I think this scene from What Dreams May Come is a far better meme to be spreading, where suicide is concerned.
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I donât think it glorifies anything. If that tweet pushes you off the edge, then you were too close to begin with. Letâs have people take some personal responsibility for their actions and not wring our hands over a tweet of someone coping with the death of a person who touched their lives.
If I never hear the term âtrigger wordâ again, it will be too soon.
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Or this one, maybe? This was one of the images people have been taking of the Good Will Hunting bench up in Boston.
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Part of the problem is that death is âeuphemizedâ and glorified a lot, in many contexts beyond suicide. How many times do we hear that someone has ''gone to a better place", is ââanother angel in the skyââ, or even ââgodspeedââ (as if the person has gone on an exciting new journey)?
Itâs true that since copycat suicides seem to be an actual phenomenon, we should be careful about it. But at the same time, itâs a bit problematic to widely allow- and expect- such flowery terms of relief for some deaths but not to suicides. It seems to perpetuate a form of stigma towards suicides; like their pain is not as acute as, say, a terminally ill patient who has âstopped sufferingâ, or the belief that suicides actually go to Hell (in many religious views); that their death is shameful and somewhat immoral.
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Should people who have cancer take personal responsibility and not bitch if they are terminal? Or people who have HIV? Depression is an illness, one that some canât control and as others have pointed out, there have been studies on copycat suicides that have shown this sort of language around suicide is not helpful.
I think you can disagree that the tweet was gloryfying suicide, but others disagree. Why shouldnât we talk about that if we think itâs an issue?
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I agree though mostly because people like to say and do that for kicks and to feel important, just be cool and remember that some people can be set off, who really donât want to die. Being smart with how we treat each other will save more lives than almost any possible form of gun control.
It is feels a little crazy and sad that we have to watch ourselves like this, but it is how we are built, even winners in the game of life, astronauts like Buzz Aldrin have suffered so lets not be too harsh.
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Of course, from some religious/spiritual perspectives he is free. What if the tweet is a sincere expression of religious belief rather than mere sentimentality?
That excuse worked for Hobby Lobby.
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I thought this was a good response from Buzzfeed:
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When writing the SOPs for one EMS system I codified the death notification, with the support of our supervising physician and be in line with his hospital, to be present tense and use the word dead ie âYour husband is deadâ it makes the situation clear and is merciful to both the family and the notifier.
Flowery descriptives make the job only slightly easier on the notifier while often confusing and giving false hope the the survivors.
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You may not think it glorifies anything but you are not, unless I am mistaken, the spokesperson for all people with suicidal ideation, or the scientists/therapists who study this problem. If this were simply about offense, Iâd be there with you. On the internet battlefield. Telling people I donât know to chill.
However, this is not that. This isnât about trying not to offend anyone who mightâve suffered.
I can only assume you havenât stood on the precipice people can be pulled back from.
A more important thought I shouldâve attached to my original reply is:
Donât you think youâre getting a little butthurt over the criticism of a response to someoneâs death (who, presumably you didnât know?)?
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I just hope that if I ever came to the conclusion I needed to âcheck outâ, that I wouldnât be strapped down to a psych ward bed and forced to âliveâ just because someone else doesnât like my choice. Thatâs my personal idea of hell.
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A minority option, though. Most major religions make it quite clear that killing yourself has all sorts of bad repercussions on whatever other side they believe in.
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Expressing empathy isnât a âget-out-of-jail-freeâ card that makes whatever you say right. I absolutely walk on eggshells with talking with the grieving, because theyâre so vulnerable and raw and can be hurt by a well meant but ill-considered comment. I donât find the effort silly. Iâd much rather not hurt somebody, then hurt somebody and then justify it to myself.
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I am not a dog. My life is my own, to do with WHAT I WILL.
Maybe there ARE things worse than death. Maybe YOU donât have any say in someone elseâs decision on whether or not THEIR life is worth living TO THEM.
Maybe the worldâs already been made shitty enough that there IS no real future for some and rather than live shittily they just want to draw a line somewhere. âTHIS,â they say, âand no further. NO MORE of this shall I put up with.â Itâs NOT for YOU to decide.
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I live in chronic pain and was seeing a psychiatrist and being medicated for depression until I lost my medical coverage and I own guns. I am your future suicide statistic.
I donât believe in censoring others because it might make me feel worse. I certainly wouldnât tell someone coping with someoneâs death that they are doing it âwrongâ and bringing me further down. And if I were worried about copy cats, I wouldnât lay blame on someone trying to deal with the aftermath of a suicide, Iâd put it on the one who original did it and the person who thought they had the right idea and carried through with it.
Now perhaps you can find an example where I would agree that they are only making things worse, but this three word tweet isnât one.
So yeah - feel free to talk about it. Iâll talk about how I find it ridiculous.
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When weâve gotten to the point where using quotes from Aladdin counts as a âtrigger warningâ that might cause someone to hurt themselves, yes, itâs silly.
And Iâm saying that as someone with clinical depression whoâs been in suicide therapy.
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Talking about suicide in a certain way might be harmful, but so is restraining speech. I would never tell an artist that they shouldnât say what they want to say in the way they want to say it.
Good art often agitates intentionally.
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Iâm sorry about that. I hope that you are doing okayâŚ
But no one was calling for the academy to be censored, it was being pointed out as problematic. Pointing out that something is problematic and asking for some forethought before people say something publicly is not censorship, itâs public dialogue.
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This was a movie a lot of us loved as children. For whatever reason, Disney movies have a lot of impact on a lot of people. For those people, the freeing of Genie was a moving moment, a strong emotion felt as a child.
The comment connects that moment with suicide, draws a parallel.
Of course that could push somebody close to the edge past. Taking a joyous moment from childhood and equating it with suicide. We know this happens. This isnât a hypothetical, we know that media treatment of famous suicides does change the suicide rate.
If you feel its the suicides fault, or that itâs too big a burden to ask people to control how they talk about a topic, or whatever, thatâs fine. But thereâs a real chance this will push somebody or multiple people to suicide, and I just canât see that as silly.
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