Tag: suicide

Parenting Social Media

by jcafesin, posted in addiction, ADHD, artificial intelligence, social media

Australia killed social media today for under 18. YEA AUZZIES!

My almost 24 yr old daughter came downstairs Saturday morning giggling with glee. She told my husband and I she was ‘so excited!’ Something ‘great’ had happened.

She was in a car accident 1.5 yrs ago that is resulting in a lawsuit, and I thought she’d talked to our lawyer and he gave us great news. Nope.

“I got an audition on The Button!” she said, pridefully. “It’s a really popular YouTube series.”

I went with her excitement. My beautiful daughter got an acting audition, or for her melodic singing. Or a baking show for her excellent macaron cookies!

“How many subscribers?” I asked.

“Millions! It’s a reality dating show.”

As her words registered in my head, so did dread.

“You sit at a table across from each other with a large red button between you,” she explained enthusiastically. “The show’s producers ask personal, intimate questions to push conversation.”

I bet they do. Build tension. Push the show’s platform of ‘Shaming Spectacle.’ Corrosive dread was quickly turning into explosive rage.

“If one presses the button before the other, that person is out of the game.”

“You mean rejected?” At this point, my rage was boiling over. My daughter was seemingly so addicted to her phone and social media she could not see the ugly, sick fuck piece of trash YouTube show she’d signed on for.

“Yeah. But if neither press the button, then you win a date,” she said, more cautiously seeing my expression.

My tolerance dam broke right then. “Are you stupid!? Why would you sign up for a show designed to SHAME YOU? Are people allowed to leave comments?”

“Yes, Mother, but it’s not like that.”

“What’s it like, then?” my husband asked. “How can this possibly serve you going on this show?”

“It’s not about that. It’ll be fun to be on a show I watch.”

She watches this crap!? But I didn’t voice it. “You’re supposed to be studying for your MCATs. Why do you want to go on this show that’s designed to make you feel shitty about yourself?”

“It’s just for fun,” she defended. “I probably won’t even get on.”

“And if you do, how are you going to feel with being rejected in front of millions? Or rejecting someone else?”

“Maybe I won’t be rejected.”

“And what? You’ll find Mr. Right on this bullshit show? You have MCATs in 8 wks, honey. What are you doing!?”

“I thought it would be fun to be seen by that many people,” she said flatly.

“But you won’t be seen,” my husband chimed in. “You judge everyone on the show when you’re watching. And millions will be doing the same to you.”

“Are you ready for negative comments about your looks, or things you expose when the asshole producers trigger you in front of millions?”

“I won’t read the comments.”

“Are you talking about the Red Button show?” our son comes in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” she said to her older brother. “Have you seen it?”

“Yeah. Couple times. It’s really brutal. A race to the bottom — who can push the button first. No one wants to be the one rejected. You like it?”

“Yeah. I think it’s funny.”

“She got an audition to do the show,” I filled him in.

“Your mom and I don’t think it’s a great idea.”

“Even to audition,” I said. “Won’t help your self image any if you get rejected for the show.”

“So, you don’t think I’m pretty enough to be on the show?” she asked, practically glaring at me. “You think I’m not good looking enough to get picked.”

“I see my beautiful daughter. But this isn’t about what I think. You’ve cried to me time and again you’re not pretty enough,” I manage more softly. “You’ve admitted you compare yourself with influencers, and how you feel ugly by social standards. You’ve told me you hate your nose. Don’t like your body shape. Breast size. Your face. How is this going to be ‘fun’ if you’re rejected, get bad comments, or even get a second date? At best, this show’s a distraction from your goal to get into med school. At worse, and more likely, it’ll make you feel even worse about yourself.”

“Not fun,” her brother added. “I wouldn’t do it J. Not smart,” he said as he left.

“I’m doing the audition anyway,” our daughter said, and followed him out of the kitchen.

—

Ever written a blog, personal essay, or even an email, and as you write it you realize something is fucked up with your reasoning — the point you set out to make?

I realized I may have shamed our daughter, just as the The Button is designed to shame its participants.

I wrote her an email this morning apologizing if she felt I did when I lost it after she told me she was auditioning for the game. I explained my intention was to protect her, educate her from the dangers of predatory online content. She clearly failed to understand the broader consequences of signing up for, or even frequently watching the exploitative game show.

‘Game show’ my ass. Nothing playful about The Button. I wanted to protect my beautiful baby from being publicly shamed.

Some raw facts (I didn’t iterate to our daughter, but likely should):

  • Social media addiction amplifies low self-esteem leading to higher rates of depression and suicide, especially in her age group.
  • Watching and engaging with shaming, bullying, predatory, and exploitative content increases low self-esteem, depression and suicide rates.
  • The development team of ignorant, arrogant, short-sighted, self-serving slime, AKA, the Cut: David Alvarez, Blaine Ludy, Marina Taylor (former), and Desmond Vieg, are making bank on what they call “a social experiment.”

