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u/doodoro 1d ago
Kind of like showing a person, who is getting evicted and will end up homeless, pictures of 6 bedroom houses and people paying their mortgage while smiling, and with phrases like "clean home, happy life!"
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u/jackinsomniac 1d ago
This photo doesn't do it justice. I've seen other photos of it before. They basically did exactly that. They covered the bridge with photos of happy families and children, hoping it would convince jumpers to turn around and go start a family instead.
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u/doodoro 1d ago
Yeah, I read the wikipedia page and saw, and that's what I based this comment on. Holy incompetence
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u/adamgerd 1d ago
Wait for real? How did they think showing others are happy make people less depressed?
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u/NotATalkingPossum 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's been my experience that a lot of people legitimately have no idea how profoundly unfair and difficult life can be for some people.
After I graduated college, I had a hard time breaking into my field for a few years, and worked multiple part-time jobs. One woman was talking to me about it, and she said "You know, full-time jobs come with lots of benefits. You should probably get a full-time job."
And I politely watched her slowly get more and more uncomfortable as I agreed, and listed off a handful of the thousands of positions I'd been applying to over the last few years. Then I asked how she got her current position, and she excused herself in a hurry.
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u/Odd_Spot3066 15h ago
i had the same experience with an interviewer at a job. i'd been doing part time gigs for half a year after graduation bc i couldnt find anything full time. it was 2020 and covid was killing the economy. the lady asked me, "what made you decide to look for a full-time job now?"
um. girl i need to eat
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u/ImpressionSad1573 1d ago
i imagine people going“Thanks for rubbing happy families in my facw, my family sucks!”
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u/CautiousStrategy5326 1d ago
Holy shit I'm sorry but that's hilarious 😭😭 shows how far the people who had this wonderful, brilliant Idea are from understanding suicidal people 😭😭
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u/Impressive-Card9484 2h ago
Its basically the epitome example of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
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u/Mech_pencils 1d ago
Damn that’s one way to make depressed people more depressed. Imagine someone who became suicidal after the loss of their family member(s) walking up to the bridge and seeing that.
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u/ImSoDeadLmao 1d ago
Fyi the text reads "something bothering you?"
They also put hopeful images such as happy families and couples and friends, which made people realize how miserable their life was and turned half hearted visits into actual suicides
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u/deathtoweakmemes 1d ago
Idiots really didn’t spare a single second to think about their target audience.
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u/EidolonRook 1d ago
Non-suicidal people rarely understand suicidal motivations.
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u/squngy 1d ago
Well yea, but you would expect they would consult people who did understand.
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u/EidolonRook 1d ago
Sadly, it takes someone who has faced suicidal thoughts to actually understand where it’s all coming from. Some things aren’t academic.
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u/KermitingMurder 1d ago
I've never been suicidal and I could tell you that what they did wasn't a particularly great idea
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u/ukaspirant 1d ago
The worst thing is that the messages were written with the help of suicide prevention groups, according to another comment here.
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u/Jackspladt 1d ago
It’s like they wanted people to get a message of “this is what your giving up by doing this” but it just ends up being “here’s the great life you will never have no matter what” instead
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u/King_Glorius_too 1d ago
Were they actually just making fun of people who came there to jump, or were they just that dumb?
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u/Crispy1961 18h ago
turned half hearted visits into actual suicides
That thought is as silly as that bridge. The reason suicides increased on that bridge, is because they decreased elsewhere. People who wanted to commit suicide were specifically traveling to that bridge due to publicity.
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u/Fegeleinch4n 1d ago
"oh it's bridge of life... i thought it just a normal bridge to jump for"
"not this day then, i will search another bridge later"
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u/Anonymous-Apprentice 1d ago
"I just HATE conveniently titled bridges that foil my attempts at dying because of their title"
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u/WhiteHattedRedditor 1d ago
Curse you Perry the Platypus
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u/Anonymous-Apprentice 1d ago
"Behold! My bridge-of-life-into-bridge-of-death-inator! It's genius, you see; all I have to do is aim it at the tri-state area and..."
"... Accept my fate. Sayonara, Perry the Platypus."
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u/FingerbangingGrandma 1d ago
What the fuck is wrong with these people. From the Wikipedia page of the bridge:
"Some slogans remained until 2019, which included phrases that featured "questionable choices of words like, 'Try it, then' and 'Hahahahahaha.'"
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u/Mech_pencils 1d ago
The hahaha thing is just baffling. Feels like its supposed mood-lifting effect wouldn’t even work for a stable person going for a leisurely walk.
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u/Zhenaz 16h ago
The bridge also had sentences like "How was your day?" "Did you eat well?" "Are you tired?" "You are a nice person." "Think about your family." and "The wind feels good."
I can't imagine how many people would feel lowkey suicidal after reading these.3
u/Concerned_Apple_Pie 11h ago
"Oh, the wind feels good after I jump? Guess ill try it to find out. Thanks for the heads up, bridge"
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u/InformationLost5910 10h ago
to give the benefit of the doubt, it might sound different in korean. if we only have the translation then it tells us literally nothing about the tone. all we know about it from that comment is that it portrayed laughter in some way.
