Selfie-taking hobbit monument taken down in Ust-Kamenogorskg

    A monument in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan has been taken down after local residents said the figures it depicted looked like hobbits taking a "selfie," reports say, BBC News reports.
    The statue was built to honor two 19^th Century figures - Abai Kunanbayev, a Kazakh thinker and writer, and Yevgeny Mikhaelis, a Russian pro-democracy activist and scientist who was exiled to eastern Kazakhstan. The monument immediately attracted the scorn of locals who - according to Tengrinews - took to social media to point out the figures looked like they were taking a selfie. Other people noted heir similarity to hobbits, said the news website Nur.kz.
    Even one of the co-authors of the monument, Vladimir Samoylov, admitted that there was something wrong with it. The sculptors were given too little time to finish the monument, he told YK.kz, a website based in Ust-Kamenogorsk. "We were in a huge rush, and look what happened."
    Following the criticism, the monument was removed on 24 June, just one day after it was erected at the intersection of Abay Avenue and Mikhaelis Street. It "deviated from the agreed design", and the sculptors were told to correct the deviations as soon as possible, the local government told Tengri News, according to BBC.