Extreme Influencer, social challenges towards the extreme (at the cost of life)

Challenge our limits is in our DNA. There is always someone more courageous than others who start by doing things that were previously considered impossible. In sport, this tension is the equation: to overcome a border, to rewrite another. It is the show of the Olympics, the beauty of the company. But with the arrival of social networks, Instagram and Tik Tok above all, the athletic gesture has released from the competition to become performanceoften an end in itself. Like many of the contents that flow in front of us every day, the algorithm offers us more and more pushed content: challenges against gravity and sometimes even with death. “They do it for followers!”, Say extreme influencers, supporting a legitimate thought: more followers, more money. And if something happens, the verdict is terminal: “If it went to look for it!”. Is it really like that?

A story of passion (not follower)

The disappearance of the influencer – but first of all mountain bike guide – Andreas Tonelli He rekindled the spotlight on one of our small-large perversion: that of social adrenaline and, in the most tragic cases, to try to understand what an instant is felt before the end. In his case, falling with the bike from a ravine to 3000 thousand meters.

Andreas was an expert guide, followed by over 140 thousand followers. He loved the mountain bike in his own way: climb the mountains of South Tyrol with the bike on the shoulders, often long via ferrata, to then face technical and dizzying descents, on paths usually reserved for trekking – And not even among the simplest.

His companies were told with spectacular images. Andreas was also a capable photographer, as well as a Adventure Seeker With a sincere passion for nature and action, always looking for a new top to reach. His was an act of love – for sport, but also for life: “A life out of the ordinary, who burned of passion and enthusiasm like no other, the freer soul I ever knew,” the friend wrote about his social networks Giovanni Mattiello.

The last Instagram story published before the tragedy portrayed him smiling on the top of Piz Duleda, at 2,905 meters. The bike on the shoulders, the clear sky and a breathtaking panorama behind it. It is right there, on that ridge, that the thin red line between a first and after one is placed. That invisible border that, once passed, leaves room for the questions only: «What will happen? What went wrong?».

Extreme sports: between the search for the limit and spectacularization

Leaving Andreas’s tragedy for a moment, leafing through the pages of memories other similar ones come to mind. And here the numbers become alarming. From 2008 to 2021, according to a search for “Journal of Travel Medicine», At least 379 people accidentally died while trying to immortalize themselves in various parts of the world during extreme selfies. One death every 12 days, with 72.5% of male victims and an average age of 23 years. For the occasion, the term “killfie” (contraction between “kill” and “selfie”) was coined).

Behind these cold and impersonal figures, however, there are real faces and lives. Like that of Wu Yonging26 years old, considered the first rooftopper Chinese. On November 8, 2017 it fell from the 62nd floor of a skyscraper. Wu had one million followers. And for that performance – never completed – he should have received $ 100,000 (about $ 15,000) from a sponsor who remained anonymous. And the names of the victims of selfie are wasted: Rumors “enigma” lucidalways from a skyscraper e Lewis Stevensonin Spain by climbing a 192 meter bridge.

Tragedies daughters of the same objective: feed a vicious circle of content, likes and approvals. On the defendants’ counter there are the platformswhich feed a voracious algorithm, who does not look at anyone. Remove the most dangerous, bloody or shocking content? No, because they are the ones who generate more views and therefore more profits, according to the accusation.

Andreas: a different case?

Returning to Andreas Tonelli, his story seems far from that of Content Creator obsessed with likes. Born in Fiè alla Sciliar, in 2014 he had made a courageous choice: abandon his boring office work to become Full -time guide and organizer of sports travel around the world. More recently, together with his friend Mattiello, he had been accredited as the first to have made the rise and descent of the Cerro Morceario, in Argentina, a 6,768 meter peak, in January 2025. An expert raider, aware of its limits. Still, it wasn’t enough. On July 15, during one of his usual releases in Val Gardena, he crashed for about 200 meters in a gully while he was facing a very impervious stretch alone. A mistake, a moment of distraction, a failure: the mountain does not forgive.

The feeling is that his social networks were not built for the algorithm, but they told an authentic life, made of adventure, passion and respect for the mountain. The question then becomes one: Where do we trace the border between authentic passion and spectacularization? Between looking for their limits and looking for likes? Perhaps both live in symbiosis, but Andreas seemed to be on the right part of this border, for that unique feeling of freedom that only those who have walked on the ridges know. In addition to sensationalism.

The problem arises when this genuine passion mixes with the logic of the viral content, when the authenticity of the gesture is sacrificed on the altar of theengagement, And each top achieved is worth less if it is not shared. But Andreas, in his own way, had already answered. In one of his most heartfelt posts he wrote: «No matter how crazy your goals are, always remember to give everything to pursue your dreams! ». And perhaps this is exactly what remains, beyond the tragedy: the courage to really chase them. At any cost.