Daredevil's death shows livestreaming risks

WU YONGNING, a 26-year-old man famous for climbing high buildings without taking any safety precautions and releasing videos of his stunts, died on Nov 8 when he fell during one of his climbs. His death was confirmed on Friday. Sznews.com comments:

The loss of the young man's life is undoubtedly sad. Yet to call his deeds extreme sports, as he himself did, is wrong.

By climbing on high buildings without taking any safety measures, Wu put himself in danger and pushed himself to his limits, but that does not mean what he did is a sport.

The list of extreme sports posted on the website of the Shenzhen Extreme Sport Association does not contain such a "sport".

Wu had been punished by the police many times for his deeds, and his counterparts in developed countries have been punished, too, because their actions pose a danger to themselves as well as to the public. If they fall, they might hurt those who pass by. Besides those who watch their selfie videos online might imitate their deeds.

Then what prompted Wu to climb high buildings without protection? The answer lies perhaps in his micro blog with over 54,000 followers. Whenever he posted such selfie videos, he got many likes and comments. More sources show he was on several livestreaming apps and he got many likes, too.
From his interactions with his audience, it seems he really enjoyed the attention. But with all the likes and comments, he overestimated his own abilities and finally lost his life because of that feeling. Had Wu not been so popular on livestreaming apps, he might not have died.

His death should remind us to strengthen supervision over livestreaming apps. Some of them try to hype things up with obscene and dangerous things, and their purpose is to attract more eyeballs and make a profit. It is time we ended this.

Last December, a new regulation on livestreaming had come into effect, yet today there is still much to be done. Greater efforts are needed to regulate the livestreaming industry.