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Interesting question.
Interesting to me because during my years in the 80's and 90's working at a local hospital I had occasion many times to work at the psych facility and saw this "coolness" factor, especially among young suicidal in-patients. There were a group of three girls in particular, all in their late teens and early 20's who would literally feed off of each other's behavior. It was as if all this "I might kill myself today" stuff they had going on was cool, and the further they could push it the cooler it was to them. But it wasn't just idle crap or a pack of really dumb kids being dumb kids, make no mistake, underneath it they were serious.
One of those girls jumped off a nearby bridge one spring, before the ice on the river had broken up. She figured she would break through when she hit and be taken by the undercurrent. The problem was she weighed next to nothing and merely smacked the ice from the 50-something foot fall, got herself all busted up, and ended up in the ICU (where I later had occasion to work and was able to talk to her about it). The months of attention she got for her little stunt just had her giddy with pleasure.... like it was cool. To me it's almost like a slap in the face to those who are truly going through some horrible depression and who otherwise do not want to die but are on the edge of seeing no other way out.
So yes, some people do really attribute some sort of coolness factor to suicide. But of course the real answer is it is anything but cool, and anyone that makes mention of it or saying they are having thoughts of suicide even in jest should not be ignored. It's something that needs to be taken very seriously and addressed immediately, and nothing to roll one's eyes at.
By the way, those three cool girls, all of them succeeded in their quest for coolness before the last century ended. So not cool.
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