Discussion Do you think the censorship on even mentioning suicide in regular media works?

[Forever Sleep]

I suppose it's maybe not everywhere. Maybe it can be mentioned if people are warned of the content prior. But, I think it's reasonable to say it's very restricted. I don't think it's acceptable to present it as a reasonable thing to do many places. Plus, by restricting talk about it, it does suggest that the powers that be don't want the general population talking about it.

Obviously to therapists also. Perhaps depending on where you live, your history and their own approach, some people merely talking about it seem to end up being sectioned! Others seem to have the experience that their therapist simply moves them off the subject and makes it clear they don't want them to dwell on it.

So- as a technique- do you suppose suppressing it works? Can it be supressed even? Even if someone isn't permitted to talk about it and is encouraged not to think about it- how likely is it they'll stop?

 

[SVEN]

Hasn't worked for the members on here.

 

[Eriktf]

I guess it's good for kids to not know about it any earlier then they already do and maybe it prevents some triggers but overall I don't think it have any noticeable effects

 

[insideitsempty]

either psychologists here suck but when i talked to one on a local hotline and told them i wanted to ctb they just encouraged me to do it??????

 

[socrates]

Censorship never works. In fact is has the opposite effect. look up the "Streisand effect" Not letting people talk about stuff makes people just wanna talk about it more.
I'll be honest I don't really think suicide is censored much. There are plenty of forums online. People talk about it on social media. News articles get written. Suicide is commonly seen in movies and TV shows.

I think suicide as a topic just makes a lot of people uncomfortable. It's scary, people don't want to loose loved ones. So if you talk about it in the wrong circles people freak out. They call the cops, but the cops can't do much. Suicide isn't a crime, most they can do is take you the hospital for a little bit. It's not a fun visit, but suicide is really up to you. The knowledge and resources are available. Even if some options have been limited

 

[compulsoryaliveness]

I don't think censorship stops people from thinking or wanting to ctb.

However, I think the question is: what does it mean for people who stay alive, despite not wanting to? What kind of shit do we do when we dont have access to peaceful or ways to ctb that aren't violent or likely to be successful?

My view is that hiding ctb through censorship might keep a lot of us alive, but at what cost? A lifetime of suffering at best, and at worst a harm on others through the torment that is staying alive when one would rather die.

Economically, for governments, I wonder how much money they spend on keeping us alive, through hospitals, state intervention, welfare accepted medical services etc. it's weird to me that they keep us alive. I personally have to do crime to stay alive cause I'm poor

Anyway, I dunno that censorship helps keep us alive in the way that they want. I don't think censorship works to stop the suicidal from being suicidal…

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

imo yes censorship in the media is working. Imo most people believe many lies because the truth is censored. That's why most people don't realize we are living in an extreme suicide prohibition state in which they have stolen our most important rights like the right to move away from extreme suffering.

if someone falls into a trap of extreme torture they can't move away from that torture by committing suicide because they made someone helping u in suicide, suicide booths like sarco, nembutal etc crimes

 

[Crimson Red]

Well the concept of suicide is not very censored, what is being done is the banning of the word "die" and "suicide". They then just replaced em with "unalive" and "end" so in the end it did nothing. This censorship is based on the idea that the more people are subject to suicidal ideology, the more will seek out suicide as a means to seek attention or as a "trend". Anyone with a brain or who has been there before will tell you that something like suicide is pretty much only possible when your brain abandoned all means of self preservation.

The human is built to survive, wanting to not live means there is a lot wrong. It isn't a "trend", it will just bring forth the people who have been suppressing their emotions for too long and now finally had a glimpse at the solution. The media will wrongly interpret this as suicide being promoted, their job is to write shocking headlines, not to tell the truth.

 

[Chinaski]

That's why most people don't realize we are living in an extreme suicide prohibition state in which they have stolen our most important rights like the right to move away from extreme suffering.

