a curious, and frightening, thing:

i just did a google search on "webcam suicide". yeah, it was a mood pose: a) i don't have a cam and b) i don't have anything like the commitment to top myself – it's only living like this that i want to stop, not living, FULL stop. but anyway...

only one recorded case that i could see, of a girl in brooklyn in 2001 who webcammed an attempted suicide (she survived, as far as i can gather). and what's remained online of responses to the event is not shock, not re-evaluation, but whole screeds of flaming.

of insulting her for attention-seeking. well, hell, has nobody else heard the phrase "cry for help"? or is it just that people don't care?

no, they plainly do care, because so many of the comments were from people who'd lost friends to suicide.

and that's the point: they care about themselves. they're taking out their anger on a complete stranger, because that's what grief is: anger. you don't grieve for the dead, you grieve for the living, that they're not in your life any more. so, because the bereaved hurt, and they can't tell the dead what they think of them, they pass the pain and frustration and wrath on to somebody they've never met and never will, because that gives them an excuse to vent it all. because who cares how the victim in this case, or anyone looking at it with a vestige of human compassion, might feel? what's important is to cathart for the person posting.

well, fuck that.

the net has shown itself time and time again to be an enabler of community, of support, of affinity and of democracy.

but one of the things about democracy is that morons get just as much of a voice.

nothing wrong with that in itself – you want equality, you accept it even when it's not convenient for you. but, being morons, their voices tend to be louder and more forceful. arguments get "won" by lungpower.

and the fucking tragedy is that the people who have something to offer, even if it's just patience or solidarity or the intimacy of being human together, far too often get beaten down.

it's like the "no platform for fascists" issue so exercising brits and europeans right now, as the british national party stand in local elections and le pen enters the run-off for president of france. the way to defeat such poisonous vermin is not either to try and deny them voice – because they won't be denied – or to take yourself somewhere where you won't be bothered – because you can be damn sure they'll follow. the only way to stop the march of the roaches is to confront them - don't give in, out-argue them wherever they appear. 99 times out of 100 it won't make any difference to the bilious individual in question, but the bystanders, the audience, will have been shown an example and shown that it is a viable one.

idealism? sure. but there's nothing that says ideals can't actually be realised, at least asymptotically. if there were, well, hell, then i really would be under the next train out of here.

i try to be there for people as much as i can be, and i know that others do the same for me. because as far as i can see, it works, and as far as i can see, the alternatives don't. in the words of w.h. auden, "we must love one another or die."

and you venomous fucks, the next time you flame somebody like that poor woman for selfishness, check your coding for Pot/Kettle Error, line 1.

before - after