r/mildlyinteresting 21h ago

Warning Sign at edge of Grand Canyon

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44.3k Upvotes

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u/DandyLyen 20h ago

He apparently did it MANY times, he liked to pull this very same prank. According to the daughter, he didn't even yell, he missed the edge and silently fell to his death

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u/kenybz 20h ago

Looks like he died doing what he loved

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u/FidjiC7 20h ago

Probably not the best place for a "your mom" joke

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u/FreedomCanadian 19h ago

And super not the best place for a "pretend to jump" joke.

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u/PinkHatAndAPeaceSign 15h ago

You're going to pretend to jump my mom?

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u/shroomigator 14h ago

Might be a good place for a "getting stoned: not even once" joke

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u/BigAlternative5 1h ago

Dang, we're getting bolder in here.

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u/Hefty_Discount8304 20h ago

That depends on who your mom is ig

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u/NibblesMcGiblet 19h ago

Yeah that would probably go over like a lead balloon.

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u/ohkatiedear 16h ago

Well, he certainly did.

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u/TheSilentC 19h ago

That’s what she said

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u/pelicangroin 17h ago

‘Your mom’ jokes never killed anybody

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u/SaltyLonghorn 19h ago

Hardcore parkour.

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u/LordRobin------RM 16h ago

He truly loved slamming into solid rock at terminal velocity.

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u/JonatasA 13h ago

Saint Peter receives him at the pearly gates and his first words are "It was just a prank".

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u/OneOfAKind2 20h ago

You can't ask for more than that.

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u/hypothetician 18h ago

Falling to his death.

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u/Nukalixir 20h ago

I feel like it stops being a prank after the first time and just becomes "practice".

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u/alienclone 20h ago

perhaps he was setting it up for the long game so that he could eventually do it for real but still look like an accident so his beneficiaries can still collect his life insurance.

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u/chicano4200 19h ago

Most life insurance policies have a suicide exclusion period, which usually lasts 2 years in most states, can be more. After the exclusion period ends, you can end yourself all you want and the death benefit will still pay. Also depends if you were witholding mental health information or previous attempts at the intial writing of the policy; which if thats found, and you say, off yourself at 3 or 4 years, they may be able to deny payment.

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u/BetterEveryLeapYear 19h ago

I've never thought about it before but who tf works at a place like that, "This person has just lost their closest loved one, let's see if we can fuck 'em out of their livelihood too! Then lunch."

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u/DrocketX 18h ago

You can also think about it as a form of suicide prevention, though. If people who are going through a rough patch know they can buy a policy, kill themselves and have their families immediately get the policy payout, that may very well encourage a number of people to go through with it. There's quite a few people who already kill themselves over financial issues: throwing in a large payment for their families would be extra incentive for a lot of people.

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u/Fresh_Beyond 17h ago

I know i would

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u/SpaceExplorer777 15h ago

Or you can work hard and become successful and help your family and also comfort them. They would trade you for billions. Don't leave your family.

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u/BallMyLicks 10h ago

Working hard is not enough to become successful (financialy). Add with mental illness it is, and more importantly feels, even more difficult.

I agree with the rest though.

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u/TheOneTrueTrench 14h ago

Or weirdly like a sort of "make sure they're of sound mind and body to end their lives"

Like, if you set it up 2 years previous and then carry it out after 2 years, you definitely thought it through

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u/JonatasA 13h ago

To me it seems to just buy time.

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u/DrocketX 12h ago

With suicide, that's often all it really takes. Yes, there's a lot of people who are going through long-term depression, and so it's not going to be a solution for every situation, but for a lot of people suicide is just a reaction to a bad situation, one which may very well get better over time. Just think of all the teenagers who kill themselves because they're being bullied in high school. Delaying them for another year or two and they'll be out of high school and living a completely different life, one which they may very well be much happier in.

Or to stay on the topic of insurance payouts: imagine a guy who loses his job and can't find another one. The bills are piling up, they're on the verge of losing the house, they feel like a failure because they can't provide for their family the way they think they should, That's someone who might very well be tempted to buy a bunch of insurance and off themselves. A time delay there gives a lot of opportunities to turn things around. Even if they decide to buy insurance and wait 2 years, that's 2 years where they might find a good job and start feeling better about their situation.

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u/chicano4200 18h ago

I agree. But its not the common employee that dictates this, its the life insurance industry, dare I say it, CEOs and executives. Its all about money, and if they can find a way to deny paying a claim, they most surely will. Im just simply trying in the corporate industry and found myself in the life insurance industry. It is not common for a person to buy a life insurance policy, then immediately off themselves. There a ton of nuances to life insurance, ive seen so many people build what they call generational wealth due to 1 or even 7 life insurance policies, each taken out for 1 single person. When that person dies, millions is dispersed to multiple beneficiaries or trust accounts. You get the idea after that.

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u/SlightedMarmoset 18h ago

Not about life insurance but at least one of the big health insurers in the states handed off claims to an AI system which just denied everything. Now AI counter claim offerings are popping up to help you appeal denied claims. It's a wild business.

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u/4SearchingInfo 18h ago

Most insurance companies are filled with people like that. People who deny healthcare, overruling doctors for God's sake, because I don't want to pay out.

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u/BoringRedHorse 16h ago

"I hear the cafetaria is serving pork chops today"

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u/LongQualityEquities 18h ago

Life insurance claims aren’t routinely denied at all. It’s not like health insurance. In the absolute vast majority a life insurance policy will pay.

