Another round of the Blame Game

Bleh, I bet you've all heard this story by now about the young man in Florida that decided to kill himself on the internet. Naturally there were people that egged him on in a failing example of reverse psychology I suppose, and...basically the crux of this story is there were perhaps hundreds of people that watched this man kill himself before their eyes and either LOL'd or didn't bother to do anything before it's too late.

Forgive me but I don't take suicide lightly. Not. At. All. Never have. You can claim to want to kill yourself bout 10 times and I will take each time seriously. You should Call me a sucker but as a survivor of a couple suicide attempts, that shit is neither funny nor to be taken lightly. There's a REASON you're crying out for attention that way, I'm convinced.

Oh, but wait, we're not done yet. Now that the victim is dead we have to play the blame game. We have to pass it around--first off, it's the young man's fault for essentially crying wolf so many times and the time he finally did it, well, how were we supposed to know? It's his own fault.

Then, you know, its the viewers' fault for egging him on or not trying hard enough to stop him. Then it's the family. Then it's society & pop culture's fault. Then it's all of these & everyone's fault. Then at the end there's a big ol' question mark.

I. Fucking. HATE this Blame Game shit. This young man is dead and you can blame whoever you want for it--maybe it is his fault, maybe it is the fault of the viewers, maybe this rests on all our shoulders. It could be all these things, but for goodness's sake passing around & assigning blame to various structures way, waaay after the fact is just so annoying to me. Identify the problem, that's it--but most of the time after we're done assigning blame for the issue it becomes clear that there's nothing to do to get rid of the problem.

If you blame the man, well, then what? What happens in other cases like these where these people need help and no one offers, do we blame them every time? If you blame his family, how do you punish them? If it's society and desensitization and all that, what do you do? What to do. I hate this Game.

I wanted this post to focus solely on victim blaming but it's more than just victim-blaming, it's everything-blaming and I really can't stand it. Especially over this man's case and any suicide, private or public. He's gone and when there was potential to help it just wasn't effective, and now it's _____'s fault for this young man's death. I grieve and I'm also angry at the way this is being taken and the damn blaming game.

Sigh. I just have all kinds of non-faith in humanity these days. Oh I could talk about this story and others like it for days, but what's the point....