My mother is the first person to tell you that she’s not the best at staying calm when somebody gets injured. As she tells it, even minor cuts I experienced as a kid received such an emotional reaction that I would have to remind her that it’s going to heal.
Unfortunately, that tends to happen when you’re a particularly empathetic person. Still, there’s a difference between a reaction that may be a little overblown in the moment and one that stays that way after the event has already taken place.
That, plus the details of the situation in the full video, has led some viewers to find it a little hard to be sympathetic to one YouTube couple.
Shaun McBride chronicles the adventures of his family through his YouTube account called Shonduras.
Alongside his wife, Jenny, 3-year-old daughter Adley, and one-year-old son Niko, Shaun dedicates his channel to making every day “the best day ever.”
As he puts it in the full video, “We set this goal a couple of years ago to always try and make every day the best day ever and get along and do one fun thing every single day that made the whole day worth it and just love life more.”
However, shortly after defining this, Shaun and Jenny describe something harrowing that happened on a recent “best day ever” in Hawaii.
Shaun describes seeing Jenny “tumbling off a cliff” and identifies this as the scariest moment of his life.
He also describes watching her desperately grab vegetation on the side of a “really sharp incline” which slowed her down just enough that she was able to fall down the cliff and survive the bed of volcanic rocks below,
For her part, Jenny calls this “life-changing” and starts crying while recounting.
So naturally, when the footage cuts to the moments right before this fall, the viewer has plenty of reason to feel tense.
We’ve already heard a dramatic description of what happened, so when Jenny loses her balance we may feel compelled to mentally prepare ourselves for a scene of her hanging on for dear life while her horrified family and friends look on.
However, that feeling will likely change when you actually see the fall in real time.
While, she does grab vegetation as described, this occurs during what can better be described as rolling down a hill and experiencing a slight drop at the end.
That’s right, what you see in this picture is the extent of the “cliff” that Jenny fell down. You may notice that calling it that came off as misleading.
You may also notice that the bed of igneous rocks is a little farther the edge of this “cliff” than it sounded in Shaun’s description.
This is not to say that Jenny couldn’t have hurt herself further by landing on one of them or that she couldn’t have seriously injured herself beyond the cuts and bruises she experienced as a result of this tumble.
However, it becomes much harder to convincingly frame this as potentially fatal or “life-changing” once you see the fall in action.
Indeed, there seemed to be a major difference between the reactions Shonduras was expecting and what they actually received.
Unlike most of their videos, the full video has its comments disabled and hides the like-dislike ratio.
Furthermore, he has since deleted a tweet where he said, “I watched my wife fall off a cliff…you’re whole world can change in a matter of seconds. mine almost did.”
Although those who felt misled or felt that the McBride family was being melodramatic could no longer voice this in YouTube comments, they soon took to Twitter.
Responses ranged from “she just slid down a hill” to “I’ve fallen farther getting out of bed,” to edits featuring over-the-top explosions.
To clarify, it’s perfectly natural to react in the moment as Shaun did.
If you’re worried that someone you love is about to be seriously injured, nobody should blame you for getting scared. This is also true if you’re suddenly falling and it’s not clear where the bottom is.
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However, still treating what turned out to be a fairly minor fall as a near-death experience involving a “cliff” a day or more later makes the resulting accusations of “clickbait” a little more understandable.
Of course, it’s best to decide how you feel after seeing the full video. The fall occurs about eight minutes in.