How did Suicide come to be known as catching the bus?

[Xi-Xi]

I don't understand. I have caught buses many times and never have I died doing it. Euphemisms in English confuse me, put perhaps none more than this one.

 

[what]

its supposed to resemble a final journey basically a 1 way trip

 

[OzymandiAsh]

There is no bigger meaning, it is just a euphemism to be able to water it down (suicide, killing yourself) and be able to talk about it in a more casual or light hearted way.

It implies that there is always going to be suicide, people have done it before and are doing it now and will do it again.

I prefer thinking of it like Catching The Spaceship (CTS) or Rocket (CTR) though. :D

 

[underairpressure]

AH....... so that's what "CTB" means. I'm still fairly new here, and I thought it stood for "close the book". As in, you're ending your story

 

[OzymandiAsh]

AH....... so that's what "CTB" means. I'm still fairly new here, and I thought it stood for "close the book". As in, you're ending your story

That is cute. lol

 

[Captive_Mind515]

You've got your ticket out of here. Old internet slang.

 

[justanotherbody]

I'm partial to reading it as "cut to black"...can never read it as intended.

 

[martyrdom]

Comes from the alt.suicide.holiday (ash) days, probably some way to make them less easily accessible on search engines of the time.

It might also come from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, if I'm remembering it right.

 

[astroproto]

AH....... so that's what "CTB" means. I'm still fairly new here, and I thought it stood for "close the book". As in, you're ending your story

I initially thought it was "cease to be/breathe" before I saw someone explicitly say catch the bus in some thread.

 

[fadedghost]

Comes from the alt.suicide.holiday (ash) days, probably some way to make them less easily accessible on search engines of the time.

It might also come from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, if I'm remembering it right.

This is correct, phrase got big from ash

 

[OzymandiAsh]

There is no bigger meaning, it is just a euphemism to be able to water it down (suicide, killing yourself) and be able to talk about it in a more casual or light hearted way.

It implies that there is always going to be suicide, people have done it before and are doing it now and will do it again.

I prefer thinking of it like Catching The Spaceship (CTS) or Rocket (CTR) though. :D

Or just, catching the ship. Sailing into the endless ocean... now that's a metaphor.

Or catching the ferry, like over the River Styx...

 

[Unlucky777]

AH....... so that's what "CTB" means. I'm still fairly new here, and I thought it stood for "close the book". As in, you're ending your story

I actually LOVE this more than the actual catching the bus. Closing the book sounds better and is metaphorically more apt IMO.

 

[Xi-Xi]

We should probably change it

 

[cme-dme]

Comes from the alt.suicide.holiday (ash) days, probably some way to make them less easily accessible on search engines of the time.

It might also come from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, if I'm remembering it right.

Erm ackshully a.s.h is a Usenet newsgroup and was not indexed or used the same way we use a web browser with search engines. It might actually predate the release of the World Wide Web in 1989! So this was not a concern at all back then.

As for what "catch the bus" actually means, the users of a.s.h thought of the newsgroup as "deaths bus stop". We're all gathered here at a bus stop, waiting for the bus that takes us to death to arrive. Some of us talk (what we're doing here right now), some of us decide to go home (recovery), and some of us decide to take the bus to death (suicide). It's a strange acronym for sure but it's deeply rooted in the a.s.h community. It's pretty cool how it's been given new life here after so many years.

 

[Hojag]

AH....... so that's what "CTB" means. I'm still fairly new here, and I thought it stood for "close the book". As in, you're ending your story

I like your take on that. Always like to think life as a book... our chapters, our torn pages... and it always comes to an end.

Oh, also, I bid welcome!

 

[U. A.]

There is no definitive answer to either exactly how this term came into use, or even the actual meaning of CTB (the most known oldest uses do indeed seem to be about buses though).
There's a post on this site from years ago about this that has some ex-ASHers replying, but I can't find it right now.