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Monday, November 24, 2003
A Winter Trend?
Well, my next post here isn't really an Otaku History post. Maybe next time.
Instead, it's a brief rant about recent suicide/cutting/etc threads.
After closing the "living hell" thread in Otaku Lounge, I received a massive PM from wiccansamurai. It included everything from research reports on suicide to dictionary definitions and who knows what else.
Apart from the fact that I've experienced suicide first hand (and therefore don't desire to read an encyclopedia article about it), I also feel that my decision with that thread was justified.
Obviously, there was the question of people simply spamming. Posting something like "Hello?!" or "bye" as the entire content of your post is obviously not going to win you any brownie points.
But more importantly, I do agree with some that there is a kind of trend during the cooler months; a trend to create depressing threads.
On the one hand, I do see some validity in people discussing their thoughts and feelings online. I mean, if you are seriously in trouble or if you are suffering depression, I'm sure that talking about it amongst friends can only be a good and positive thing. It's not that aspect that I take issue with.
Instead -- and as I'm sure you can predict -- I take issue with the "posers". Or, the people who really come across as though they have no real problems other than boredom. Of course, it's impossible to tell online. But that's half the point; it's the reason why anyone can say anything they like. And it's one reason why I personally tend not to talk forever about my personal problems on OtakuBoards. I don't think that the membership at large is all that concerned and moreover, OtakuBoards is an entertainment destination. I don't want kids to be bogged down by overly-depressing discussion.
Of course, we do foster some serious debates at OB. And that's fine. It's even a good thing in many cases. But how many cutting/suicide threads can pop up before you start saying "Okay, this is enough"?
I don't want to imply that I'm contemplating a complete removal or "banning" of this type of thread. That's not the case. Sometimes the discussions are very legitimate and reasonable. But what happens when a bunch of newbies jump in and start holding private conversations with one another, which are often incredibly shallow and pretentious?
In this case, I closed the thread and banned the people who I felt were the most problematic. Maybe these kids do have legitimate problems and maybe they don't. My own feelings strongly point to the latter, though.
But also, I think there's a bigger point. If kids like this are in serious trouble, aren't there suicide-help related forums out there? It might just be that these guys aren't aware of them, I don't know.
Either way, it's not a simple question to answer. But I am sure that we get an awful lot of teens on OtakuBoards who get grounded for drawing on the wall, and then subsequently go on OB and talk about cutting. Sometimes you can feel it, when someone posts something like this:
"OMGF!!! i liek, totaly kut myseph l@zt nite!!!! Fuk, im leik, soooooo xperienced @ taht!!!!"
Know what I mean? It's interesting that these things are also somewhat seasonal. We don't seem to get nearly as much of this stuff during the summer break. Somehow, I don't think that suicide is that dependent on the weather.
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