The cable stays were not fake. The bridge was supposed to self-support without them during assembly, without a hurricane or marching band. This does not mean t

The cable stays were not fake. The bridge was supposed to self-support without them during assembly, without a hurricane or marching band. This does not mean the cable stays were entirely decorative. They had a structural purpose, primarily to change the resonance frequency to be outside the range of ordinary human motion. They were intended to bear some of the load. To me there were obvious problems, particularly the sharp non-articulated corners in the the concrete at the truss edges (high stress points), but of course my concerns would have been dismissed prior to the collapse. Lots of people, with even minimal understanding of mechanical design, should have been alarmed. Maybe that was the point of the design: make something that looks alarming and thus dramatic.