Suicide: Sensible release or egotistical selfishness?

Politics and religion
1

Over at the Ars Technica gaming forums there was a thread posted about the suicide of one of it’s members, which lead to me thinking about the situation in general, and how it applies to online communities as well.

So my first question is: Do you think suicide, outside of obvious cases like severe pain due to a terminal disease, is an understandable reaction to the problems in life one may face?

Personally, I think a good number of suicides are unreasonable attempts at getting attention, while selfishly ignoring the pain one will visit upon those one leaves behind, but I’m open to the opinions the rest of you may have for this issue as well.

The second question is about posting about the results such actions in something like a gaming forum, and not even in the “off topic” area most such forums have set aside. Do you find it appropriate?

The cynical side of me has a rather cold view of suicide as often being an egotistical choice, often carried out in a way to bring attention to one’s self from others no matter the cost to others who are affected by those actions. I can’t help but wonder if adding more attention to their actions by posting such threads only helps solidify the attention getting draw of the situation.

Comments?

2

My personal opinions, for whatever they’re worth to you:

  1. Posting: I think there’s no question that it’s inappropriate to post something about a suicide in the “Games” forum of a site that has a section for off-topic stuff. That should be so obvious that I’m surprised anyone would ask whether it was appropriate or not.

  2. Suicide as selfishness: I think there are different types of suicides, and some fall into one category and some another. I certainly would not say categorically that all suicides are ethically wrong. If someone feels that they would rather be dead than face their life, they should have the right to that choice whether they’re terminally ill or not. If I knew such a person, I would certainly try to get them professional help or, if they wouldn’t accept professional help, try to help them myself as best I could. But ultimately, it’s their life and their choice. I agree that it’s wrong and selfish to kill yourself in a way designed to inflict maximum emotional pain on others, but I don’t know that all or even most suicides are like that. It certainly isn’t true that all suicides must be like that.

3

The cynical side of me has a rather cold view of suicide as often being an egotistical choice, often carried out in a way to bring attention to one’s self from others no matter the cost to others who are affected by those actions.

Not to be crass, but have you ever been extremely depressed? And how can it be attention seeking if they’re not around to receive the attention afterwards?

I’m not sure what you mean by understandable reaction. It’s not “crazy”, I guess; perfectly reasonable people do it.

4

Yes, I have experienced severe depression due to a chemical imbalance in my younger days. It completely destroyed my life, and in many ways I still haven’t quite recovered from the financial and emotional damage to my life I caused during that time. It ended my time at college, while leaving me in enough crushing debt that I can never finish, making any sort of well-paying career more of a pipe dream for me than a possibility.

I’m a person who tends to role-play out situations in my head in order to guess at the possible outcomes and consequences any actions I take may have, and believe me, there was a good few months where suicide was a daily consideration.

Obviously I didn’t carry through on those thoughts, though I’m still slowly working at fixing my own self-made problems, and desperately trying not to slip back down that hill for every few steps I make forward.

Now, I of course won’t claim to have nice statistical evidence of exactly why anyone commits suicide, and what I do base my opinion on is purely anecdotal from what I’ve read or seen in the news, as well as exprienced first or second hand through those around me.

I do believe people can be attention seeking despite never actually being around to experience the reaction their actions cause. People who vandalize something belonging to another, for example, rarely stick around for the eventual discovery, but I would argue that there is something of an egotisitcal, yet anonymous, bit of attention sought in the power to affect the life of others.

During my thoughts of suicide, I would often find myself thinking about how others would find my lifeless body, and those thoughts would provide a horrible bit of satisfaction. A good number of suicides are done specifically so that the person will be found by someone they know.

There are suicide notes that are quite detailed in naming names of others. There are people who commit suicide in spectacular ways that very much inconvenience and affect others, jumping off of highway bridges, stepping front of trains, “suicide by cop”, etc.

I know, not all suicides are the same, I’m not going to claim they are. However, I will make the claim that a good number of suicides are done despite the grief, pain, turmoil and anger they cause to people who have reason to know them, and I personally find that rather selfish.

I believe there in nearly all suicidal actions, there is no emotional, psychological or financial pain that outweighs that which you are causing on those you leave behind.

5

Reading the above, I realise just how much I’m assigning personal adecdotal experience and opinion to color my views on what is obviously a rather wide range of experiences when it comes to suicide.

Therefore, I’m going to just shut up and try to be a little more open-minded about the choices of others, even if I won’t be able to get over my preconceived notions to actually agree with those choices.

Plus, I’m spilling out a large amount of boring sob-story details about my life in the P&R portion of a gaming forum, exactly in the way that I’m complaining about others having done. I’ll just go sit in a corner now and be quiet.

6

I think you need to distinguish between suicide and suicide attempt when it comes to the “cry for help/seeking attention” motive. A lot of people get depressed and will overdose on aspirin or some other drug. It’s an attempt to end their life but often not serious enough to accomplish the task. It’s really just their own way of saying, “Help me”. You could look at that as a selfish act but sometimes people get desperate and don’t know what else to do.

Someone putting a loaded shotgun into their mouth and pulling the trigger is not looking for help or attention, they’re looking for a way out. Permanently.

7

You’re correct, I’m being overly critical and judgemental. Apologies all around.

