mountain climber. She died trying to summit a 10,000 foot plus mountain. It seems disrespectful to focus on the selfie aspect and place her in the same category as a man who tried to take a selfie with a wild bear.

> It’s easy to write off these tragedies as catastrophically bad judgment.

Yeah, because they are. I have never once thought about risking my life for a selfie. The only thing the author offers to explain why this isn't true is that some selfie deaths occur while the photographer is engaged in “non-risky” behavior. That would make them accidents. Whether someone was holding a phone when an unforeseeable accident befalls them seems pretty irrelevant.

Overall I'm not sure 259 people dying in six years worldwide can be called an epidemic, especially when you consider that they may have died this way even without handheld cameras to document it. It seems very silly to call it “our obsession” with photographing risk-taking when obviously the overwhelming majority of people do not do this.