Myspacide, kid uses myspace for his note.

[Jack]

He has no idea how badly he hurt people that loved him. It was an extremely selfish act

I have always hated this argument.

I would say that it's selfish of the people around him to expect him to continue to live with what he believed to be unbearable pain just to satisfy their needs.

Would you ask someone who is suffering from an excruciating physical illness to refrain from suicide because it would be "selfish"?

Nobody knows what it's like in someone else's head. Last year, I very seriously contemplated suicide over a bad break-up. I didn't do it because I consider surviving in the face of adversity to be a good thing. You could call that strength if you want, but I think it's actually more like masochism.

But none of you know what he was thinking. I don't care what any of you armchair pundits say, killing yourself is a very difficult thing to do. Imagine putting a gun to your head and knowing that after you pull the trigger you will be gone, at least from this plane of existance. I think it's probably a lot harder to do than any of you think.

And he did it for attention? Excuse me, but how does one get attention from beyond the grave? Slitting your wrists somewhere that someone can find you and call an ambulance, that's probably for attention. But shooting yourself in the head? You're just plain not gonna live through that to enjoy any attention you may have gotten. So that argument sucks.

[junkie christ]

Now i call bullshit
suicide is an easy way out.
its so hard till what the trigger is pulled?

you want difficult?
try living with shit, getting over it, moving on, admitting you can fail like anyone else, and going back to fucking work on monday like everyone the fuck else.
live with it, deal with it.
if your biggest problem is someone leaves you, maybe your not that understood, or mommy doesnt spend enough time with you.... your life is still better than almost the entire fucking worlds.
youve got a roof, albeit not always a good place.
youve got food, and it may not taste great, your not fucking starving.
and maybe theres some crime in your area, a few places to avoid.... your not in a war torn country.
you know whats worse than embrassment or heartache? BEING SHOT AT FOR BEING AT HOME.
and all those fucked people out there living in disease, war, and famine... THEY GET DUMPED, FUCKED OVER, AND HURT TOO. AND THEY DONT OFF THEMSELVES EITHER.

[paintedbird]

Some people have a lot of pain because of what is going on in their head rather than what is happening to them. This often has a strong biological/chemical component. It seems a lot of times people just don't understand this because it's not something you can see like a physical handicap, but people's brains can malfunction just like any other part of the body and cause emotions to be so out of whack and cause them so much pain. Not saying suicide is right but I just wish people had a better understanding of how much suffering a person would be going through in order to not be able to cope with life and not think their life is worth living.

[Hardcoregirl]

I agree with both sides of things. Suicide is selfish. Yes, but if you don't have fucking control over your own life or the right to end it, what rights do you have? Eating and breathing are also selfish, things you do for your own damn benefit. If you are so depressed you simply don't want to exist anymore or you feel you only bring others down, sometimes it seems only the logical conclusion. To me there is not much difference in killing oneself than drowning in drugs and alcohol, you could say just going ahead and pulling the trigger instead of slowly killing yourself takes more balls.

Who hasn't every contemplated suicide? I know once I was so depressed all I could do was sleep and cry. I could not function. I wanted to die but I knew it was very selfish of me to leave my son, so I figured out how and where I could get help and I did. People of all walks of life commit suicide, it doesn't matter what label you put on him, emo , goth whatever. ..DOESN'T MATTER. The fact is he was a kid, and though many of us go through what feels like excruciating emotional pain as teens, somehow we survive those years....we find ways to deal with it, by doing drugs, being self destructive in other ways...

I don't fucking care, suicide is a fucking tragedy unless you are Adolph fucking Hitler...its senseless....and one point you have to remember is PAIN IS RELATIVE.

Others may look at you and think you have it all, friends, family, clothes, shelter, whatever but you can still be living in your own hell. I'd say Americans have a lot more time to consider things like suicide because they don't have much else better to do....people in other countries have to fight each day to survive, I don't think they are sitting around on myspace crying over others....The amount of leisure time we enjoy makes us fat and probably not as appreciative of life as we should be.

And to inform,

Social Darwinism is generally associated with rascists, eugenisists, and rich fucks who like to argue its the reason for social inequality.

I also am sorry if that was a cheap shot, but I thought Christians were supposed to be compassionate towards others....?

[ophelia]

Social Darwinism is generally associated with rascists, eugenisists, and rich fucks who like to argue its the reason for social inequality.

