Comment by squigz
15 days ago
Stuff like this seems a bit... selfish? to me. Why risk falling, and people having to see that/having to clean that up? For a bit of adrenaline and publicity? Meh.
15 days ago
Stuff like this seems a bit... selfish? to me. Why risk falling, and people having to see that/having to clean that up? For a bit of adrenaline and publicity? Meh.
The Taipei tourism bureau disagrees. Many here as well. The more eyes on Taiwan, the better. I'm grateful Alex was willing to risk his life for this spectacle, now potentially millions will have at least some concept of Taipei and Taiwan in their minds.
Did he do this climb with no safety equipment for Taiwan or for Alex?
I'm with the OP - watching people so willfully put their lives in danger isn't my cup of tea. I'm just glad he didn't die.
He did it because he thought it would be cool to free solo a building. He grew up idolizing Alain Robert, a french soloist who made his bread and butter out of soloing buildings. The guy was free soloing for free on his own without telling anyone about it for years, living out of his mom's minivan and eating cheap food, the media attention just allows him to be more comfortable as he keeps climbing obsessively. Also running his foundation probably gives a lot of meaning to what he's doing, he'd just be your average dirtbag loser otherwise.
I'm going to add that his coolest achievements were done with ropes. The friendly race to climbing a route graded 5.15 with Sonnie Trotter and Tommy Caldwell is a lot more interesting to me.
You put your life in danger every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Statistically more danger than a free solo climber.
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That a government would be willing to risk this for publicity isn't really changing my mind.
"Come to Taiwan; you may or may not watch someone plummet to their death while here" doesn't appeal to me, personally anyway. Anyway that guy that did it with safety equipment a few years back made the rounds in the news too, so not sure this was necessary in that regard.
Don't watch then. Clearly enough people around the world found some kind of value in it. If you didn't, just jog on.
C'mon, didn't some guy do a skydive from nearly outer space? Do you criticize the country he landed in? Or red bull for sponsoring it or the many other extreme sports?
Injury and death happens in rock climbing even when tethered. Not often but it does happen, that's the nature of the sport and it's the same as BMX, skateboarding, motocross, any kind of racing.
It's also the same as just living - go look up Taiwan traffic deaths. There's so much more dangerous things happening here and wherever you live, it just seems silly to criticize someone for doing an extreme sport publicly.
There's like one injury per NFL game ffs...
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