Teen Taking a Selfie Gets Kicked in the Head… by a Freight Train

Photography News

While hiking to Macchu Picchu next to some train tracks, a teenager named Jared Michael Frank had an epic idea for a selfie. He would stand right beside the tracks but angle the camera so that it looked like an oncoming train would hit him. Yes, his social media followers would rejoice this day and the ‘Likes’ and ‘Retweets’ and ‘Shares’ would flow freely.

But Frank didn’t get the world’s greatest selfie. Instead, due to his severe miscalculation of the speed and proximity of the oncoming train, all Frank got was a right smart kick in the head from the train’s conductor… and this viral video footage that makes him look, in his very own words, “stupid”:

Perhaps Frank’s judgment was impaired by the task of operating his camera backwards, or maybe he was simply distracted by listening to The Chainsmokers’ obnoxious #SELFIE song with his earbuds and honing his mantra for his upcoming portrait. Whatever the case, Frank’s epic fail hints that the seemingly-innocuous selfie craze may not be so harmless after all.

The train was only traveling at 17 miles per hour, which explains why the conductor’s well-placed blow didn’t injure anything but Frank’s pride. While some speculate that the conductor might have been trying to save the teen’s life by kicking him away from the tracks, Frank feels skeptical that the man had good intentions since Frank was a “safe” distance away from the train.

“[The conductor] wasn’t on the front of the train,” said Frank. “So if the train was going to hit me, it was going to hit me before his boot ever reached me.”

In case you weren’t able to see the actual kick take place in the video (via PetaPixel), here’s a play by play:

Preparing for his selfie, totally unaware that doom is upon him.

Boot against cheek? Still in selfie mode.

Boot propelling head sideways at 17mph? Still in selfie mode.

The break.

Frank insists that his video is real, but after Jimmey Kimmel’s recent viral video pranks, one involving a girl who accidentally set herself on fire while twerking and another involving a wolf wandering the athletes’ village at the Socchi Olympics, many speculate that Kimmel is behind Frank’s video, too.

What do you think?