I know the web site came after the early mentions in the 1990’s. I’m not sure which social media platform first coined the term. It was used at the SDMB a lot in the early days. Did the SDMB ever have a continuous Darwin Award thread?
There were many worthy nominations in the past couple years.
I do not know what has happened, but the books and web site were primarily produced by Wendy Northcutt [“I AM the Darwin Awards”, in her own words…]. She also has this site which is slightly more up to date (she posted there in June at least).
That site was Early WWW personified. Much like Snopes. A place where an eager volunteer gathered interesting stuff on a particular topic and displayed it for all to see. Gratis.
The world has moved on and that’s not a practical hobby to sustain for decades, nor is it a viable business model.
A quick search turns up many threads involving individual nominees which then led to other suggestions by other posters. The last real attempt at an omnibus thread was in 2018 and fell flat, attracting only 3 posts.
Bottom line IMO …
Compared to the rest of the screaming idiocy on display all over our fair country, merely killing oneself inadvertently seems … quaint. Kinda like reading the Onion from 2010 seems so very sane and ordinary by current standards. Humor has a sell-by date, and the humor inherent in Darwin Awards seems to have passed its date.
The website and the books did bring those up, but then they immediately showed them to be the urban legends they were. They had no part in spreading those stories.
Sometimes that happens. People lose interest, or real life gets in the way. I’ve followed more than one podcast that updated regularly, until it suddenly didn’t. They just kind of stop, with no announcement or anything. A lot of websites, blogs, and podcasts are essentially hobbies, and sometimes people lose interest in their hobbies, or don’t have time to pursue them anymore.
I would agree it’s more of an early-internet thing – before it was possible to quickly check details of incidents and there was not so much competition with, say, videos of sovereign citizens getting tasered.
Also, for me personally I found the idea fun at first, but the more you think about it the more distasteful it became so I think it had an inherent sell-by date. It’s distasteful IMO because, well, firstly of course it somewhat makes fun of tragedies. But also because of what it’s trying to entail about evolution and human life.
In the US, where so many people are still creationists, it’s not helpful to be painting this idea that people who believe in evolution think we should still be servants to evolution, and that we should point and laugh at death and suffering.
It says right there in the article preview that he died in 1993! (I know – he didn’t die in the attempt.)
Was a version of this story circulated where he died? I remember hearing this story in the early-to-mid-90s, and in the versions I’ve heard, he always survived.
The Darwin Awards did not demonstrate anything about evolution, nor was it ever intended to.
I thought it was funny, in a misandrist sort of way – nearly all the people who die doing butt fuck stupid stunts are men. The number of women who say, ‘hold my beer’ is miniscule in comparison.
There are lots of reels of clips out there of men who videotape themselves cutting off limbs they are sitting on, attempt to boogie board on wet concrete, or gun their car over a gap in the road, or thousands of other tries at being famous for being an idiot.
So maybe the era of the selfie video did in the awards.
I would venture that much of its readership thought it did. There’s a decent argument that such humor can steer some weaker minds toward an advocacy of eugenics.
I should have been clearer in that I don’t think the person / people behind the webpage were necessarily advocating anything, but in general discourse it often was described in those terms.
The kind of person that would lament that we are “evolving” to become more stupid, and so it’s a good thing is some people removed themselves from the gene pool.
I’d also note that while the DA themselves could be granted to people who had children, I remember people saying so-and-so wouldn’t be eligible for that reason. So it was ok to be a deadbeat dad and die in a stupid way, only dying childless was shameful.
They used to have a message board, too. I prefered the snopes message boards because they were… nicer. Alas, looks like both have gone the way of the dodo.
Yeah, I admit I found the Darwin Awards funny when I was young and immature, but now I find them pretty distasteful.
An acquaintance of mine actually knew someone who “won” a Darwin Award – IIRC he died in an accident at the Boeing plant and my acquaintance is a retired Boeing employee. Everyone who actually knew they guy knows he wasn’t stupid and his death was a tragic accident. But some random person on the internet found a news article about the incident, spun it to make the guy look like an idiot, and nominated it for a Darwin Award. The whole DW thing was incredibly hurtful to the people who actually knew the guy and were mourning his death.
(I know – he didn’t die in the attempt.)