The Werther Effect

Nouman A.
Mar 27, 2022

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It’s as strange as finding a submarine in the middle of a desert!

Photo by Maria Shkliaeva on Unsplash

Germany, 1774.

Van Gough of german literature, Von Goethe, wrote a novel called The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Unlike the typical love melodramatic novels, our hero Werther shoots himself with a pistol after getting rejected by Juliet.

After its publication, a lot of things happened. Goethe got famous. Young German men went crazy. They loved the novel so much that they started dressing in yellow pants and blue jackets just like the novel’s main character.

The strangest of all was that the suicide rate in Germany and across Europe spiked. In the midst of hopelessness, young people committed suicide not by hanging or jumping off the cliff but by pulling the trigger — just like Werther, dressed like Werther…

Hence the term, the werther effect….*big smiles*

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Nouman A.
Nouman A.

Written by Nouman A.

I write about the marketing strategies that made brands millions

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