#3 Goethe wrong a hopelessly romantic book called 'The Sorrows of Young Werther', in which a sensitive young man falls in love with a woman he cannot have, so after lots of suffering, he shoots himself in the head and dies.
But though Goethe wrote it as a parody of other syrupy romance literature of the time, he did it so well, that some 2,000 young dumbasses across Europe decided to shoot themselves.
A now much more obscure case was in the US, when I believe a Hungarian violinist recorded a melancholy tune called "The Suicide Song" in the 1920s, before killing himself. There were several instances of dumbasses who later killed themselves and the record was found on their player, which resulted in calls for the record to be banned.
It seemed to have worked, because it has been pretty much forgotten since. I have only seen references to it, and there is nothing on the Internet about it. |
