Amidst the drama of the Sydney hostage crisis, many Australians took to Twitter on Monday to express their outrage after tourists and few locals took selfies of themselves in the area of the Lindt café hostage crisis in Martin Place.
All day people were uploading selfies of themselves on Twitter and Instagram from as close as possible to where the hostage siege was taking place.
Just to make the photos more authentic some even took them with television cameras in the background. Two onlookers even looked like they were taking a ‘celebration selfie’ than one at a hostage siege. Others smiled happily as if they were standing in front of Sydney Opera House instead of a chilling hostage crisis that could yet end in tragedy.
The images uploaded were severely criticised with some calling them insensitive and callous.
One Twitter user said, “Don’t go home and hug your loved ones and be grateful that you’re not caught up in a hostage nightmare… go to the scene and take a selfie,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another wrote: “Awful, do they not have any feelings. People are being held hostage and all they can do is take a selfie.”
Someone else wrote: “Just hangin out at a dangerous hostage crisis, think I’ll stop and take a selfie, with a smile of course.”
Yet another person wrote: “I love a selfie, but how is this ok?”