The right to kill yourself is absolute, this is why so many people do it daily

 

[infectiousseptic]

I don't agree with censoring it, all it does is alienate people who are suicidal. Give people the option to learn about suicide and hear why other people attempt it. Normalize it and give resources on how to help rather than hide it.

 

[L'absent]

It's not really like that. The state wants us to talk about it in a certain way. This way works, but alone it is not enough. What keeps suicides at bay is a very complex system of culture, structures, controls, stigma etc etc...

 

[Chinaski]

There is no media omerta on suicide, when it happens it's reported on, there are many books, articles, documentaries covering the theme from various perspectives, suicide in drama is not uncommon, media bias and influence is certainly a thing but some of the posts in this thread seem to be clamouring for celebrated doomposters to be given a rolling 24 hour broadcast

 

[ijustwishtodie]

imo yes censorship in the media is working. Imo most people believe many lies because the truth is censored. That's why most people don't realize we are living in an extreme suicide prohibition state in which they have stolen our most important rights like the right to move away from extreme suffering.

if someone falls into a trap of extreme torture they can't move away from that torture by committing suicide because they made someone helping u in suicide, suicide booths like sarco, nembutal etc crimes

I agree. Somehow there are people out there who believe that the current available suicide methods are easy and painless to execute (whilst vehemently opposing the actual peaceful methods) and that "if somebody really wants death, they will find a way to kill themselves". It's shocking at how so many people are unaware of the obstacles that somebody has to go through just to even get a chance at checking out of this hellish planet early. Our voices are silenced in the media

 

[Chinaski]

Somehow there are people out there who believe that the current available suicide methods are easy and painless to execute (whilst vehemently opposing the actual peaceful methods)

Who holds these views

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Who holds these views

I've seen way too much random people say it both on twitter and on reddit when discussing suicide. Sure, I will admit that not every single person who opposes suicide holds this view but I've seen this view uttered by people time and time again. As an example of somebody having this view, point 2 of Bryan Caplan's article against antinatalism shares this exact view:

"2. Almost everyone's behavior confirms that they're glad to be alive. After all, no mobile adult needs to be miserable for long. Tall buildings and other routes to painless suicide are all around us; in economic jargon, life is a good with virtually "free disposal." Yet suicide is incredibly rare nonetheless."

 

[Worndown]

We had suicides before there was media or even the word "suicide".

 

[Chinaski]

I've seen way too much random people say it both on twitter and on reddit when discussing suicide. Sure, I will admit that not every single person who opposes suicide holds this view but I've seen this view uttered by people time and time again. As an example of somebody having this view, point 2 of Bryan Caplan's article against antinatalism shares this exact view:

"2. Almost everyone's behavior confirms that they're glad to be alive. After all, no mobile adult needs to be miserable for long. Tall buildings and other routes to painless suicide are all around us; in economic jargon, life is a good with virtually "free disposal." Yet suicide is incredibly rare nonetheless."

I honestly think the majority view on suicide is not that it's painless or easy but that it's inherently tragic and not to be celebrated or romanticised, and fwiw this is the correct view.

As for the paragraph you quoted, I've not taken it in context (though tbf I'm already aware that enthusiastic antinatalists are the most tedious people in the history of the internet so i don't feel the need to read it in full) but whilst i disagree with the language used and would take issue with his view that suicide is easy and painless he's not wrong when he states that methods are there, available freely, and people do use them, daily. If you haven't been able to summon the courage to hang yourself that's fine, there's nothing wrong with admitting this, i haven't been able to do it either, but for goodness sake can we please stop pretending there is a huge conspiracy against individuals suiciding when there clearly isn't, literally all of us are at liberty to kill ourselves. Many, many people have done exactly that without a pro-suicide government policy being in place.

