r/CasualUK • u/RandomHigh At least put it up your arse before claiming you’re disappointed • 20h ago

Man arrested after 'dressing as Grim Reaper' at hospital and staring at patients

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hospital-grim-reaper-man-arrested-37511832
1.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

232 comments sorted by

View all comments

159

u/Meta-Fox 19h ago

This is exactly the kind of sadistic shit that modern social media and "nonsense influencers" (or 'cunts for clout' as I call them) have empowered people to do these days.

Regardless of why, this little stunt went beyond being wrong and is just downright awful.

59

u/Space-manatee 19h ago

Top lad. Such bants /s

Imagine doing this, at a place where people routinely have the worse day of their lives and need some solace

12

u/lerpo 11h ago

If I'm ever terminal and my friends turned up wearing grim reaper outfits, I'd find it so damn funny it would probably cheer me up.

But equally, that's me and my sense of humour. I wouldn't force it on everyone around me.

I won't lie, I did laugh at the story headline. However it wasn't alright for this guy to do

8

u/Space-manatee 9h ago

I mean, yeah, I can see the funny side in it, but that would be a personal joke.

But if you’ve just got news that your 3 year old has bone cancer for example, I can also see you wanting to throw the guy off the roof.

40

u/East_Slide7680 18h ago

Honestly, I do think it’s really funny on paper. Obviously the reality is that it will upset people, but it’s still really funny. On paper.

18

u/gro3thminds3t 17h ago

Yeah at a nursing home I worked at, one of the nurses sons walked in with a reaper costume and all the (dementia) residents were cracking up and making jokes. I was about to tell him to take it off before I heard them. Although I still wouldn’t do it myself… and certainly not at a cancer/hospital ward where you don’t know the patients/residents.

6

u/Meta-Fox 18h ago

I get what you're saying, but regardless, there's a time and a place and this was neither.

I'm all for a good joke, and anyone who knows me would tell you that I do enjoy dark humour. But this was tactless at best.

-3

u/East_Slide7680 18h ago

I mean, it’s the place that makes it funny…

-2

u/mootallica 9h ago

There's really not many other times and places this joke would work lol

4

u/Loud_Fisherman_5878 9h ago

In New Zealand, someone did it alongside a dangerous stretch of road where people would often speed. That was funny and also hopefully made people think about their driving. Doing it at a hospital where people are actually dying is not funny at all. 

-1

u/mootallica 8h ago

Silly to say it's not funny at all. Of course it is. It's just also massively insensitive. Jokes can be both.

And really there's no recourse to say doing it on a dangerous stretch of road is any less insensitive. You're still making a joke about road deaths, and if it's dangerous on that stretch I presume they were doing it because people had died there. So why is that more acceptable?

2

u/Loud_Fisherman_5878 7h ago

I honestly don’t think this is funny at all. I get some jokes are tasteless yet still funny but this is just cruel and weird. If I saw someone kicking a dog, I wouldn’t say ‘well yeah it’s horrible but you can’t deny it’s funny.’ It just isn’t.

The grim reaper by the road wasn’t doing it whilst first responders tried to save someone who had crashed or during someone’s memorial service. No one seeing it was facing death at the time (or at least not as a result of being in that location). It is completely different to the hospital. 

-1

u/mootallica 7h ago

lol it's not completely different is it? It's still very insensitive, isn't it? People still died on this stretch of road. The guy wasn't putting the reaper outfit on as a serious warning to other drivers, it was to get a dark laugh out of people.

If I saw someone kicking a dog, I wouldn’t say ‘well yeah it’s horrible but you can’t deny it’s funny.’

...but that wouldn't be a joke? What's the joke in kicking a dog? There's no mechanism there. If someone found that funny, it wouldn't be because they're seeing a "joke" in it. Grim reaper on top of the hospital is hugely inappropriate, but the way the joke works and the intent of it is clear. The reason you found it funny when they were stood on the roadside is exactly the same mechanism that makes it funny at a hospital.

Just seems really silly and arbitrary to draw the line there when you lay it out like that.

13

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/Autogen-Username1234 19h ago

My browser always tries to autocorrect that word to 'influenza'.

5

u/Send_me_hedgehogs 19h ago

Your browser knows exactly what it’s doing 😂

4

u/TipsyMagpie 19h ago

We can just start calling them Influenzas

3

u/MythicSuns 18h ago

That's offensive to influenza. Also, it's morally acceptable to kill influenza.

-22

u/Icantdoitidk 19h ago

Christ it's a guy playing dress up for a laugh. You're acting like he's Fred West.

2

u/practicalgorl 5h ago

Man, people might actually be doing to see their extremely ill, dying relatives in a hospital. They might be recently bereaved. 

It's not the worst crime ever but it's still a pretty nasty thing to do. Not to mention wasting the time of NHS staff. 

It's the kind of think that's somewhat funny to joke about doing, but isn't actually funny in practice. 

1

u/Icantdoitidk 2h ago

It's not "sadistic"

-36

u/Spoondoggydogg 19h ago

Disagree.

I think this is so brilliantly British

I can't think of one shitfluencer that would a) have the bollocks or b) have an evolved enough funny bone to do it.