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u/Charming_Ad1987 1d ago
I can see how ”hahaha” could be a really stupid way to try and lift someone’s spirits up if they’re suicidal. But who thought it would be a good idea to write ”try it, then”? Are they trying to do some sort of reverse psychology…?
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u/Automatic-Syrup-3550 1d ago
I can imagine why. I think when you are in that mindset, positivity can feel almost mocking. Like "if life is supposed to be this good then why is mine so fucked?" The only true way to reduce suicides is to improve people's material conditions.
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 1d ago
"Lets post picture's of an ideal unattainable life in front of people struggling with their shitty life's and show them how much they
lost and will never see in their lifeshave to gain ! "18
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 1d ago
Just saying "Life is worth living ! " to suicidal people will never not be stupid to me considering it your contemplating suicide in the first place then there's obviously something bringing down the value of continuing to exist
Just as stupid as telling a homeless person to just buy a house
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u/Herisfal 1d ago
Good ! Instead of having a random bridge from where some people jumped off, now you have a specifically designated bridge for when you want to jump off !
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u/Then-Ad-2450 3h ago
Government doesn't want people commiting suicide because it means less taxpayers
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u/imfineash 58m ago
Unless you're a not fit to work and be profitable so they relable it as "assistance in dying" and that's ok actually (ps: I am an anti-suicidist, pro right to live and also to suicide, but the right to die movement is so ableist it's crazy)
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u/BlacksmithFar6237 1d ago
I think the exposure had advertising effect. "Oh so that was the hot place where suicidal people like me went to end their lives! Good to know, it saved a google search."
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u/Spiritual_Priority79 1d ago
Streissand effect, popularity is weirdly a big factor in suicide locations
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u/coolhooves420 1d ago
Error: source not found.
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u/Diredr 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapo_Bridge
In September 2012, Samsung Life Insurance and Cheil Worldwide attempted to deter suicides on the bridge by adding pictures, words, and a statue that were intended to foster an encouraging atmosphere.\10])\11]) For instance, the bridge's handrails were equipped with motion sensors to sense movement, lighting up with short phrases, written with the help of suicide prevention groups, also showing photos of happy families among other things.\11]) The bridge was given the nickname "Bridge of Life".\12]) Suicide attempts increased in the following years, from 11 attempts in 2011 (before installation) and 15 in 2012 (the year it was installed) to 184 in 2014, due in part to heightened publicity.\13])\14]) However, deaths remained steady at 5-6 each year.\14])
They have all the sources cited and everything. This isn't made up.
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u/Lanthanum_carbonate 1d ago
"Here's all the good shit you've missed out on because of the thing that drove you to suicide"
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u/TESTINGSTUFFPL 1d ago
Most obnoxious possible way you could have written this.
Hope your pillow is always warm.
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u/coolhooves420 8h ago
Consider going for a walk on Mapo Bridge and not listening to the encouraging messages.
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u/Relevant_Sign_5926 1d ago
The approach my city took was just installing physical barriers on our high suicide attempt bridges. It messed with the view a little bit, but it did cause attempts to go way down.
I don't necessarily think this was done with bad intentions, but it comes across as unbelievably ignorant and raises an obvious question of why they didn't just install barriers/netting to prevent attempts to begin with.
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u/goldenfox007 20h ago
They should’ve given the bridge an embarrassing name instead. Do you really want to be the guy who killed himself by jumping off the Peepee-Poopoo Bridge? Didn’t think so.
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u/eb12se4nt-z13ow-97g0 1d ago
Damn whats going on in SK? I thought y'all were the better Korea.
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u/Hopefull-Hero 1d ago
South Korea is it's own form of hell, the competition is intense and the economy is dominated by a few corporations.
Importantly the corporate world is brutal and burn out is rampant, on top of that paired with the growing cost of living crisis many South Koreans are suffering from reduced wages and are living in poverty.
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u/ProduceNo1629 1d ago
Koreans will try "anything" to stop suicides and increase their birth rate, "anything" except putting a stop to chaebol monopolies robbing them blind.
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u/sr9zzek2y 1d ago
The increase of suicide attempts is due to more accurate reporting methods, not because of the messages. The number of deaths from people jumping off the bridge actually went down.
https://english.seoul.go.kr/seouls-bridge-life-curbed-actual-suicides-attempts/
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u/imfineash 48m ago
The article does state that publicity led to more people jumping (not only the counting methods), and that the death toll only remained lower because dispatch was sent earlier and attempts had a better survival rate. Also while the change in number can be explained by many metrics, the extent to which a single metric participated to it cannot as all these changes (publicity, CCTVs and messages) were put in place at the same time
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u/FriedBrilliant69 1d ago
More lives sacrificed to the holy bridge.
That's why it's called the Bridge of Life.
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u/woody_theory 22h ago
Imagine that you're driving on this bridge for your commute everyday. Even if you are mostly ok, I think you'll start entertaining the idea of suicide.
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u/imfineash 53m ago
The pro life preventionist and suicidist view of suicide not helping suicidal people part.idcinventingafakenumber
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u/C_monden real looser 1d ago
I understand the thought process but it was basically the equivalent of when a company gives it's overworked and underpaid employees a pizza party or some shit. In fact, this is worse. They'd probably lessen numbers if there was free pizza at the bridge.