Now, this is going to definitely be something odd, coming from me. I'm not necessarily known for being too serious of a person OOC, with a lot of my own OOC posts containing some degree of light heartedness and sarcasm. This won't be the case, I'm going to be completely honest for this post, because this is a serious issue I've noticed not only on the internet, but it is especially prevalent in the realms of cyberspace.

Fuck suicide glamorization. No, not the douchebags who tell people to kill themselves over the internet because they're fucking cowards. I mean, the people who make suicide look like this big thing, and fuel this morbid fascination with death in mainstream thought.

Story time:

A couple years ago, I moved from the town that I lived in all my life to another one three hours away. I walked in the first day a stranger in a strange world. Yadda yadda, moving on. Fastforward to some point further down the road, and something legitimately tragic happens.

Over the course of one weekend, two students in my school district (one in the grade above mine, the other two grades above me) take their own lives. One of which being the son of my school's principal. I don't feel as though I need to explain just how fucking terrible that is. I didn't know either one of them, and despite my already cynical worldview, the combined somberness of teachers and students alike almost drove me to tears. No family should have to go through that.

Now, suicide itself isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the suicide culture so to speak.

About a week or two after their deaths, a T shirt was developed and sold on school grounds in honor of the one in the grade above mine (as the one two grades up wasn't in the same school as us), and they were planning on planting a tree in his honor as well.

A lot of people in my own grade (among them were way too many people who I'm sure never spoke to him once in their entire lives) bought the shirts and wore them often, some still wear them to this day, two years later.

That's where the problem comes in. I doubt the intentions of a lot of people who purchased the shirts, because when something becomes a new trend, everyone tries to fit in.

Suicide and honoring the dead should never be a trend. However, this is all a tangent and isn't my planed message.

My message is the fact that the shirts exist, that the tree was to be planted. Should suicide really be honored? All it does is create a culture where "commit suicide, and you'll get fifteen minutes of fame!"

Case and point, Amanda Todd. Y'know, the girl that drank bleach? You wouldn't, had she not done that. Had she not killed herself. Yet, it was reported all over the internet, and people who didn't know who she was five minutes before were liking facebook pages and reblogging shit on tumblr about how tragic this all was. Not while this shit was happening, not while there was another way.

Such is the way of life, as I've seen in the short amount of time that I've been alive. Everyone's so content to say "this never should've happened" but no one offers to make it that way.

Instead of honoring those who do it like they were martyrs or something (not saying this has happened outright), what we all need to do as a society is admonish the causes. Chief one in teens being that little word everyone's so content to say shouldn't happen, but is too scared to actually stop.

Bullying.

Bullying and suicide go hand in hand.

That's the real problem. Not the individual stories of those victims. By promoting the individuals, by giving their life stories out five hundred thousand times on TV, gives other people in similar situations ideas that maybe, just maybe, their stories will be told if they follow in that person on the news' footsteps.

The stories of those victims do deserve to be told, but it should always be noted that they're victims, and that there's something that can be done about it. Being stricter on punishments and surveillance when it comes to picking up on the behavior, talking about the act of bullying and how much a repugnant fucking asshole the bullies are, that's what's going to get somewhere.

Teenagers as a whole are fucking cowards. Put the pressure on them, and they'll fold like the spineless fucks that they are.

Another local story; this twelve or thirteen year old girl gets bullied to the point of committing suicide by jumping off a building. The two main bullies were arrested and charged with aggravated stalking. Not as strict as I would've liked, but it's a start.

Then, there are the people who post things on their social networking profiles about how if they were to kill themselves, that the world would go on without them. These type of suicide glamorizors are the type of people I have a major problem with. Fuck them. The world loses enough people every day, you don't need to be another drop in that proverbial bucket. You're alive now, and you have been for however many years. If you somehow weren't meant for this world, you wouldn't have been the sperm that fertilized the egg.

Life is precious, so to see people waste it always pisses me off.