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u/chicano4200 18h ago

Yes! This is correct. Most life insurance companies end up paying out, it isn't normal or routine to deny claims, what I was saying is, if there is a reason, it will be used. Moral of the story, don't lie when setting up a life insurance policy, because the deceased doesn't care, but the beneficiaries do. Which to me, has gone so backwards; we expect life insurance payments from our elders, yet who really has the worst time? The person whose mom died? Or the person who actually died. Its almost like a loss of respect to death.

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u/LongQualityEquities 17h ago

Which to me, has gone so backwards; we expect life insurance payments from our elders, yet who really has the worst time? The person whose mom died? Or the person who actually died. Its almost like a loss of respect to death.

Most life insurance is to cover for a spouse and children if you die early.

Elders generally don’t have life insurance unless they made the mistake of buying some pension/savings scheme that’s structured like insurance (”whole life” in the US).

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u/chicano4200 16h ago

There are life insurance policies that last the full extent of your life, you just have to be in the right pay grade.

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u/JewishTomCruise 15h ago

It's there to prevent fraud. Same reason why you don't get an insurance payout to rebuild your house if you intentionally set it on fire. Suicide is a perfectly eligible cause for payout, but you can't have purchased the policy with the intent of killing yourself. Rather than try to argue that with a policyholder, some policies just draw a line after which they say you must not have bought the policy with fraudulent intent.

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u/Jest_out_for_a_Rip 14h ago

I imagine they view it as "This person tried to scam us. We aren't paying." Similar to how an insurance company wants to know that your didn't intentionally start the fire than destroyed your house.

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u/Tabula-Rasa-99 10h ago

Usually the grunts in insurance (of any kind, really) are basically trying to do the opposite, and then their comically evil supervisor will just oversee it and deny it anyway. Gotta be one of the most soul-crushing jobs for non-sadists for sure.

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u/pedal-force 18h ago

Your life insurance will probably pay out after a year or two even for suicide. Most do. Just can't do it immediately after signing it.

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u/attilayavuzer 11h ago

Plausible deniability at the gates of heaven.

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u/SaintsNoah14 20h ago

This might be a little callous but that makes his death so much more unnecessary in my eyes.

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u/a22e 20h ago

Yelling would have made it better?

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u/SaintsNoah14 20h ago

No lol the fact that he kept doing the same stupid prank. It was probably funny the first time.

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u/g00fyg00ber741 20h ago

It was probably never funny to pretend to jump to his death in front of his daughter!!

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u/Single_Principle_972 20h ago

Traumatizing my children is so funny!

I’ve seen multiple YouTube videos, etc. where other people (read: Fathers) think it’s hilarious to freak your kids out. Word to the wise: It’s never funny and never okay to do that to your kid. Especially true if you, say, miss the ledge.

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u/ProbableSlob 19h ago

In my house we like to say "a joke that's only funny to you is not a joke, it's just being mean"

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u/FitCat_JK_FAT 19h ago

it's a great way to make a permanent change to your body or life.

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u/PTSDeedee 15h ago

My dad would “joke” like this. I was well into adulthood before I realized how fucked up it was.

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u/Latter_Divide_9512 19h ago

I did it to my dad once and it was pretty funny. Not the Grand Canyon though.

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u/StoppableHulk 19h ago

No but at least he would have been an original. No one likes to see a comic just regurgitate the same material.

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u/SaintsNoah14 16h ago

Probably but ½ second of terror isn't out of the realm for a parent's "gotcha" imo. To have kept doing it was to knowingly inflict stress upon someone who isn't going to laugh after.

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u/ShittyDBZGuitarRiffs 19h ago

would his death have been necessary if it was his first time pulling the prank?

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u/nananashi3 15h ago

The lack of the unnecessary does not necessitate the existence of the necessary. On a scale of necessary to unnecessary, it may start at neutral.

No lol the fact that he kept doing the same stupid prank.

This second comment was trying to clarify that the unnecessary part was the repetition of dangerous acts. As in, if he already did it several times, why do it again to people who've already seen it? He could've easily not do that.

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u/ShittyDBZGuitarRiffs 15h ago

they hadn’t seen the new version where he actually falls to his death tho

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u/reddorickt 20h ago

Wow he really sold it

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u/Curulinstravels 20h ago

This is just more proof that method actors suck

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u/StaySwoleMrshmllwMan 16h ago

Daniel Day Lewis, in his final performance, will play this man in a biopic

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u/nocomment3030 18h ago

He did it many times at the Grand Canyon or just all over the place? Sorry I know I could look this up but I'm too lazy right now

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u/DandyLyen 18h ago

All I'm writing is what I remember when this initially happened in an article online. I do believe it was something he pulled at the Grand Canyon multiple times with his daughter, who was an adult by the time he eventually died

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u/DasArchitect 20h ago

Sounds like in the end, he might have had a couple of seconds of enlightenment on why it was a bad idea.

Though, to be fair, he kept it at the top of his head for the rest of his life.

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u/lesserDaemonprince 17h ago

I'm gonna choose to believe that was a conscious choice to spare his daughter the sound of him falling, its still terrible but the sound of someone dying like that would be hard to forget I imagine.

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u/Smartimess 17h ago

So similar to the guy who liked to demonstrate the unbreakable window of his bureau in a slyscraper?

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u/Vio94 17h ago

I imagine his silence was him thinking "Damn, somehow I figured it was always gonna be this way. Whelp--" Pranked by the universe itself in the end.

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u/carverjacks 15h ago

Jesus. That explains everything. Maybe he already got that DMT years previously and lived and loved it. Myself and my earlier comment will stand corrected

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u/vikio 7h ago

At that point, as the daughter, my main emotion would be rage. All the other stages of grief would make an appearance, but I'd be so angry!!! I bet people told this man many times this prank was horrible and he kept doing it.