i have developed a noticeable fear of heights (to a point) as i’ve gotten older. i’m not sure i’d be able to do this or not. i like to think that i’d be like the woman who gave herself a bit of a pep talk, walked to the back, and then just ran and jumped off. but i don’t know. i liked the two guys (couple?) who were fist bumping and gently trying to coax each other to go, until one did it – then the other just could not. and the ending is awesome!
Perhaps that’s a semantic difference - by “crazy” I meant “maladaptive”.
When the video cuts, for the first time, to the side of the pool and you can see how high it is, I actually yelled: “Holy shit! That’s high!”
No mention of the Mr. Bean sketch?
From 2:20 to 7:40. Brilliant.
self-righteous inaction is so fascinating, especially when it’s fictionalized into being! How meta!
My bones are a full derivation from the norm more dense than the average.
If I did this I would be sitting on the bottom kicking my feet watching the surface stay an impossibly far distance from me.
The fascinating thing is really watching peoples brains fight with themselves. It’s like the left brain right brain divide with some survival instinct that knows what you are thinking but doesn’t talk to the rest of your brain it just hits the fear response to stop you in your tracks.
Fertility runs in my family
I did a jump around that high once, knocked the wind right out of me, and the water was a few hundred feet deep so before I even know what happened I’m sinking fast with no air. If I wasn’t a strong swimmer I might not have made it back up. As it was I was nearly blacking out from oxygen deprivation when I reached the surface, (losing vision, sense of orientation etc).
That was my first thought as well.
This video makes me love people!
Screw politics, lets all just be human!
Yep. I’m not a good swimmer and have never jumped off a diving board, so it would take quite a bit of cash for me to do that.
Boing boing had to convert 10 metres to “33-feet” for the headline in the video? Is the boing boing audience wholly unfamiliar with metric measures?
Reminds me of Action Park water park in New Jersey. Better known as “traction park” to the local hospitals. I walked up and jumped off the high dive thinking “how bad could it be?” Hurt like hell, filled my sinuses with water and I sank to the bottom. Clawed my way back up as I had learned to swim in a saltwater pool and didn’t consider the difference in buoyancy. Can’t say I would do it again.
I’d do it, no problem! Without my glasses, I’ve got 20/600 vision, so what I can’t see, doesn’t matter.
Well, for the most part.
Heck, the first time I went off of the diving board in high school, I did a belly flop - OUCH!
Now it’s nearly 40 years later, and I know how to do properly dive into a pool, but I’ve not had a chance to do it since, lolololol!
That was wholly beautiful!
I loved the exchange with the young couple near the start.
It was so real!
Also, that kid before the opening titles!
I love high heights, but oddly this has never occurred to me. I think I’ll locate a pool with a high dive and a good life guard. Wish I could get paid though
I’d like to see this re-run where you lose an equal amount of money if you climb back down.
I’ve never jumped (untethered or without a parachute) from such a height but suspect that I could. (I purposefully chose to jump from the Stratosphere hotel in Vegas last year precisely to see if - feeling generally anxious of heights - I would). I actually feel disappointment with the fit young men who chickened out, empathy for the middle-aged woman who climbs down, and joy for the older lady who almost bails but finally convinces herself. And yes, I know these judgements say more about me than the people in the film.
When I was 20 I found myself hanging out at a quarry that had filled with water, and one side had a cliff face with two marked access points, one IIRC was supposedly about 35 feet and the other around 60. I found a new respect for 10m platform divers, it just doesn’t look that high on tv. I couldn’t imagine trying to flip or dive from that height, it would have felt like suicide. Being 20 I just had to try the higher one, which I did exactly once and will never do again. That was friggin’ nuts.
What I always find difficult jumping from height is not holding breath when jumping off, which is way too early. It takes a lot of willpower to wait until at least halfway down to breathe in, but you need that because you’re underwater a lot longer. From the taller jump I remember feeling close to not having enough air to get back to the surface.