I think I'm just starting to ramble on and on now, so I'll end this. I might also be coming across as a tad contradictory at some points, as I really just kinda vented on this topic.

Just really needed to say all this.

I think parents need to take more responsibility for this school bullying deal. I don't know about everyone else, but I was taught by my parents growing up that if I'm bullied, I need to "Stand up for myself and fight back." Boy, what shitty advice that was.

So I take their advice and guess what happens afterwards? I'm considered to be a troublemaker and I'm thrown into in-school suspension. At the time I felt so fucked over. But looking back, I understand that it was the right thing to do because violence solves nothing. Instead of sending their dumbass 12 year old son into a fight, it might have helped to go speak with the teachers about the issue. If someone is being a shithead at work, you don't engage in a fist fight with them. You pull them and your boss into a private room and you discuss the issue.

As for suicide itself, I think people need to realize that they aren't owed anything in life. You could be the nicest guy on the planet and still be dealt a handful of shit. There isn't some outside force that's balancing everything out. Otherwise, why does one kid who had a birth defect have to live with a potato for a brain the rest of his life?

However, I am understand of people who go through suicide and am willing to help them out. Not every case is the same, and chances are that person has gone through some shit that you wouldn't understand.

That's my opinion on it anyway.

I agree and disagree with you.



As far as the T-shirts go, I agree people tend to go with whatever is popular. Case in point, Kony 2012. Every-fucking-body and their mother "oh wow, did you hear about Kony" "We have to stop Kony!" Then two weeks later it got old! "Oh he lives in Africa! That's too far!" Way to follow through on things America. Yes, trends are just a way of life in everything, 'from death to dance moves'. That's also going to be the title of my first book. lol jk.


I agree with the fact that suicide shouldn't be honored. In fact I was actually going to post in the bitching section how the media spends soooo much time focused on the killer from a school shooting and not the victims.

Well of course when kids that already aren't right in the head see how famous or infamous this killer became for doing this... Then THEY ARE GOING TO DO IT TOO!


Same applies with suicide,"Amanda Todd killed herself and got on the news! I'm going to do that too!" Point being, what the news and just media in general should be showing is the victims, Amanda Todd's family crying. All the people that were affected by the death, not the person who caused it.



Now, the bullying. I've actually strongly believe that bullying is good for you in a sense. I know from experience, I was bullied soooo fucking much in grade school! For one, at the end of the day it makes you a stronger person. Two, it gives you motivation. "Fuck you all! I'm going to show you one day!" <------ What ever happened to that way of thinking? It was that thinking that made me try harder and harder and keep pushing myself to this very day to become better than those fucking bullies. Not once did I think about killing myself. Granted, I would cry and listen to that song "Ohh child, things are gonna get easier! Ohh child things will get brighter! Someday!" lol. But now I can say if I didn't have bullies, I wouldn't have had anybody to prove wrong. And if I never had anyone to prove wrong, I wouldn't try as hard. If I didn't try as hard... well I don't know, but shit would be a lot worse now let me tell you.


At the end of the day(I've said that like seven times now haven't I?), sometimes you just have to work on making yourself a better person, and the world will follow.

Quote:Now, the bullying. I've actually strongly believe that bullying is good for you in a sense. I know from experience, I was bullied soooo fucking much in grade school!

Not everyone handles it the same way though, especially if it's some kid who's 90 pounds with emotional problems at home. You might take the bullying as a way to build up your strength, but someone else might decide to load up daddy's gun and go on a rampage. Is it really worth having bullies around to go through that type of thing?

Quote:Two, it gives you motivation. "Fuck you all! I'm going to show you one day!" <------ What ever happened to that way of thinking?

Except that it doesn't always play out that way. I've seen plenty of bullies who go onto big universities with their sports scholarships.

You're right. Every case varies. That was just what I went through and how I dealt with it. I chose to see it as motivation, but others might see it as a reason to 'pull the trigger' so to speak.

Someone call Emily Osment!

Too early?