December 13, 2021 - 7:30am
“Most suicide websites are about prevention. This one — started in March 2018 by two shadowy figures calling themselves Marquis and Serge — provides explicit directions on how to die.”
On Thursday, the New York Times took on another niche online community in a sprawling, 6000 word exposé entitled “Where the Despairing Log On and Learn Ways to Die.” Its target was a suicide discussion forum that includes a section describing painless suicide methods collated from various guides online. The existence of such a website on the open web, where it can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, is no doubt concerning, but it is not clear how this Times story actually helps.
In the piece, the ‘Gray Lady’ reports that it identified 45 suicides “connected to the site,” thus implying that these individuals would be alive today had they not been “pulled in.” This is impossible to prove, if not unlikely, and it’s a logical fallacy the piece makes repeatedly. It alternates between voyeuristic accounts from grieving family members and a portrait of the “shadowy figures” responsible: two sociopathic incels who regularly evade takedown efforts to keep their death cult running.
The Times apparently made no effort to interview the site’s current members to better understand why anyone — including the handful of victims profiled in the piece — initially sought out the forum, which regularly receives four times more traffic than the National Suicide Prevention website. If its reporters did bother to dig a little, they would find that the forum is filled with users’ traumatic experiences in the mental health system, especially with suicide hotlines, whose operators are required to alert emergency services if they believe someone is a danger to themselves or others. Justifiably or not, failure here can erode trust, leading those most in need of such resources to seek out alternatives, and their perspective is worthy of inclusion.
Lacking even a veneer of balance, the piece presents efforts to improve the forum, such as increased moderation or additional recovery resources as cynical attempts to avoid accountability. It includes a few statistics along with emotionally-charged soundbites from experts, who explain that the site is “disgusting,” like “handing [members] a gun.” With stark black-and-white photographs and stylised animation, the story unfolds like a horror movie, complete with folk devils unveiled in the final act when their identities are revealed, along with descriptions of their homes and irrelevant, sensitive details about their families obtained through court records.
The Times’ investigation hinged on sheer luck, in the form of a massive leak of confidential registration documents obtained through EpikFail, a hack of a company that had previously provided hosting for the website. Using such information in reporting is legally protected given it is “in the public interest.”
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SubscribeOh look! One of the most prestigious Main Stream Media newspapers has made matters worse by profiting from emotional tales of victims and publicising the web site they may have used.
The Grey Lady’s petticoats are sweeping the floor.
As Gerald Celente likes to refer to the New York Times,”The Toilet Paper of Record.”
SJWs have known Seargent Incel runs the suicide site for at least two years. Surprised it took them so long to launch this sort of attack. Not that one needs to be an SJW to have concerns about such a site. There’s almost certainly going to be several sensitive, sweet and much loved young people who would have survived their suicidal phase if not for the site, and gone on to have meaningful lives. Cant blame parents and others who have lost loved ones to suicide for seeing this sort of site as evil. On the other hand, as even the mostly negative Vice piece concedes, some users have reported things such as receiving “more genuine support and empathy in this forum than anywhere else ever in my life.” So it’s likely saved lives too.
And theres the possibility that thousands face such adverse circumstances that suicide is their only realistic relief from a life of constant pain and bleakness. As a Christian Id like to think God wouldn’t allow that to happen, but realistically, I fear it does. Simone Weil said most people cant even bear to contemplate that such extreme affliction even exists. One can never be 100% sure about other peoples motives, but as far as I can tell, M & the Sergeant have the courage & compassion to assist those who receive at best unhelpful platitudes even from most well meaning people.
This just typical of the modern media. We spend vast amounts of effort concerning ourselves with the symptoms of problems rather than the causes.
It will not happen though because instutions like the NYT, were they to be introspective, may find themselves to be in some way part of problem.
“God wouldn’t allow that to happen”
He doesn’t – we do.
God’s hands are rather tied by human free will.
It’s rather like all the “conservative” websites that made AOC a powerful celebrity through their negative reporting. In today’s ungrounded, attention deficit disordered world, it no longer matters if attention is positive or negative. All that matters is attention itself. COVID hysteria is another example. If no one had reported on COVID, most people wouldn’t even have noticed that there was a deadly pandemic in our midst.
” If no one had reported on COVID, most people wouldn’t even have noticed that there was a deadly pandemic in our midst.”
Surely another unproveable, logical fallacy.
In the absence of state assisted death, I have had friends research the most effective ways to kill themselves – quickest, least pain, least mess, least chance of surviving with a disability. Report back was that finding information was difficult.
I find this very sensible and if the rag that is the NYT is smearing this site then I am sure the site has something to offer.
There’s no greater freedom than being able to decide when and where to end one’s own life.
What right does anyone else have to intervene?
I can think of much greater freedoms right off the top of my head.
“This is impossible to prove” Welcome to 2021
2021 is proven. In a short wile we will prove 2022.
No one at the NYT appears to have considered the possibility that making a spectacle of a fringe website on their pages might alert thousands of people who have a fascination with suicide to a website they may never have discovered on their own. It’s almost as if they can’t be trusted with a newspaper.
If the NYTs hates it there must be some good in it
If the NYTs hates it there must be some good in it