 

[dust-in-the-wind]

Censorship never works. In this case I think it causes more suicides because it can't be talked about openly.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

The right to kill yourself is absolute, this is why so many people do it daily

That's ridiculous. only one out 25 suicide attempts die. many of those suicide attempts remain alive with an added disability or brain damage

there's no science , no real data , for risky diy suicide methods. no diy suicide method is gauranteed .

a real right to die is when one can exit this hell when you want to a guaranteed, easy , almost instant, painless way.

for one thing it's a million times easier to hire someone else to kill you or assist you in suicide than to kill yourself. with all the tech it's very easy for someone assisting to make sure the person need help dies.

if it were legal to be able to hire someone to help you with suicide then we'd have a right to die becauses it would be guaranteed.

but they made it a crime for someone to help you with sucide. so if you get into a trap of extreme suffering and the only way out is suicide then you have to risk brain damage

you have to do it in secret with risky diy suicide methods for which there is no real data or science . And you have to risk remaining alive with brain damage .

I can't make sure i die because many methods have a high likelyhood of making me unconsiuos first. someone else could make sure i die and don't remain alive with brain damage.

 

[Chinaski]

That's ridiculous. only one out 25 suicide attempts die. many of those suicide attempts remain alive with an added disability or brain damage

Statistically improbable that 24 out of 25 suicide attempts lead to brain damage rather than death.

there's no science , no real data , for risky diy suicide methods. no diy suicide method is gauranteed .

You say there is no data despite producing an implausible statistic in the preceding paragraph. If you hang yourself until you pass out and do not get discovered, you will die. People have done this by accident. It does not need any data to back this up in the same way you do not need data to tell you your breath stinks if you do not brush your teeth.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I honestly think the majority view on suicide is not that it's painless or easy but that it's inherently tragic and not to be celebrated or romanticised, and fwiw this is the correct view.

As for the paragraph you quoted, I've not taken it in context (though tbf I'm already aware that enthusiastic antinatalists are the most tedious people in the history of the internet so i don't feel the need to read it in full) but whilst i disagree with the language used and would take issue with his view that suicide is easy and painless he's not wrong when he states that methods are there, available freely, and people do use them, daily. If you haven't been able to summon the courage to hang yourself that's fine, there's nothing wrong with admitting this, i haven't been able to do it either, but for goodness sake can we please stop pretending there is a huge conspiracy against individuals suiciding when there clearly isn't, literally all of us are at liberty to kill ourselves. Many, many people have done exactly that without a pro-suicide government policy being in place.

As for people's views on suicide, imo, yes, most people do share the view that suicide is a tragic action but that isn't mutually exclusive with the view that it's painless. I believe that some people share both of these views simultaneously.

Also, I genuinely fail to understand at how all of us are at liberty to kill ourselves. In my case, yes, I will admit that methods like hanging still exist but the issue for me is that I'm unable to hang myself, not because of lack of courage, but rather because my autistic brain makes me incapable of understanding how to tie knots. I just don't see how I'm at liberty to hang myself via hanging as my brain prevents me from understanding the fundamentals of it. Sure, there are other methods like drowning or jumping but I'm not sure I'm at liberty to utilise these methods either because, as for jumping, there isn't an unmonitored high place near me that I can jump from and, as for drowning, I run the risk of somebody spotting me during the attempt. Additionally I have to deal with controlling parents that would near immediately call the police to find me the moment they find me to be missing. If I wasn't stuck with controlling parents, I feel like I genuinely could say that I have the liberty to kill myself and that's exactly what I would do.

Maybe most people are at liberty to kill themselves but fail to do so because of lack of courage but, in my case, I genuinely don't see the liberty that I have to kill myself due to my personal circumstances as well as my neurotype. I'm going to clarify here that obviously I'm not asking for ways in how I do have liberty to kill myself as pointing this out is against the rules. I'm merely expressing at how I think that I don't have the liberty to kill myself. I may be wrong of course but this is how I feel.