8

I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Derek. :)

Suicide is a complex subject and it’s not one where there are pat answers. Combine that with the fear and paranoia that western culture has surrounding death and it’s an even greater tangled web.

9

Sing it now:

"Through early morning fog I see,
Visions of the things to be,
The pains that are withheld for me,
I realize and I can see...

[REFRAIN]:

That suicide is painless.
It brings on many changes.
And I can take or leave it if I please."

Wonder why they left the lyrics out for the TV show? (MASH)

10

During my thoughts of suicide, I would often find myself thinking about how others would find my lifeless body, and those thoughts would provide a horrible bit of satisfaction. A good number of suicides are done specifically so that the person will be found by someone they know.

True, but how is it necessarily selfish for them to want to demonstrate exactly how wronged they were to those that wrong them? I mean, lots of the suicidal cases I’ve heard of had very legitimate reasons to be horribly depressed or pissed off. Apparently nothing else they were doing had an effect. I think it’s all very ethically ambigous; I wouldn’t call (to pick a random example) a gay son who killed himself after being tormented by his father as selfish; he was obviously miserable, and if it was that bad, why not try to retaliate on the way out? Urg.

Good to hear you’re doing better. Boy, this is an appalling discussion. :D

11

I blame Bush… um… and Jesus.

Honestly I might have agreed with the ego point of view if you had asked me years ago, but nowadays I can see how life can be so relentless in dishing out the pain for some that it would have more to do with ‘having had enough’ then attention.

12

A couple years ago, a few months after G4 started up and had its forums running, I had to deal with an alleged suicide announcement on the forum. It was regarding someone who was, at the time, probably one of those most popular female of the community (of a few hundred regulars, and a couple thousand registered accounts).

Being a new moderator, and the only one around at the time, it was difficult to deal with. I wasn’t willing to make the assumption that it was fake (the person didn’t make any announcements about it, and made no public indication that suicide was ever considered), so I did get the user’s real information from their registration and a friend (police officer and forum member) wound up calling their local police precinct and report that there may have been a suicide. Police went over to the address we had on file and found that the most popular girl on the forum was, in fact, a 13 year old boy who had had enough of his alternate persona.

I still feel I did the right thing and am thankful I had the resources to contact to make sure it was not, in fact, a real suicide. Since then, of course, the most we’ve had are angsty teens saying how much they hate their lives and would rather be dead. No actual suicide threats or announcements. Really not sure how I’d handle it if similar circumstances occured, however.

As for suicide itself – I’d say, to some degree, it is a way to get attention. Not so much in the “HELLO, ATTENTION WHORE HERE” way, but as an “I’m fucked up, and look at how fucked up I am.” Selfish, though not necessarily egocentric.

And that’s purely anecdotal, of course.

13

I’ve played tons games with LoneWolfX1X (the suicide victim in question), spoken with him on TS frequently, chatted on IRC, and participated in many of the same threads at arsclan.net. There’s a few misconceptions in this thread that I feel should be corrected.

To address this:

The second question is about posting about the results such actions in something like a gaming forum, and not even in the “off topic” area most such forums have set aside. Do you find it appropriate?

Just before offing himself, he posted in the “off topic” forum at arsclan.net. You can read his last post here: http://www.arsclan.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7952

Once the admins at arsclan saw the thread, they took it quite seriously, finding LoneWolf’s personal info and called his father who confirmed the worst. I can say with full certainty that this wasn’t a hoax. Sadly, his sister later posted at arsclan saying he never left his family a note, and his relatives were rather upset that he would choose to say goodbye to a bunch of random internet people but not those closest to him. Her post is five up from the bottom in this thread: http://www.arsclan.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7950&perpage=30&pagenumber=3

Since arsclan.net is affiliated with Ars Technica, (and since LoneWolf had nearly 2500 posts there), a thread was started in the “off-topic” forum at ArsT. A poster started another thread in the gaming forum because a) LoneWolf was mostly associated with the gaming portion of the Ars community, and b) only posters who pay for a subscription can post in the off-topic forums. This thread was later locked by one of the moderators.

I’ve been feeling rather wierd about the whole thing since I heard the news yesterday…on the one hand, this is someone who was ostensibly my “friend” in the sense that we’ve spent many hours playing games and chatting together, but I’ve never met him or know anything about his life away from the computer. It’s a stange sensation…I don’t really feel sad or a sense of loss, but it’s not exactly ennui either. It’s like that feeling in high school when someone you saw in the halls everyday but never really knew died in a car accident.

14

BTW when I was in charge of Ultima Horizons we had someone very near and dear to us in the forums commit suicide. Let me tell you what I heard from his family members and friends it had nothing to do with ego. He didn’t make any announcements or letters. I think he had just had enough. :/

He actually touched the hearts of many members in the gaming community as a few companies have honored him with a place in their games (Ultima 9, Morrowind, Wizardry 8 IIRC and maybe more I can’t recall). He was a big RPG fan. But I highly doubt that he was expecting this. It was just very touching that even though you may think you’re worthless you’re actually more important then you think.

15

Coincidentally, last night’s Law and Order: SVU was about suicide and the internet… Pretty interesting episode. Did anyone else catch it? The guest star was Marlee Matlin, she played a woman with a terminal disease who ran a blog to help other people commit suicide.