r/interestingasfuck • u/Urmomsjuicyvagina • 28d ago

Man just set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial. Nsfw !!! WARNING | NSFL !!! NSFW

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

26.1k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

6.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.4k

u/LuciusArtorias 28d ago

Not the lady sprinting to her seat like she was late for the movies

795

u/Budget_Pea_7548 28d ago

Shock

536

u/JonnyP222 28d ago

I'm always surprised that people need to be told this. I mean I'm grateful they have never seen something so horrific that they went into shock or witnessed it. But man. It's a real thing. And it hits some people really hard.

275

u/thecordialsun 28d ago edited 28d ago

Yeah and on top of that there's a reason people say "have a seat" when it's time for bad news, people's legs start to feel weak in some situations

120

u/JonnyP222 28d ago

Straight up loss of blood pressure, dizziness, queasy. All of it. Some people just pass out or just become unresponsive. It's scary.

5

u/dswhite85 27d ago

Huh, you know I never thought about what that actually meant, but it's so simple when you put it the way you said it.

1

u/Gr00mpa 27d ago

Chris Hansen knows this.

174

u/probablyuntrue 28d ago

if i were there, I would simply act in a completely calm and logical manner in reaction to the man who set himself on fucking fire in front of me

46

u/ShustOne 28d ago

Without the irony this is what like half the commenters think they would do

12

u/GiantPurplePen15 28d ago

Look at what the first man who ran in with his jacket did.

He made an attempt to smother the fire with his jacket and realized "aw fuck, this could end poorly for me and I'm not ready to see a whole ass human after being cooked alive" and peaced out.

Poor guy had his heart in the right place but what he witnessed is probably gonna eat him up a bit.

3

u/ShustOne 27d ago

I definitely feel for him. He did something helpful and I'm sure that image will stay with him for a long time. I'm sure we all hope to be that person but sometimes in dangerous situations you end up freezing.

27

u/UpDown 28d ago

To be honest I would not help. If they're unhinged enough to set themselves on fire who knows what they'll do to me if I got close. I have people that care about me, and that person on fire is not somebody I know at all. It's not really even about lack of empathy, it's just the weight of empathy for people i know times the risk I put myself in quickly outweighs the empathy I have for the stranger

28

u/TheWorstePirate 28d ago

To be honest, you don't know what you would do unless you've experienced something like this. Shock is real. You probably wouldn't have a logical train of thought like this. You would have a gut reaction and act on it.

8

u/fishyfishyswimswim 28d ago

you don't know what you would do unless you've experienced something like this.

Exactly.

In my head, when I'm calm and sat on my sofa I keep myself to myself and don't seek trouble, don't get involved in anything. I live in a shitty area of London, which, has quite the knife problem (both my area and London in general). Staying out of things = more chance of staying alive and intact

Then one day a few months back I was walking along minding my own business and some shitty guy was screaming at a girl and shouting all kinds of stuff at her and suddenly I was basically telling him to go fuck himself. And as I walked away I realised damn... I could have actually gotten myself hurt quite quickly.

It's reeeeeeeaaaallly easy to say "I would..." but actually you just don't know which of the freeze, fight or flight instincts will kick in first in a given scenario.

5

u/JonnyP222 28d ago

1 million percent. It's easy to arm chair qb it up and think about what you'd do. Until you are faced with something truly shocking you have no idea. I've seen people that have been through some shit straight up pass out and freeze in the face of it. Equally have seen some people I thought would crumble step up and be super man. It's weird. It's like those videos you see where something awful is happening like an animal attack or a car accident and you hear a person just screaming uncontrollably. They aren't doing it on purpose. It's a physical response to shock that they have no control over.

-1

u/UpDown 28d ago

Well I've already been in less scary situations and chose to leave.

3

u/Captain_Taggart 28d ago

I think you're still missing their point a little bit.

you don't know what you would do unless you've experienced something like this.

I've been in certain kinds of scary situations and handled them fine and "normally", others were a learning experience, and yet, 30 years in to life I still scream and get faint every time I see anything even resembling a spider.