I also am sorry if that was a cheap shot, but I thought Christians were supposed to be compassionate towards others....?

I'm glad you pointed this out. People often use "social darwinism" as a synonym for "survival of the fittest," which is only the application of the theory in its most elementary form. As it gained popularity as a social theory, critics (and the average Joe who was paying attention) realized that it acts as a justification for inequality and oppression.

[junkie christ]

**post edited for someones opinion i actually do listen to, what a considence, they dont use the boards**
i posted up the summation of two months of research in college using social darwinism to defeat the exact claims that the last two posts make.
yes i have papers wrote, on me, as im typing, on this topic proving the definiton your using and the wikipedia not the current state of the term, but the bastardization hate groups, the media, and the rich have used it.
its actually the opposite of the terms intended meaning.
two months of research in a graduate level class writing about the empowerment of the common man to weed out its unwanted elements such as racism, eliteist rich, and people just too weak to function........social darwinism was the term.
now im taking the word of professors with much more learning than a fucking wikipedia article to have the proper meaning of the word in its current state
and if they are educated enough to say, HEY! MR HATE GROUP!YOU MISUSED A WORD EVEN BY THE PRETENSE OF SYMANTICS, YOU GOT NOTHING CORRECT AT ALL, then im siding with them. not your posts.

i teill you this much, research some recent articles that arent by the groups you mentioned, down to some of the articles quoted (which i highly doubt you read your you wouldnt have linked it) and youll see the application of the terms you used in the pretense you used it an extreme case example and ignored.one of the underlying currents of social darwinism in its modern evolved form in damn near every page of everything i read.... it was hintint that it should flow almost like Marxism . The fact that the social structure must unite and remove the agreed upon weaknesses. those weakenesses arent RACE or POOR its RACISTS and THE SOCIAL ELITE that get removed. your "hunters" are the "hunted".
thats the OPPOSITE of the meaning i see you quoting and in the enitre time ive heard those two words used in a sentence together i was always under the impression the only people who thought it was a term for racists or ect... were the groups themselves...
yes hitler used the terms. yes he used it as propaganda. no, his version isnt the theory. and it has nothing to do with a class war either.well it looks like their misuse of theory has caught on.

as for my religion, thats between me and God, you know nothing of my relgious beliefs, and if you wanna know something on either topic, come prepared. bring a notepad, tape recorder, something.
but dont presume to know my anything of my faith or try to play that card. its as weak as the assholes in right wing using God as control. youve inverted the card and are using it.Religion is between me and God, and as far as my soul or faith is conerned, me and im betting God dont care what you or anyone else thinks of my relationship with God. You know whats as bad as a religious fanatic? someone fanaticly against it.
too much of anything is a BAD thing.

[miz kitty]

