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I was making a big rant about how Jack Thompson was weird and all that, I was going deep into stuff and some of the things I was saying might have shocked some people. I love to shock people with things like thinking and good old J.T. seemed like the vessel I needed to get down and dirty in the realm of responsible media.
But this morning I found something different, and to be honest, fuck J.T. Anyway. He's had enough people talking about him and I've always suspected that making people doing that was part of his plan. I'm going to touch a subject that is much, much more extreme all the while talking about the same thing, and more.
I'm going to talk to you about Suzanne Gonzales. Though her case is currently featured on some internet news sites it's impossible to know how long she will stay in the media lime light. Up to now the articles I've read have talked about nothing that is of actual concrete value beyond the shock of her parents. Even CNN has failed its job and turned itself into an info gossip machine by not giving any facts and instead have related the personal thoughts of the most unqualified and emotionally biased people they get their hands on; her parents.
Suzanne is a 19 year old woman who committed suicide last week. Let's look at that with a list of things that are pissing me off.
- The title of the article on CNN is as follows: “Parents: Online newsgroup helped daughter commit suicide”. A very clever title if you ask me because it included the word parent. This way, you don't have to be sure if such an allegation is true or not because the media company is not implying anything themselves. Instead, they found some people to say something shocking that could make people interested, angry or whatever. They won't get the blame themselves, even though they are pushing a pre-conceived idea down people’s throat that may or may not be true. Just in case you didn’t know, media, being national, international or even local, cannot do a little thing called defamation. I know, when you think about it, you see that kind of thing going on everywhere and it is a point of this rant.
- The article starts off with the idea that Suzanne was happy and that she had everything going for her, yet she committed suicide. This is obviously stupid since she still committed suicide. It's a cheap tactic that tries to give credit to the slander. Again, you don't see where that information came from in the first place and there is no care to talk about the source. Oh well, guess we’ll have to guess where that one came from.
- I'm a parent, I would hate to hear some guy telling me this on the worst day on my life, but suicide is not something that is done to you. It's a known fact that people who want to commit suicide want to do it as cleanly and painlessly as possible, so yes, they do try and seek out information on how to do it in the best fashion. The internet is not horrible because you can know anything about everything. Blaming the freedom of information for things you don't like or don't want to hear about is just plain wrong, and for a news media conglomerate to encourage the notion in anyway sounds quite totalitarian to me.
- Sometimes the idea of suicide will be brought up through curable depression and this would result in a useless loss. Sometimes the idea will come to people who have truly no exit to their problems. None the less there is still nothing you can do about it because anyone who wants to commit suicide will do it anyway and they can do it in a moment's notice, be it for the right or wrong reasons. The information is not to blame; it's the person's actions and nothing else. If a person sees information about suicide and actually acts on it... well shit, there is no flip side. The person who committed suicide had deep personal problems that pushed her to such actions, point and simple. It's a choice the falls upon them and no one else and you can’t obviously argue with the dead. Were they wrong? Were they right? Here is a thought that is very hard to swallow. If you know for a fact that the person killed herself for the wrong reasons, then you have to ask yourself what you could have done about it. I can tell you this, trying to exterminate the information and knowledge about easy suicide is not going to help that much, even the basic human can find a way to make that happen.
The only other scenario that I can think up would be to hear of some person with no problems whatsoever who read up information on dying and wanted to explore death. I can't say it better than Mr. Carlin: “The kid who eats too many marbles does not grow up to have kids of his own”.
- The article has very weak arguments on both sides concerning who was to blame for the death. They did not take care to mention what Suzanne thought about all of this, but then again, you can't speak to the dead who just happen to know the truth behind the whole issue. I find it ironic that the living state of the person who's dead is also ironically the answer to the whole idea of who is to blame. I don't understand why no one can see this from the start.
- This is no different than the debate on video game violence. In fact I'd rather use this example when talking about a subject because it's easier to understand for everyone. It's not the sick shit you see on the six o'clock news, the books, the magazines, the internet or the videogames that create acts of violence. It's the people who commit them in the first place. If you can't restrain yourself to kill people after you've played a game of Doom 3, then you have no place in society and you should be locked up. Surprisingly enough, some would call you insane and dangerous to let loose if you can't handle a video game or a movie. It's you that has a problem, not the game.
- You could say it's a different matter when we face the same questions concerning children who get influenced by such information. Well guess what. Parents are there to influence too. That should be the end of the discussion right there.
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