Be stupid, get rich

Jamie Neale is going to earn an estimated R1.3 million for wandering off into the Australian wilderness, without his cellphone, and getting lost.

Twelve days later and after A$100 000 had been expended on a massive search, he was found by two bushwalkers, dehydrated and half-dead.

This is a good time to remember the gory story about Aron Ralston, the hiker who went off alone down a remote canyon in Utah and then spent more than a week contemplating his imminent, slow and miserable death when he got an arm trapped under a 360 kilogram boulder.

Now, it’s a good thing that there are still people trying to disconnect from the grid and go off and have real life adventures – the cellphone generation really is missing out on life.

What’s not so good is that Neale has now signed a deal to sell his story to the media companies.

More worrying is the prospect of this prodigal son becoming a motivational speaker. We have already learned all we need to from Jamie Neale: don’t go off walking without your phone, and even better – if you’re not the outdoor type – stay home and drool in front of the TV.

What happened to Aron Ralston, you may wonder? Well, he paid for his mistake. After days of chipping away at the boulder with a knife and supplementing his rapidly decreasing water supply with his own urine, he eventually freed himself. First, though, he had to snap the bones in his trapped hand. Then, with his now blunt knife, he cut off his arm.