Selfie Gone Bad: Student Breaks Century Old Statue While Taking Picture

We are in an unstoppable "selfie" generation. Following Ellen Degeneres' epic selfie, another selfie is making headlines, not because the picture is funny nor cute, but because the selfie attempt happen to break a priceless piece inside an Italian museum.

A student broke a statue in an academy museum in Milan, Italy while taking a selfie with the century old Hellenistic sculpture. The student who was identified through the museum's security cameras but has yet to be named climbed on a 19th century statue at Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, one of Italy's most renowned academic institutions, to take a picture of himself. The selfie attempt caused the leg of sculpture, which depicts the "Barberini Faun" or the Drunken Satyr, to fall off. The student has not reported the incident to the management.

#Brera: studente scassa er Fauno http://t.co/DJqXTOLjHS Se 'n so furti, so crolli. Se 'n so ladri, so grulli. #selfie pic.twitter.com/GivRertnIM

— Romano Pugile (@erpugileromano) March 18, 2014

The broken statue was discovered by a staff of the academy on Tuesday morning, March 18. Museum officials also found out that the incident was recorded on the security cameras in the area, according to the online news portal of Time.

The "Drunken Satyr" statue is a depiction of a Hellenistic era sculpture of ancient Greek. It is a human sculpture with animal features like missing fingers and tail. The statue strikes a provocative pose and was recovered with his right leg missing as well as some parts of his left and right hand. Famous restorers restored the sculpture.

While the original "Barberini Faun" sculpture is in Germany, the copy of the statue is placed on the academy's hallway which leads to a room with more art works and sculptures of the Helenistic era.

Selfies has become one of the popular traditions in the digital world today where a person holds a camera and takes a picture of himself or himself with a group. The selfie fever took great heights especially with the presence of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The most recent proof of how popular selfie is, is the Oscars selfie by Ellen DeGeneres which garnered the most retweet in Twitter and is widely shared in different social networking sites.

Meanwhile, the question is whether the student captured a picture of himself before the statue's leg was ripped off from its body or the incident was captured on still. It could have been a good entry for a selfie gone badly.