'Now I'm the 'JetBlue selfie guy': Scott Welch's selfie went viral on YouTube. Photo: YouTube <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
As other passengers began to cry and pray, Welch strapped on his oxygen mask and pondered his fate. <\/p>\n
\"I understood that I might be going to meet God,\" Welch, 34, recalled. He thought, \"If this is my time, this is my time.\" <\/p>\n
When his plane cabin filled with smoke, Scott Welch quickly pulled out his phone. Photo: YouTube <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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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. <\/p>\n
It is no longer enough to record seemingly every last moment of life with your smartphone, it seems. Near-death is fair game, too. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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Fearing death in the iPhone Age<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" '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. Continue reading