Which is why I definitely would’ve called 911. But I still would’ve been been pissed at the guy in the pond for being a dumbass.
If I were concerned enough to call 911, I would be concerned enough not to laugh at the victim.
Perhaps I should clarify. It would not be ‘that’s-so-funny’, laughter. It would be angry, frustrated, scornful ‘that’s-what-you-get-dumbass!’ laughter.
I have scant sympathy for suicides, I guess. I have my reasons. I know people who use suicide threats as manipulation, and I find it disgusting. I also consider actual suicide a monumental act of selfishness in that it hurts so many people around you. It is a dereliction of duty to those who depend on you. The only thing worse than committing suicide is taking others with you when you go.
And yes, I’ve had thoughts about how much I would like to be dead. But I don’t do it. That’s the easy, cowardly way out.
When people laugh at SNL portrayals of Trump and company, are they laughing because they are gleeful that Trump is president? No, the people are laughing because they are angry as hell that an idiot like Trump is president. So they laugh.
Laughter comes from pain, not happiness.
It also comes from weed.
Regardless of why he went in the water, or the wisdom of doing so, nothing changes that he called out for help, for his life, and was mocked and ignored.
So #1) We don’t have any clue the guy was trying to commit suicide. He could just as well have been upset and trying to get away from other people.
#2) That is some seriously ignorant shit you believe about suicide. I’m not going to waste my time when there are about twenty sites you can google to educate yourself, but nobody with a firm grasp on the realities of mental illness would assert those things. ‘‘Thinking you would like to be dead’’ is not the same as being suicidal. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
No, I know what I’m talking about. I have clinical depression, “life is not worth living”-type since my early teens. I spent twenty years managing it without antidepressants, which help tremendously. But I got and still get through the low parts without offing myself, or torturing others with the threat of offing myself.
Yeah, I know all about “The pain is so bad, I just want the pain to end.” Well, you know what? The world is bigger than your pain, and you ought to look beyond yourself when the pain gets bad. You are just surrendering to selfishness when you hurt others with your own death.
And who gets away from others by wandering into a pond?
Someone not in their right mind. Whatever choice this guy made, it clearly wasn’t rational.
Which means you’ve never experienced being suicidal, so you have no basis on which to make your claims, not even personal anecdote. I’ve been your kind of depressed and I’ve been suicidal depressed. They are radically different. For one thing, people who commit suicide don’t perceive themselves as ‘‘hurting others with their own death.’’ They perceive themselves as relieving others from the burden of living with them. They are fundamentally incapable of making rational decisions because their view of reality is so wildly distorted. If you can’t grasp that very basic concept it just underscores your ignorance on this subject.
That’s true. But there are also others who make suicide attempts on impulse with a “they’ll be sorry when I’m dead” attitude. A lot of them. Unfortunately, a lot die when the attempt becomes deadly serious. Which appears to be what happened here when the guy started yelling for help.
I’d be curious to know what strain of marijuana makes human suffering funny, turns a stranger’s accidental or self-inflicted death into an SNL sketch, and leads one to believe that posting video of a man dying on social media for the amusement of others is a good idea. I’ve certainly never encountered it and want to take great pains to avoid it.
Yeah, I agree that those kids aren’t the classiest act in the world. That’s the truth.
Hey, Two Many Cats, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you have experience with cats.
Do you have any insight into my situation here? I do in fact want to die today, and for once there’s a reason.
My mother was prone to announce her impending suicide when she was upset about something. I once came home from school to find five family cars parked in my driveway and the front door window broken out with a baseball bat. The house was empty except my Dad. The first words out of my mouth were, ''What did she do?" What she did was write a bunch of suicide notes, call my Aunt to say goodbye, and then wander about two miles down the road and sit in a cornfield with a bottle of pills she intended to OD on. My Aunt called 911 then broke out the window to try to get to her, only to find the house empty. The police came and picked her up and gave her the option between hospitalization and counseling. My grandmother burned the notes. My mother learned nothing from the counseling and nobody ever spoke of what happened (except my Aunt, who was the one sane person in my family.) That was the most memorable incident, but it was relatively common for her to announce that she was going to kill herself, then drive away and disappear for hours. I tried to stop her from driving away once and she damned near ran me over.
My Mom has Borderline Personality Disorder. She never forgave my Aunt for attempting to save her life. My view of this behavior is rather more complex than the average person who has to live with it, owing to my exposure to the more clinical/research side of personality disorders. I don’t believe she was consciously manipulative. I believe her pain was real. I also believe this is a different strain of behavior than you would see with someone who only suffered from severe depression. I’ve been suicidal but never done anything like that.
Her pain was real all right, but she was using that pain to manipulate others and draw attention to herself. That’s Borderline Personality Disorder in a nutshell. And yes, she could’ve chosen to fight against it by working with her counselors, but she chose not to.
I seem to remember from other postings that you cut off contact with your mother because of her behavior, correct? Good for you, because that’s what you have to do.
Pain is no excuse for bad behavior, including suicide.
I’m sorry about your cat. You may want to die because of it, but you won’t.
But cactus are vicious and deserve no sympathy at all.
Yeah. It’s for the best.
I bet there’s a dispensary somewhere that, given your question, could suggest a Bubblegum/NYC Diesel cross that would be just what the doctor ordered.
I should clarify this a bit - the barge (non-propelled except by anchor-winching while working) was being towed by two tugs at night on long anchor cables. Even a ‘man overboard’ situation would have been a serious proposition as one of the tugs would have had to cast off the tow, leaving the other to hold the barge against drift and return a number of miles to a now indeterminate location.
They were giggling and shouting at a drunk/high man who went into a pond fully clothed. By the time they realized he was in trouble, there was nothing they could have done. The guy swam a long way before that*. And yes, one of them laughed again after he went down, but when they realized the man was going under, you could hear the seriousness of it. They got real quiet and there were sounds of grief.
And yeah, posting it online was a horrid thing to do. But I’m betting if they went to their parents and said, “Hey I saw this man drown, should we call someone?” their parents would have said “Stay out of it.” And if they told their friends, someone would have called them a liar, so, video.
*The more I think about this, the more I wonder if there WAS an alligator. The way he bobbed under was odd, and the scream was too. But I don’t want to think about it anymore, so I’m bowing out of this argument.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s a bit harsh - it’s not like I’d post a video of it on Facebook.
They had a phone; they could have called 911. He might have been able to continue to come to the surface intermittently to breathe. There might have been an emergency responder very close to the pond. Note it takes several minutes for the dying process to complete.
More to the point, that wasn’t for them to decide.