I can see the tragedy of this death. I can say this person must have been in horrible agony to take his own life. Anytime a young person dies, there is talk of tragedy. If that young person died at their own hand, the projection of our own religious beliefs, insecurities, guilt, and shame compound the tragedy. Because this is the suffering of a human being, we all shoul relate at some level.
With that said, I gave this whole thing a good deal of thought over the weekend. The thing that keeps coming into my mind is how this person wasted precious time. That may be judgemental, and I don't mean to be cruel. But I know people who would give anything for soem of the luxuries this kid had. I think of a girl who was my customer when I sold make up who had a birth defect that casued her cheek to protrude and nose and mouth draw to one side. She endured many operations, but nothing has really corrected it. All she really wanted was a "normal" face. I think of the kids my cousin teaches in rural West Virginia who would be thrilled to have a computer at their houses to do home work on. I think of a friend of mine living with AIDS who would gladly trade places with some one young and healthy. I think of all the people I've known who've died in car crashes, from silent heart problems, from cancer, from AIDS, and I think how they would have given anything to have one more day to LIVE. And this kid couldn't wait to die.It makes no sense to me.
There is a generation of young people who take so much for granted. And yes, the "emo" thing plays a role in it. Most of them are kids born to the self obsessed "me "generation of the 80s. Yes, at some point the Less Than Zero set put down their coke straws and bred. They projected their delusions of grandeur of having perfrect lives onto their children. The parents believe the sun rises and sets on Evan or Ashton, and they can do no wrong. They don't discipline their kids because it might wound their precious perfect kid's feelings. The kids are never made to take responsibility for their actions. These kids have no emotional coping skills because they are coddled and filled full of meds. Sad? take happy pills! Too hyper? take ritalin or adderal! They are never taught ot DEAL with what they are feeling. Hence the popularity of "emo" music. To some one who is an emotional cripple, getting dumped by a highschool girlfriend IS the end of the world. It' s probably the cruelest thing a parent can do to a child, sned them out into a world they are completely ill prepared to live in. The "emo" movement is a symptom of this problem. It is the godawful soundtrack to the pity party of a generation. These kids have so much opporitunity ahead of them and they'd rather wallow in their own misery than take what is handed to them on a silver platter. They just can't believe the world isn't the pretty picture their pathetic douchebag parents have painted for them. It's just like the song from the kid's myspace profile, "How could this happen to MEEEEEEE?" Guess what, shit happenss to everyone! That's life! Where does a kid end up when no one explains that to them from the begining? dead? The parents are suing myspace? They need a swift kick in the ass!
I am actually glad there is an "emo" movement. It finally takes the heat off the goth kids for awhile. Goths may be doom and gloom, bu tthey are rarely suicidal. Goth generally send people in one of two directions. 1. My heart is black and I'm dead inside, but I am going to go clubbing, dance, drink, get laid, and forget how bleak my world is for awhile. OR 2. My heart is black and I'm dead inside, so I'm going to drink overpriced coffee, write poetry, and generally give society the finger with folks like myself. Either way, goth encompasses some form of rebellion which pretty muc equals survival instinct. "Emo" lacks tha completely. I predict two trend in the next 4-5 years as a result of the "emo" movement. 1. The S&M community will see a new breed of submissives who want to be degraded and humiliated (simultaniously counteracting the "I can do no wrong" mentality and filling the void for discipline their child hood left them with). AND 2. More teen suicide. I feel number 2 could be avoided if only Dash Board Confessional would cover the song from Heathers entitled "Teenaged Suicide, Don't Do It!" Tragedy, it certainly is.

[The Lizard Princess]

for once they actually followed through instead of complaining how horrible there life was......silly emo kids going on about girl troubles and cutting themselves......I bet my live is worse then theirs ever was(and its not bad at all.).....oh well..........as Junkie said..."natural selection" heheh...

[Coor]

I don't now. I hate to say this...but if I ever become a living burden...I will either go into the woods and put 2 in my head...or...go under the rib cage...and end it...

Sorry, but I refuse to lie in a bed and be fed through an IV just to make people hapopy that "I'm still with them."

I'm like "Wow way to be selfish..."

But, I'm kinda warped...

[ophelia]

**post edited for someones opinion i actually do listen to, what a considence, they dont use the boards**
i posted up the summation of two months of research in college using social darwinism to defeat the exact claims that the last two posts make.
yes i have papers wrote, on me, as im typing, on this topic proving the definiton your using and the wikipedia not the current state of the term, but the bastardization hate groups, the media, and the rich have used it.
its actually the opposite of the terms intended meaning.
two months of research in a graduate level class writing about the empowerment of the common man to weed out its unwanted elements such as racism, eliteist rich, and people just too weak to function........social darwinism was the term.
now im taking the word of professors with much more learning than a fucking wikipedia article to have the proper meaning of the word in its current state
and if they are educated enough to say, HEY! MR HATE GROUP!YOU MISUSED A WORD EVEN BY THE PRETENSE OF SYMANTICS, YOU GOT NOTHING CORRECT AT ALL, then im siding with them. not your posts.

i teill you this much, research some recent articles that arent by the groups you mentioned, down to some of the articles quoted (which i highly doubt you read your you wouldnt have linked it) and youll see the application of the terms you used in the pretense you used it an extreme case example and ignored.one of the underlying currents of social darwinism in its modern evolved form in damn near every page of everything i read.... it was hintint that it should flow almost like Marxism . The fact that the social structure must unite and remove the agreed upon weaknesses. those weakenesses arent RACE or POOR its RACISTS and THE SOCIAL ELITE that get removed. your "hunters" are the "hunted".
thats the OPPOSITE of the meaning i see you quoting and in the enitre time ive heard those two words used in a sentence together i was always under the impression the only people who thought it was a term for racists or ect... were the groups themselves...
yes hitler used the terms. yes he used it as propaganda. no, his version isnt the theory. and it has nothing to do with a class war either.well it looks like their misuse of theory has caught on.

