Kinda curious. Why watch people die? I'm not making fun of anyone doing it. I'm not your dad so I'm not going to tell you what to do. I just don't quite grasp why.
Yes I know, this fucking question again.
But having thought about it, the reason I'm interested is that death is a part of life, yet our culture forbids us from seeing it. I had never seen a dead body that wasn't a mummy/skeleton in a museum until I was in my 30s, and I didn't see someone die until an elderly relative's life support was switched off the same decade. It's censored on TV, on the mainstream internet, even in places you'd think it would be uncensored, such as textbooks or documentaries about hospitals or morgues. And yet it will happen to all of us. Everyone you meet or see every day will eventually die, death is an everyday part of life but yet (at least in the West) we're so fucking squeamish about it we pretend it doesn't exist. I think that's part of why so many young people think they are indestructible, because they've never seen someone really die and realise how sudden, unfair and, well,
chunky it can sometimes be. You see death in fiction, but Hollywood and TV have given people the wrong idea about death, that it only happens to bad people, or to old people, or in a way that is narratively satisfying. You, yes, you, you with the self-consciousness and the plans for the future and the partner and the house and the money, YOU could go splat at any second for no good reason and the world will just keep turning. If people were more aware of their own mortality maybe they'd look both ways before crossing the street, or at least not weave their motorbikes through traffic at 120mph.
So death, and actually seeing it happen, is in this really odd place where it's all around us yet we don't see it. That's such an essential gap in human knowledge that is only a relatively recent phenomenon. So I watch this because it completes the human experience. It shows how sudden and unfair and lacking in narrative death actually is. It makes me understand the world better, and about one of the most significant aspects of the human condition.
Also it's really funny when Indians get hit by trains ngl