'Now I'm the 'JetBlue selfie guy': Scott Welch's selfie went viral on YouTube. Photo: YouTube

JetBlue Flight 1416 was just minutes into its trip from Long Beach, California, to Austin, Texas, on September 18 when Scott Welch, a passenger in Seat 5A, heard a suspicious pop. Moments later, smoke began to fill the cabin, clogging the air to the point that he could see only a few rows in front of him, he said. The starboard engine of the Airbus A320, he soon learned, had blown.

As other passengers began to cry and pray, Welch strapped on his oxygen mask and pondered his fate.

"I understood that I might be going to meet God," Welch, 34, recalled. He thought, "If this is my time, this is my time."

When his plane cabin filled with smoke, Scott Welch quickly pulled out his phone. Photo: YouTube

Faced with his own mortality, he could have closed his eyes in quiet reflection. Instead, Welch, a sports photographer, responded in a distinctly 2014 manner: He reached for his Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone, thrust it into the murky air and pressed the "record" button. He even found the presence of mind to record a smiling selfie.

Advertisement

Never mind that the plane landed safely soon after, making the mechanical failure a relative nonevent. The pulse-quickening, you-are-there footage captured by Welch and other passengers helped propel the story to national news. Welch's two brief videos, meanwhile, went viral; one attracted more than 1 million views.

It is no longer enough to record seemingly every last moment of life with your smartphone, it seems. Near-death is fair game, too.

Thanks to the Personal Video Industrial Complex - tens of millions of video-enabled smartphones, feeding countless hours daily to video-sharing behemoths - rock concerts, presidential inaugurations, fourth-grade school plays and even midair near-disasters can all be considered "content" now, inspiring us all to tap our inner Edward R. Murrow and record the event for posterity.

Read the original post:

Near death? Take a photo