Unless you’ve managed to completely avoid the Main Green these last few weeks (in which case, you’re the most esoteric bitch at this school, congrats!), you’ve probably encountered a bunch of frat boys in backward baseball caps who are convinced they can stop suicide through flash mobs and public pranks. For the price of a fugly bracelet or T-shirt, you can contribute to the Barbie-themed flash mob that will stop someone from killing themself. After all, as many studies have proven, the best method of suicide prevention at a school like Brown is not making therapy easier to access (I’m looking at you CAPS) or encouraging professors to give their students managable workloads but ambushing you with Ken and Barbie in the Blue Room.
The T-shirts they sell read “What would you miss?” Of course, the part that’s missing from this tagline, is the completely unprintable “What would you miss if you fucking killed yourself? :P” I’m surprised that bedazzled crop tops reading “nooo don’t kill yourself you’re so sexy aha” isn’t a part of their marketing strategy at this point.
And great question what would I miss? Probably your guys’ flash mobs, duh! Oh, and how could I forget? I’d deffo miss my $35 Crewneck, which feels even cozier knowing that $24.50 went to funding a guy pantsing himself in the Ratty.
You might think I’m being harsh and in which case I say you’re silencing women. “But they raise money for real mental health organizations!” you might whine. (Are they paying you or something? Good to see their budget going to something other than Barbie costumes!) But if you do some intensive sleuthing (see: a single Google search), you will find out that “30% of the money raised is donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.” Yes, that’s not nothing, but the fact that 70% of their funds go to funding flash mobs and merch is egregious. Maybe I’ll start my own mental health organization and use 70% of the funds to buy rose toys!
My sleuthing didn’t end there. As their website boldly declares, “I sell products to help remind people they are not alone.” First of all, that’s so true — whenever I want to support my friends and remind them that they’re not alone, my first instinct is to sell products. Our commonalities don’t end there: I’m writing this article to let all-my-queens-out-there who are also skeptical of the lax bros handing out suicide prevention merchandise know that they are not alone. So don’t kill yourself, queens, we’re holding an acapella performance at the MET tomorrow about how weird these fuckers are tomorrow. Didn’t you get the GCal invite?
And is it so hard to hire at least one person who doesn’t look like they’d call me a slur to sell me your lavender purple slay suicide T-shirts? Please and thank you!
You might think I’m being harsh, but when it comes to things like suicide prevention, let’s act with a little tact. The Rib may be a satire magazine, but I know for a fact we could handle a suicide prevention campaign with far more grace than any guy who hazed 14 year olds in high school.
And, in doing the research for this piece, I see that the founder of, uhh, let’s call them All Seats Full, is not following me back on Instagram. I guess I’ll kill myself. Oh, wait — is that a flash mob? Change of plans.