This in an interesting perspective, and I'm glad to see that you edited it to be a bit more concise. I would love to read some of the scholarly works that you are referencing. I have, as well, been working with Social Darwinism this semester, in two different graduate courses (Theory and Victorian Poetry). I have been developing a conference paper on the "effects" of Social Darwinism on the poetry of the late Victorian period- especially within the works of John Davidson. I have been approaching the project with slight trepidation, but have not found any scholarly research that supports what you are claiming. And I'm assuming (since you have been doing the research) that you have read Spencer's texts. Do you think that this oversimplification in terms is a gross injustice when compared to his original text, or is the relationship between oppression and Social Darwinism evident in his theories? I'm asking, because I haven't decided this for myself yet, and figured you might have an opinion on it. I find that this is a difficult (and heated) topic to try and flesh out.

Oh, and to return to my usual sarcasm and pickiness, I thought it was really funny that you misspelled the word “semantics.â€

[Mercurygriffin]

Call more paramedics.
Address: Local conveniance store
Tell them that I'm in the back chewing on a femour bone.
They were so tasty.<3

[sapphirerose]

First off, I agree with most all of what Miz Kitty said.

Secondly, suicide is a cry for help. It's a loudspeaker in your ear, saying 'fucking help me, I don't know what to do about this'.
It's not something to laugh at. It's not a joke and shouldn't be treated as one. I don't know alot about the kid on myspace and his particular situation other than he had tried to commit suicide previously. So what did anyone do about it then?
Did anyone reach out? Did they try to get him help?
Did his parents try to communicate more with him?

If someone is drunk (judgment impaired) and can't drive home....a friend would usually call a taxi or try to arrange for someone to give them a ride home, right?

So if someone is suicidal (judgment impaired)....what did anyone do?

[Jack]

I just spent 30 minutes typing a reply and got "No post mode specified" and now my stunning arguments are gone and I don't fucking want to type all that shit out again.

In summary:

Emo isn't a real genre, nobody even knows what it is, Fugazi were considered the first emo band when emo meant "emotional hardcore", emo isn't the first sad music, many emo kids are actually very happy, listening to sad music is a good way of dealing with pain, it's not a way of avoiding it - it's called "catharsis", look it up sometime.

Also, the argument that we should all be happy little bunnies because we live in America and have cars and roofs over our heads and we aren't starving is ridiculous, Cobain pulled the trigger, didn't he? Happiness is an existentially ridiculous state that is caused by as many different factors as there are people in the world. Happiness is not your fucking khakis. I've been very happy when I had nothing and been very depressed when I had everything.

[junkie christ]

Call more paramedics.
Address: Local conveniance store
Tell them that I'm in the back chewing on a femour bone.
They were so tasty.<3

god i <3 you.

[miz kitty]

Jack, you hit on the point I was making. happiness is all relative. When you get depressed (and we all do) look at what you have not what you don't, be it material goods, people who care about you, or just the gift of another day. It's not all about the money, but there is always some one else who is much less fortunate and would be grateful for the gifts you have in your life. When you are depressed look at the bigger picture, think outside of the little reality that is your life. Every day we get is a gift, not some thing owed to us because the day before it sucked.

[Bigun]

I whole-heartidly agree with Miz Kitty.

But let's talk about relativity shall we?

Saying that you want to kill yourself because a girlfriend broke up with you is about as bad as stating that your going to kill yourself because you lost $4 million dollars to theft... yet you still have a cool $1 million in the bank. Jesus..... how the hell could you live off a million bux. How the hell would you manage.

That guy had other loved ones. He had parents, he had friends, he had teachers, he had other relatives. There is no way in the world you could convince me that everyone on God's green earth hated this kid. Just because he had one person dump him doesn't mean he should go and blow his head off. Relativity my ass. If he would have put more thought into this he would have realized there are other people that do care, and he needed to talk to them.

Now.... onto the part that chaps me:

Also, the argument that we should all be happy little bunnies because we live in America and have cars and roofs over our heads and we aren't starving is ridiculous, Cobain pulled the trigger, didn't he?

I'll start off by saying that you probably will not change any state of your thinking by anything I will say.... that said... I don't care... and here I go.