Also, you could potentially argue that I'm at liberty to kill myself by pointing out something that I failed to see for myself but what about the rare cases where somebody is unable to kill themselves because they are paraplegic or otherwise limited by their body to kill themselves? I'm curious as to what you think about these cases

 

[azo]

To give a different perspective, I think it does have the potential to prevent some suicides. Not so much the censorship itself but the sense of taboo it results in could lead one to (perhaps subconsciously) adopt the general sentiment that suicide is intrinsically bad/immoral/irrational. Obviously it depends on the person. But the knowledge of that general sentiment did give me some pause when I first started seriously thinking about suicide.
And I think it might prevent active ideation in some people altogether. I've heard people say something like, I wish I could just stop existing, and then follow it up with, but I'm not suicidal or anything. Essentially I think that censorship reinforces the taboo, which reinforces this idea that suicide is axiomatically bad, which in turn could be helping to prevent this progression of passive ideation to active ideation.

That said I'm still not in favour of it—for reasons that have already been mentioned, censorship could be making things worse on net. Youtube in particular annoys me by slapping a content warning on any video that mentions suicide, even when it could potentially be helpful to a suicidal person (or when the video isn't even about suicide—like when it's only being used to illustrate a concept).

 

[_Gollum_]

To give a different perspective, I think it does have the potential to prevent some suicides. Not so much the censorship itself but the sense of taboo it results in could lead one to (perhaps subconsciously) adopt the general sentiment that suicide is intrinsically bad/immoral/irrational. Obviously it depends on the person. But the knowledge of that general sentiment did give me some pause when I first started seriously thinking about suicide.
And I think it might prevent active ideation in some people altogether. I've heard people say something like, I wish I could just stop existing, and then follow it up with, but I'm not suicidal or anything. Essentially I think that censorship reinforces the taboo, which reinforces this idea that suicide is axiomatically bad, which in turn could be helping to prevent this progression of passive ideation to active ideation.

Beat me to the punch! This is also what I was going to comment. I would add that censorship of methods can also be particularly effective; SN is by far the most popular method on SaSu, yet if there had been total censorship surrounding it, almost none of us would know about it, which in turn means that many of us would stay alive for longer than we otherwise would've.

 

[TAW122]

No, I don't think censorship works in the long term and also that eventually, there will come a breaking point, or something that eventually forces the truth out. When that happens it would often come with a great cost societally or through macro level events that upend and disrupt the current status quo. Some examples include the pandemic, the major world events, disasters, and many more. I think partly the censorship is rooted in obligatory virtue signaling and having to say certain disclaimers for the sake of policy (or regulation).

 

[Chinaski]

No, I don't think censorship works in the long term and also that eventually, there will come a breaking point, or something that eventually forces the truth out. When that happens it would often come with a great cost societally or through macro level events that upend and disrupt the current status quo. Some examples include the pandemic, the major world events, disasters, and many more. I think partly the censorship is rooted in obligatory virtue signaling and having to say certain disclaimers for the sake of policy (or regulation).

Who is being censored, which important voice is being silenced

 

[Forever Sleep]

Who is being censored, which important voice is being silenced

I was originally refering to most references to suicide on platforms such as YouTube being banned. As other members have pointed out, even platforms that allow the discussion of suicide eg. Reddit seem to only permit discusion of it in a certain way. Members on here have been banned from SuicideWatch on Reddit I believe for being too honest I suppose.

It seems to mirror some people's experiences in therapy. That some get sectioned, some get told not to talk about it, some get dropped all together! That's what I was refering to anyhow. As in- does it really do us much good not being able to talk about it openly? Does that work more towards preventing it or does it simply make people feel more isolated and more at risk of actually doing it?

This wasn't supposed to be a thread about big conspiracies to silence people- although, I suppose it is about that in a way. I was more curious to see whether people thought that trying to control the narrative on suicide- as in- ok, it exists but, don't do it- really works.