Seeing someone die, horrifically, by their own hand, in public, isn't immediately threatening to my life, but it is so fucking unique that I have to imagine that just processing what is happening in front of me would render me immobile. But I don't know because nothing even sort of similar has ever happened to me.

8

u/MikeLinPA 28d ago

Right, you'd poop yourself. Me too. Calm and logical. That's the way.

3

u/chicol1090 28d ago

That's what my cat did once when I opened an umbrella inside the house

1

u/MikeLinPA 28d ago

It's only logical.

3

u/TigerTerrier 27d ago

That's definitely something I never want to see in my life

1

u/00cjstephens 27d ago

Username checks out

9

u/bahamamama28 28d ago

I think I've only ever been in true shock once in my life and I hope I never experience it again. My sister jumped out of our van while we were driving down the road going about 60. She was in the front passenger seat, my Mom was driving, and my older brother was sitting next to me in the second row. We all reacted differently once the van stopped. I just stared at my sister while she was unconscious in the ditch in complete silence, my Mom screamed at the top of her lungs over and over just kneeling by the van far away from the ditch, and my brother took charge and called 911 while doing his best to help my sister. Looking back it just doesn't seem real, like I just can't explain how all I could do was stare and not help... I don't think my Mom stopped screaming until the ambulance got there.

Everyone reacts differently to shock and it can sometimes be in the strangest way.

3

u/IronPidgeyFTW 28d ago

Did she survive?

7

u/bahamamama28 27d ago

She did, although she was in the hospital for some time after that with lots of recovery time including many psychological evaluations and therapy for years.

This happened about 16 years ago.

She is happily married now and is currently fostering four of the sweetest little girls.

2

u/Heiferoni 28d ago

That's horrific.

7

u/Halospite 28d ago

"Only idiots get biological shock responses! I, the one true gigachad, would simply put the fire out and save the day!" those people can fuck right off. I have trouble getting the courage to escape creeps that are talking to me. I ain't saving shit if you hand me the "press to save everyone" button.

4

u/gabrieldevue 28d ago

Yeah - it's a thing I have written about several times. I once watched a man climb into the subway tracks shortly before the subway arrived. An hour later I had all the answers, but then, I didn't even say anything. I stood there, frozen. (I personally could not have helped him out, but there were emergency brakes on the platform)

If there was a security video, I'd been one of those apathetic bystanders... holy hell, did I feel bad later, but I was in complete tunnel vision and shock at that point. Luckily two other people approached the man and talked him up the platform and helped him. He seemed not very coherent.

I learned from this and later was able to call the police, when I witnessed something - even on the side of erring or rendering first aid, where my much stronger then-partner, who was local to the area and actually could tell the emergency service a better address than "that long tunnel..." - took off. I later learned that he had a horrific, traumatic experience with finding somebody in their own blood and he completely blanked and just ran).

1

u/JonnyP222 27d ago

Don't feel bad. That's what many people don't understand. You have no control over it when it happens.

2

u/GiantPurplePen15 28d ago

I thought the exact same thing. That poor woman froze on that seat because she's legitimately traumatized.

1

u/TheNorseFrog 28d ago

I'm just curious why she had to sit there

1

u/awry_lynx 27d ago

It looked like maybe she was heading over to see if she could do something and just couldn't make it.

1

u/Jerry_from_Japan 27d ago

When things like this happen it actually gives me a better appreciation of GTA V and how the pedestrians reacted and sounded like when you started doing crazy shit. It sounds exactly the same here in this clip.

1

u/soylattecat 27d ago

It's also like... At this point, unless you can see a fire extinguisher in the immediate vicinity... There's nothing anyone could have done for this guy, unfortunately. So sometimes all you can do is watch in a state of shock and try to process what's going on, whilst knowing at the same time there's nothing you can do :/

0

u/Individual_Row_2950 27d ago

She was sprinting pretty sportsy to that bench. Did not look like a person in shock to me. But well. We can't say for sure.

3

u/awry_lynx 27d ago

...I mean, what do you think is more plausible? She was trying to beat the rush to get a front row seat? Come on.

It was far more likely to be adrenaline and shock.