Not to add fuel to the fire but I read that the reason she was smiling and added the emoji was because she was planning on touring Auschwitz with her father, who had passed away and she was smiling because she was remembering her father. Now, I have NO idea if that's true or just a scapegoat, but either way, it was bad judgment in the least.
But if you look at her comments regarding that, she was just using that as a reasoning for being there. Not to mention she threatened to fucking murder people who disrespected her dead father, like she was disrespecting everyone who lost loved ones at Auschwitz. It was bad enough, but the successive responses and her celebrating getting attention from it made me realize she was a revolting gutter snipe. She was probably smiling cause she loved the Bieber track playing in her earphone.
I visited Pearl Harbor for the first time when I was twenty one. All I remember from that trip was wanting to punch every Japanese person square in the face while they were laughing and giggling and taking pictures. I went back when my wife and I were on our honeymoon and it was the same thing all over again. It was as if they were there to celebrate their great victory.
What if she had a somber expression and her tagline discussed the somber feeling of the location? Would her selfie ever even register to the masses? Context is the issue. I have friends who have selfies next to deceased relatives & friends gravestones, next to monuments and memorials at numerous battle sites, etc. Are those inappropriate? Personally, I don't find the selfie inappropriate, however her reaction to the backlash. Committing a cultural faux pas is one thing, but doubling down on that same transgression is another entirely. I think world leaders taking selfies at Mandela's funeral legitimizes the practice. I find it sad, but in today's world the possibility exists she doesn't understand the gravity of the what Auschwitz represents. Despite numerous signs around reminding people it's a memorial, damn near every time I jog by the WW2 memorial in DC there's people soaking their feet in the water and occasionally people letting their kids play splash in the fountains. I see similar behavior at almost every monument and memorial I've ever visited. Time does distance us from events, but so do cultural perceptions. Thousands of years separate us from the building of the the Great Wall, but how do native Chinese regard the wall? Look at the reaction you get from a southerner regarding the war of northern aggression compared to the reaction from someone from the rest of the US.
Or she was just being a stupid fucking teenager who was responding/reacting the only way she knew how because she didn't know any better.
When I visited there (5 years ago?) they had sailors stationed everywhere who were more than happy to verbally, but respectfully, bitch-slap anyone not following the rules. No pictures, and anything above a whisper was immediately shot down with a "show your respect or you will be removed" statement. That, coupled with the group look of "what the fuck is wrong with you" was more than enough to keep everyone in line.
Wanna see a great verbal smack down? Go to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington and wait for some kids to start goofing around.
I dont know if I would go that far. More than many tourists, specifically Asian tourists, have no fucking respect for the gravity of some places. Go into any great European cathedral or church, most of which have "please no photography" signs, and there are phones and fucking tablets out everywhere snapping away. My personal favorite from my recent trip was the dumb bitch doing the invisible platters pose in front of a medieval crypt in a cathedral next to gravestones. This right next to a "please no pictures out of respect" placard. People are fucking idiots.
Things must have changed, and by the sound of it for the better. It's been 14 years since I've been there and 21 years since my first visit.
What the fuck is wrong with people? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-caught-camera-having-sex-beach-children.html And if you go to the video, it shows the "blurred where necessary" video of them in the act...
Prude. Hey get that cocaine plus testosterone combo and you're going to have a boner hard enough to cut steel. She was probably trying to help him out of an embarassing situation.
Meanwhile, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, idiot tourists think that the Ceremonial Guard is their chance to take pictures like they're hanging out with this guy: I had been to Dachau and many other terrible places before I turned 25 and somehow managed to not make an ass of myself. And if that's me doing it, it isn't that hard.
Ha ha, there's a hilarious typo in that article: 25 minutes! They left out the decimal. Idiots. I'm sure they meant 2.5 minutes.
Ann Frank's house in Amsterdam commands a level of respect when you visit. Nobody speaks above a whisper and the tourists I came across gave the general impression like they were at a funeral. It's an eerie, mournful place and should be treated as such, which is what I saw while there. You're allowed photos but I only took two, one of her bedroom and one of the Oscar statuette Shelley Winters won for the Diary of Ann Frank movie (its in the museum, not the actual house). Nobody was taking goofy "tourists" pose pictures in that place. Considering Frank was murdered in Auschwitz only days before it was liberated, plus another million or so people beforehand, you would think a brain-dead spider monkey would get the idea of how to behave while visiting such a place.