What’s up with the people climbing Everest?

They’re being really weird on Instagram

If ever there was a place that represented the pinnacle of human endeavour — literally and figuratively — it's surely Mount Everest. It’s a hostile chunk of rock where they say you’re actively dying by the time you reach camp four.

Not that I really understand what that means. If you think about it, we’re all dying. I guess some of us are just doing it more passively than others.

I’ve always been fascinated by the men and women who choose to climb Everest.

What drives that impulse? Why do humans circumnavigate the globe, swim channels, race cars, and climb mountains?

Though he was being glib, Edmund Hillary’s answer to why he wanted to scale Everest always appeals to me. “Because it’s there,” he famously said.

No better words on the nature of human endeavour have ever been spoken. But that was in 1953.

Things have gotten weird since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay schlepped it up the mountain. At some point, Climbing Everest stopped being one of the most impressive physical achievements conceivable, to an interesting talking point on an otherwise bland resume.

With enough money, even an average climber can be assisted up the mountain. Anything is possible with enough sherpas, I suppose. But the rise of commercial climbers did cheapen the whole thing a bit.

And then social media somehow made it even worse.

Not that I’m in any position to judge. Recently, I’ve had a bit of success on Instagram. After a few lucky posts, I now have around 14,000 people following me. That’s a paltry audience in the social media world, but a staggering number of humans in real terms.

If there were that many people seated in a theatre, I wouldn’t know what to say. But here I am, day after day, dropping into the lives of strangers, talking about inconsequential car shit.

The attention is, honestly, intoxicating. I don’t know how people who have hundreds of thousands of followers endure it. So for all that I write a lot about the transient, and corrosive nature of social media, I’m obviously not immune to its siren’s call.

And deep in my soul, I know that if I were to climb Everest, you would hear about it.

Oh yes. I would make a meal of that trip large enough to feed me for life. Every sentence until I died would start with “When I was summiting Everest…”.

But even then, I am scornful of the posts from recent Everest climbers.

For example, take this photo from Instagram.

Are we really at the point where climbing Everest needs clickbait? Couldn’t this person have spent a moment reflecting, metabolised the experience, and written something sincere? Apparently not.

It gets worse.

A few slides later, we come to this video:

Did this guy… stop to film someone who was dying? And then put it on Instagram?

If my final moments on earth were used in a clickbait social media post, I would haunt this dude in this lifetime and the next. He would never know peace. Just as he was falling asleep, I would put my spectral lips to his ear and whisper: “aaaat leaaasttt tag meeee you fuckkkk”.

Climbing Everest is an inherently selfish activity. It’s staggeringly expensive, ego-driven, and puts everyone who attempts the summit at enormous risk.

Yes, some people will die. If you want to reach the top of Everest, you might have to walk past a person taking their last breaths. You might watch a human – who once joked with friends and hugged their family and dreamt of mountains – die next to your boots on the ice.

Which is sad.

But at least it makes for good content.

Nothing like teasing the glimpse of a corpse to get people to watch your videos. The smattering of emojis – hearts, prayer hands, mountains – really helps the solemn tone.

This sickness isn’t just on Everest, either. A few mountains over on Lhoste, a climber filmed a corpse, and then had the sheer fucking audacity to turn it into a limp motivational Instagram post.

Hashtag goals? HASHTAG GOALS?!

I despair for humanity.

But perhaps we’ve always been like this. Social media just made it easier to find an audience.

If Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were climbing mountains today, would they document their journey on Instagram and TikTok? Perhaps. I’m sure that being the first men to reach the summit of Everest – and forever remembered in history – added to the appeal.

“Because it’s there,” Hillary said.

I hope that’s true. But would anyone attempt Everest if no one was watching?

Perhaps it’s infamy, not endeavour, which drives people up mountains.