If your TikTok feed is something like mine, you’ve most likely spent your weekend scrolling via clips of cute penguins, bagel hacks and movies of skiers failing in numerous dangerous conditions. When these movies of skiers or different common individuals doing dumb stuff pop up, have you ever discover they’re all soundtracked by the identical music? Well, put together to have it caught in your head as soon as once more, as we’re uncovering the historical past of “Dumb Ways to Die.”
You know the video format by now: Someone wades via a river and tries to choose up a snake, then the clip freezes and the phrases “dumb ways to die” flash up on display, accompanied by a jaunty little tune. It’s an ideal format that has, up to now, coated every little thing from winter sport mishaps to individuals taking part in with lethal animals on the seashore.
But have you learnt the place that catchy little tune comes from? I didn’t, and having had it taking part in via my head all weekend, I figured it was time to search out out. And, expensive Jalopnik readers, it seems the observe was written as a part of a public safety marketing campaign in Australia.
The movie was created by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. And whilst you would possibly suppose its objective is to cease individuals from choosing up lethal radioactive capsules that you just would possibly discover in Australia, it’s really all about staying secure on town’s railways.
The full three-minute observe — and lovely accompanying video you could see above — follows a bunch of jellybean-like creatures exploring the world round them. Along the way in which, every of them encounters an unlucky finish. Things like poking a grizzly bear with a stick, inviting a psycho-killer inside and even dressing up like a moose throughout looking season all warrant an early grave for the creatures.
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After reeling off a complete heap of unlikely eventualities, like taking your helmet off in outer area, issues get actual. The music sings:
“Stand on the edge of a train station platform. Drive around the boom gates at a level crossing. Run across the tracks between the platforms.
“They may not rhyme but they’re quite possibly, the dumbest ways to die.”
That a part of the music doesn’t normally make it onto TikTok, but it surely’s the entire cause it was written within the first place. It was penned to focus on the risks of ignoring security precautions round Melbourne’s railways. And by all accounts, it’s accomplished a fairly good job at that within the years since.
Metro Trains reported a 30-% discount in near-miss incidents following the launch of this PSA marketing campaign, and hundreds of thousands of individuals pledged to behave extra responsibly round railways.
On prime of that, the marketing campaign’s organizers additionally declare it’s the most-shared public security movie of all time, and it has up to now racked up greater than 275 million views on YouTube, in addition to numerous performs on TikTok as nicely. Admittedly, most of these TikTok posts aren’t precisely what you’d name safety-oriented, however at the very least we all know the origin of this extremely catchy music now.
Source: jalopnik.com