Why Instagram selfie obsession is a stain on history — and getting dangerous

The medieval walls of Dubrovnik were built for battle centuries ago but since Game of Thrones hit our screens the city has been besieged with invaders of a different kind — tourists with iphones.

The waiter says it was “bound to happen” as he looks out to the stretch of navel-high stone wall.

“It is the spot,” he shrugs.

While the magnificent medieval walled-city of Dubrovnik has many incredible spots, this is where the tourists flock for the money shot, or modern day parlance, the selfie shot.

The spot’s impressive backdrop perfectly frames panoramic views of the two fortresses Bokar and Lovrijenac, known as “Dubrovnik’s Gibraltar,” with its triangular pointy-shape jutting out grandly from the peninsula into the Adriatic Sea.

But the tourists, and we are talking in the daily cruise ship millions, are mainly here because it was the location of the sea-battle scene in Game of Thrones at Blackwater, where Stannis Baratheon tries to attack Kings Landing and dethrone (the ghastly) King Joffrey.

The magnificent medieval walled city of Dubrovnik has many incredible spots, where tourists now flock for selfies. Picture: Supplied

The golden company gathers in a fleet off Kings Landing in episode one of season eight of Game Of Thrones. Picture: HBO

A scene at Kings Landing in the hit series Game of Thrones. Picture: Supplied

The Pile wall on the Croatian port is a spot to catch your breath before venturing into the cobbled Old Town alleys, or to see Cersei’s Walk of Shame (and chow down a “Shameburger”); it’s become a lovers’ lane for Instagrammers.

Couples flock to press against the wall, smile and kiss as they fire off pic after pic. Day or night, round the clock, they come with phone poised.

Unfortunately for two young Australians, this is the spot that changed the course of their lives forever.

In a drunken 2am pash-gone-wrong for a pic, the pair fell over the navel-high ledge and dropped the 11 metres to the cement path and shallow sea below, suffering catastrophic injuries.

The 26-year-old woman is now in an induced coma in Dubrovnik’s general hospital with serious head injuries and broken vertebrate, while the man, 34, suffered a broken leg and other fractures.

It was a timely reminder of what can go wrong for tourists overseas.

The affable waiter at the Dubravka cafe and bistro next to the spot was quick to point out the couple’s blood alcohol reading was “0.3” adding “drunk people come here all the time.”

“It was bound to happen,” he shrugs. “It is a very sharp fall, have you looked down? It is not pretty.”

Later he adds that he worries while looking at parents lifting their kids onto the wall to squeeze in for the must-have selfie shot.

While this conjures those images back in the day of Michael Jackson hanging his baby boy, Blanket, over a balcony for fans to see and photograph.

Somehow it doesn’t feel all that jaw-dropping anymore.

Whether it’s for the likes, the clicks, the dare-of-it-all, the all-important social media shot is becoming more gruesome than GoT’s Red Wedding bloodbath.

A while back a friend and I were stopped in our tracks on the Hells Gate Walk at Noosa’s national park. It wasn’t the panoramic coastal scenes, or even the odd nudist on display at Alexandria Bay.

No, no, no it was the mother getting her 10-year-something girl to take a photo of her in lotus position perched on a rock down from the trail’s edge over the 40-metre vertical drop.

It’s not just photos the tourists want. While foreigners behaving badly and banged-up abroad is nothing new, the entitlement stakes have been raised.

A video did the rounds earlier this year of a woman walking across the Trevi fountain in Rome to fill her water bottle.

Rome’s Trevi fountain. Picture: Getty Images

WTAF! If you thought that was bad a guy was filmed carving his and his girlfriend’s names into the walls of the Colosseum.

On Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, dubbed the “new Bali” for Australian tourists, things have got out of control.

Signs around popular coastal town Split (known as Europe’s latest booze hotspot for binging Poms) warn in English of fines for public drinking, vomiting, urinating and even, defecating.

There was even a suggestion to ban wheelie suitcases from Dubrovnik’s cobbled old town, which is not surprising when a city of 41,000 is confronted with more than 1.5 million tourists a year and counting.

A week or so after the Aussie couple’s tragic cliff fall and it is business-as-usual with phones poised for the Insta-ready shot.

There is no sign of police tape, or evidence of the accident. Cries back home for security netting or barriers go unheeded.

“The wall has been here a long time and nothing has happened”, the waiter says.

He has a point given the walls were built for battle more than five centuries ago, just not for a 21st century tourist invasion with a new weapon — the iPhone.