Do you consider yourself to be extreme? Many journalists would call you exactly that...

[noname223]

I think most media outlets/most sources online would be say the members on here were quite extreme. We are an extreme niche on the internet. And I think some people would say the disadvantage of the internet is that idiots like us can find together to reinforce themselves in their negativity bias about life.

I know that because similar arguments were made with pro-Russian propaganda or anti-vax groups on telegram.
I am not sure whether this framing really helps. (us against them
Maybe not all readers think like that. But honestly, if you read the comment section of Youtube videos about the forum they judge us a lot and talk quite pejoratively about us. I read from time to time members who defend the forum. But there are also people that claim to be former members calling this forum a death cult/echo chamber.

I am not sure whether I consider myself to be extreme. I think on many issues I am a centrist in my country. My take on politics of other countries is less centrist.

I think compared to the average person where I live I am more pronounced pro-choice. Maybe I underestimate how far away I am from the mainstream position. I know that many Germans endorsed the highest court ruling in favor of euthanasia. Media and political elites try (successfully) to sabotage the ruling though. I don't debate with many other people suicide. My closest friends know my takes. There is no real benefit for me to debate the ethics of suicide if I am already convinced of my standpoint. I debated the topics with other people online. And it was so toxic for my mental health. It made me really angry. And I realized it is better for my mental health to abstain from doing this again.

On here I am more in favor of the position of thinking the decision through and to be really careful when it comes to life and death decisions. I think promortalists should be careful when making assumptions that could influence the decisions of others on here.

Overall, I am probably still pretty extreme. I mean I have over 7.150 posts on the biggest pro-choice suicide forum on the clearnet. I am number 15 with the most posts in a forum with roughly 65.000 members. I am an example of the 1% rule. Citing wikipedia: In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an Internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.

I am not sure where I am similar extreme in my life. I am extreme in overthinking. I am extreme in metacognitive thinking. I am extreme in the frequency of my consumption of politicial articles. I am extreme in never exercising. People told me I will regret that one day. I am extremely disciplined in my eating habits. I am prone to routines. I think I have a lot of mental problems. I am extremely dependent on the help of others. I am often extremely desperate. I am often extremely anxious. I am probably very deep.
Maybe all of that also contributes to my excessive posting on here. I think posting on here is probably an autistic special interest of me.

But tbh honest I often don't experience myself to have extreme positions. Most of the time they seem for me to be common sense positions. Lol. Maybe I am not extremely self-aware(?)

 

[Pluto]

 

[Forever Sleep]

I think they would. Not just my cynicism/ pessimism towards most things life. My lifestyle too. It's so dominated by work. Even when I'm not working or procrastinating, I'm still worrying about it.

I developed obsessive coping mechanisms from a young age. There's not much that is 'normal' about me. There again, I think people kid themselves that I'm more stable and more ok than I actually am.

 

[Yakui]

people will call me an extremist no matter what.
i dont particularly care. my life experiences were extreme, so they formed an extreme worldview. i hold the beliefs i do not because i got psyoped online or something, but from lived experience.

 

[ZwartHartje]

Yeah, I guess I'm extreme. I had to grin at the two examples you brought up: pro-Russian propaganda? I do watch RT, at least occasionally, although I'm very apolitical.
Anti-vaxx? Very much so! That's what got me banned from Facebook the first time - for 3 years! I didn't expect to ever get my account back. But then, "coincidentally" (?) just a week after Trump's inauguration I got emails for FB about logging into my account, I didn't think it would work again but there I was back!
For just under a year though. Then all of a sudden my account was suspended again, most likely because of a pro-abortion comment I had posted. They didn't tell me that, but the first time they also didn't tell it was because of my anti-vaxx stance but they claimed instead that it seemed like someone else had tried to access my account and they wanted my ID. The second time they wanted a video selfie showing my face from different angles. No way in Hell to either!!!

All in all I'm simply a freedom-extremist in all regards. Freedom of choice regarding abortion, vaccinations, suicide, owning firearms providing they're NOT used to harm innocent animals!!!, and of course animal rights. Other species deserve the very same freedom of choice.

 

[Set Real Goul]

Even though I have a pretty weird mix of all kinds of radical views that, on the surface, might look like classic liberalism. I call myself a radical centrist — I collect radical ideas from different sides and mix them together. The only principle I really stick to is the one expressed by Yuri Nesterenko: left-wing idiots and right-wing scumbags should both hate me. While everyone is arguing about the ethics of euthanasia, I'm here calculating how many Futurama-style CTB booths a city of one million people would need. I've always found the English Bloody Code from the 17th–19th centuries fascinating, especially the myth that failed CTB attempts could get you executed. I'd turn that into an actual law — but with a built-in choice.


But speaking about the actual topic, back in the 2010s when I was still in school, drug addicts and packs of hungry stray dogs were a bigger threat to me than spending two months on this forum is now. And the russian drones that occasionally fly over my house probably make me more of an "extremal" than any posts here.

 

[Canto XIII]

I'm extreme in some things.

 

[Canto XIII]

Politically I'm a center-leftist, and I tend to be a moderate on most issues. Maybe I've got a natural inclination towards the classical in medio stat virtus and all its antecedents up to the Temple of Delphi. But people who know me, and my parents in particular, have often said I tend to be extremist in my ideas. I think the fact is that when I have an idea I tend to embrace it fully, run with it throughout and take it to its logical extreme, but on the other hand, when I notice there are other factors impacting the situation and possibly towing in the opposite direction, I end up integrating them and building a more naunced, moderate opinion. Or if you want to frame things differently, you could say I'm a centrist because I can't manage to truly agree with any faction.

As for this forum, yes, I think people here are for sure extremists in regard to this specific topic, as distorted as its image in common discourse seems to me. It's obvious that the great majority of people in our society, regardless of status, education, cultural belonging or political association, sees suicide as an ultimate evil, if an evil more to be pietied than condemned, thus admitting it as a legitimate possibility is surely extremist.

One could ask, is it extremist in relation to the morals, policies and opinions our society endorses as of now, or is it something mankind will always see as extreme or outright unacceptable? Personally I'm more inclined to believe the latter, as the continuation of life is the basic necessary condition to develop any form of ethics, so, as I've written before on here, the legitimisation of suicide implies the dismantling of human morals (and in fact I see than I'm conflicted in accepting it myself). But it's also true that these same human morals are based in emotion and compromise, not in unadultered logic, so I could be wrong: people could start to believe suicide is a legitimate choice in some situations without invalidating the value of human life itself or other ethical tenets, the same way they've warmed up to the idea of medical abortion or more recently euthanasia. On this subjects interesting reads are also De la moderation and De Cannibales by the lord of Montaigne (Essais 1,30-31).