Bright Lights, Big City
Lifted from the comments, it turns out that Transport For London is advertising assisted suicide. They seem to be giving it quite a push:
Westminster Death Tunnel sponsored by @dignityindying pic.twitter.com/fW0mbtqVRc
— Fleur Elizabeth (@fleurmeston) November 25, 2024
Very on-brand, I’d say. Almost too on-the-nose. I mean, if London’s buses and tube network were suddenly to be plastered with huge posters saying END IT ALL NOW, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, it wouldn’t be entirely inexplicable, or entirely dissonant with the customer experience.
It’s perhaps worth noting that Transport For London has a staff training centre, complete with fake station and platform, and “suicide pits,” where employees learn how to manage what are euphemistically referred to as “passengers taken unwell” or “disruptions to the tube service.” Events that occur on average once or twice a week.
In 2019, staff “intervened” in the self-destructive thoughts of 426 customers deemed “visibly in distress,” “up from 252 in the previous year.”
As EmC quips darkly in reply,
Consider this an open thread.
Sooo, they’re saying “Instead of jumping on the tracks and disrupting service, why not avail yourself of this lovely clean method”?
As someone who’s experienced the soul-withering properties of attempts to travel in London – and who would not care to repeat it – there is, I think, an unhappy irony.
It’s also worth noting that TfL, supported by London’s leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan, has been quite eager to forbid adverts on the tube for foods deemed insufficiently healthy and life-affirming, including artisanal cheeses.
Fame at last.
Well, it wasn’t an entirely inapt comment. If I were of a mind to seriously degrade someone’s mental health and make them feel utterly wretched, urging them to live in London would be a pretty good way to do it.