*inhales*

First off, making the blatant assumption he did off himself, do you honestly think that in the faces of his daughter and his wife that he "loved" and "cherished", that he would say, "Life is a little too tough for me... goodbye... now please leave the room, I'm going to kill myself". No.... why, because those two people cared about him... and I know that he couldn't look into their eyes, think about what killing yourself would do to them, then kill himself. As hardcoregirl said herself:

I know once I was so depressed all I could do was sleep and cry. I could not function. I wanted to die but I knew it was very selfish of me to leave my son, so I figured out how and where I could get help and I did.

Now... off of that assumption, I really don't think he off'ed himself. I blame someone else and I don't believe I have to go into much more detail than the evidence:

- No way he would reach the trigger with the barrel in his mouth.... he would have had to use his toes
- He had 3 times the lethal dose of heroin.... 3 times people.... thats enough to jepordize an elephant... yet he would have had the coordination to put the gun in his mouth, then pull the trigger with his toe.... while sitting on a stool
- The heroin injection entry was on his back.... nearly unreachable by his own hand
- there's more evidence, but I think it needs to be taken to another thread

Sorry, but Cobain to me is a sensitive spot.

[sapphirerose]

That guy had other loved ones. He had parents, he had friends, he had teachers, he had other relatives. There is no way in the world you could convince me that everyone on God's green earth hated this kid. Just because he had one person dump him doesn't mean he should go and blow his head off. Relativity my ass. If he would have put more thought into this he would have realized there are other people that do care, and he needed to talk to them.

It's hard to speculate without all the facts. But what if, and I'm saying 'what if', no one listened to him. What if they all said or thought, 'he just wants attention, he's not serious about it etc'?
Or they were busy, or had problems of their own?

Bringing Cobain into it all.....is going to make the water muddier.
The investigation was screwed up from the get-go. He had plane tickets in his pocket for Atlanta (where he was supposed to meet friends to write some music)....this is going off the subject....but there are pages and pages of evidence that was tossed out that completely go against Cobain being a suicide.
67 people committed suicide around the world within two weeks of Cobain's "suicide". It's a domino effect. And no it doesn't make sense....it's like the question 'would you jump off the Empire State Building if so and so did?

[Jack]

Jesus Christ.

Some of you seem to not get that simply living is not enough for some people. Sleeping, eating, talking to people, working... most of what passes for "living" in modern society is existentially intolerable to some people. They feel that there is no point in it, that there is nothing coming from it. You can argue all day about "look at the good things you have in your life" or "think of the people who care about you", but those are utterly beside the point.

And, not to be a bastard, but I think most of you arguing against suicide as a valid option to ending one's life simply do not understand that. I don't think any of you know what it's like. I think that most if not all of you are capable of being content with day-to-day life, social interactions, material goods, or whatever.

The reality is that some people occasionally find themselves in a state of mind in which none of that fulfills them, period.

I blame society for making the world, by and large, a crashing bore of a place.

And let's not argue about Cobain. I don't think he killed himself either, so substitute "Hunter S. Thompson" or "Hemingway" or "Ian Curtis" (who killed himself the day after learning Joy Division would be touring America) or "Michael Hutchence" instead.

[Asher]

in June..a 19 year old my husband and i mentored killed himself. I beat myself up for a long time over it because the first instinct..is to think that you didnt do enough..that you could have done something to save them. I ended up wandering around my house and bleaching my walls compulsively. I felt as though i'd lost one of my own children because i loved him like one of my own. But sometimes..it just isnt enough.

love isnt enough.

things arent enough.

good memories arent enough.

I dont think life is black and white. For as many souls there are, there are as many shades of grey.

Do i think suicide is tragic?

not really.

I think life is tragic..that its possible to incur a pain so great that nothing but death can ease it. -that- is tragic.

[downbeforetheworld]

yo, i just quickly looked over dudes site and i didnt see any band that he liked listed. well he did have an "emo haircut" so he must have been an emo kid. we all know that you are your haircut. but that is really beside the point. The point is that if you listen to emo music ...you kill yourself. if you listen to goth music ...you shoot up your school. if you listen to rap music... you pimp hoes and bust caps in people's asses . if you listen to country music ...you fuck your sister and ride bulls. the music makes you do it. didnt you get the memo??