I can sort of understand for instance when they seem to want to conceal a method of death in some reports- especially if the people are influencial for maybe fear of their suicide 'sanctioning' others.

I'm especially curious that therapists sometimes don't seem to want people to talk about suicide. Like- maybe, if they're not talking about it, they're not thinking about it and, the thoughts will just go away. I doubt that works!

 

[Dmoore3232]

No it is a form of propaganda. People are committing suicide because life is bad for a lot of people because they live in bad countries.

 

[MyChoiceAlone]

I was originally refering to most references to suicide on platforms such as YouTube being banned

lol you can't spell out certain terms there. unalive yourself??

 

[L'absent]

Suicides are 15 per day on average in Italy. Many days not even one is communicated and many times they don't even say the method. JOURNALISTIC CENSORSHIP. Same policy in other European countries, with the difference that France censors everything and Norway too. It is increasingly difficult to find details of suicides and even information. This is one of many forms of prohibitionism and brainwashing carried out by the state. This method works because it leaves people caged in a dead-end prison. FORCED TO LIVE. Citizens are forced to hear only pro-life propaganda 24 hours a day. All this triggers a mechanism of terror that pushes people towards resignation and not committing suicide. Thus they manage to keep suicides below the threshold of 4000 per year in Italy and many times real suicides are censored and passed off as alleged murders or accidents. The goal is always the same.

It has been observed that the more the media talks about a suicide and the more detailed information they give about it, the greater the emulation effect.

"How newspapers should talk about suicides Without describing the details, without sensationalism and following other guidelines recommended by experts, because their irresponsibility can have consequences"

Come i giornali devono parlare dei suicidi - Il Post

Senza descriverne i dettagli, senza sensazionalismi e seguendo altre linee guida consigliate dagli esperti, perché la loro irresponsabilità può avere delle conseguenze

www.ilpost.it

 

[Username1359751]

No, I don't think censorship works in the long term and also that eventually, there will come a breaking point, or something that eventually forces the truth out. When that happens it would often come with a great cost societally or through macro level events that upend and disrupt the current status quo. Some examples include the pandemic, the major world events, disasters, and many more. I think partly the censorship is rooted in obligatory virtue signaling and having to say certain disclaimers for the sake of policy (or regulation).

I dig this. The unspoken rules (Although they technically are spoken because they've been documented and not redacted.) of reporting on suicide coverage lies in the ways that policies and guidelines have changed. The only example that clearly comes to mind would be seeing the 'macro level event' that was Robin Williams' death. (See, that's an example of "new reporting" by not immediately referring to it as a suicide, and (just) as a death. That's also just a personal choice out of respect but whatever.) Another would be how unhinged it is to research the subject of suicide on such a biased level of the internet now given all the "prevention" and "aid" you have to wade through to find a nonpartisan piece of suicide literature.

The government isn't nearly as concerned with people not committing homicide, as subjects pertaining to public health have yet to be so strongly regulated. (Although areas are catching up, I'm not looking those diagnostics up as I'm not being graded for this; nor is it being submitted for overview for evidence to deciding upon new regulation. That being said, any arguable indecrepancies I'm making now can hereby be sat upon for all I care.) Only when it seems to serve so-called societal discourse does any effect seem to go into change. But with Robin's death accruing 5x the monthly average of following the news and media coverage, communications were made at a federal level via the FCC which in turn paved way for new societal norms. From whatever ins and outs (among others) of these changes-- some small, some less so-- censorship in the form of restrictions, agendas, narrative pushing, etc have trickled down the vines through news media, whether you admit it or not, because the majority still believe suicide is a no-no. It's like any other movement that has to undergo the proper cultural change in a series of stages over generations.

lol @MyChoiceAlone Did you just stop reading after that first line? Because you reduced her clarity on the predictable arbitrary emotional fall out from some of the prior replies like you did.. Also, it would save time and trouble if people would read past just the damn title of a thread too.
Don't look "unalive" people.