‘Experiment?’ Get real! No science. No controls. These parasites are profiting from exploiting shame and destroying self-esteem of young people establishing their self-images. How ugly is that!

Regardless of my faulty approach of admonishing our daughter for signing up for The Button, my heart was in the right place. The Cut developers are clearly heartless. Would they entice their own kids into some twisted social ‘experiment’ for their profit? I pray they never have children. Narcissists generally make suck parents.

I’m ashamed, feel I failed as a mom that my daughter signed up to be on The Button, or even chooses to spend one minute of her life’s time watching it, essentially promoting it with her views. I thought I taught our kids to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Parenting the perils of the internet seems a constant work-in-progress now, coming up against social platforms luring kids in like the Pied Piper, and addicting them like Purdue Pharma with OxyContin.

The Cut founders are young, naive, arrogant, and ignorant in the extreme. (So is most social media, from Insta to Snap that blows away your life’s time). Ugly games like The Button teaches watchers and participants it’s OK to torment, mock, insult, shame people, for profit.

The Button creators get richer with every hit to their “mean‑spirited,” “cruel,” “superficial,” “shallow,” YouTube channel. And ‘Seen by millions’ if you join their cast of fools won’t make you rich like they’re becoming on you.

Modeling cruelty spreads it. When you View or Engage with The Button, or any online game, platform, or app that makes it acceptable, (profitable, and therefore admirable) to be cruel, you are participating in becoming so.

I See You

by jcafesin, posted in atheism, Creativity, depression, Emapthic, Emotional Intelligence, lonely, lonliness, marketing, non-believers, psychology

I am an Empath.

Wait! Before you roll your eyes and click off this post, I don’t have any paranormal powers. It isn’t magic that I can read people. I’m not psychic. I can’t glean people’s “energy,” whatever that means, or any of that mystical crap. I am a devout atheist and use the word “devout” with purpose.

What I can do, is tell you what you’re thinking and feeling, generally before you know.

How?

If I’m in physical proximity to you, your body (posture, eye contact…etc.), and facial expressions give me tons of data about what you are experiencing inside your head. We all have this ability to read physicality, though most people hardly pay attention to one another, except on rare occasions. Ever had a blind date? The first second you see your date in person, you can tell if they like how you look.

In-person, or not — over the phone, or web, I ask a LOT of questions. And I listen to your answers. My brain picks up inconsistencies in what you’re saying, telling me you are lying to yourself, and subsequently… me.

The first time my husband (of 26 yrs now) met my mother, she said to him, “My daughter (me) was born old.”

What she meant was, I was born plugged in outside myself. I don’t know why. A genetic anomaly? My senses feel hypercharged. Touch, taste, sound, even vision (clarity in peripheral sight) seems heightened compared to most (and not just by my reckoning). I live outside my own head in the company of others. Watching. Listening, my brain constructing patterns of behavior. OCD? Bipolar? Maybe. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to process the massive amount of information I get from others, and it’s exhausting. And I wish I could shut it down, live like most everyone else.

Sort of…

I’ve picked up patterns in human behavior along the way. Lots! It’s another reason I can tell what you’re feeling, often before you know. I can now predict likely responses to an enormous array of specific stimuli. It’s a fantastic tool for writing believable characters. And understanding what motivates people is equally beneficial for developing marketing campaigns with great response rates.

Yet, I struggle with living plugged in outside myself. It’s emotionally costly. I lose myself while inside others, acutely feel their sadness, their fears, and hopes. I’ve tried to shut my senses down with drugs, prescription, and not. I had an allergic reaction to Prozac that almost killed me, and no reaction at all to weed over time.

I’ve become a recluse for the most part. I avoid crowds. I limit my intimate friendships to very few. I stay plugged into my two kids, my husband, our bratty, but cute Shepard pound-hound, which serves them well, though at times, probably not me so much. I disappear, absorbed in them, their feelings often muddling my own. (To be fair, the dog’s needs are simple. No hidden agendas, no unconscious complexities. She makes her feelings obvious. Thank you, Elly!)

I am grateful and humbled in the extreme by the immense and intense range of feelings we all get to experience being human. However, I’ve felt consumed with anger, fear, isolated, lonely, left wanting of myself and others. Sometimes dark feelings overshadow all lightness, and it feels like the only way out of seeing so much, feeling so much, is to check out.

I get that living is a choice we make, daily. While I’ll continue to choose living, be here for my friends and family as long as I can, I must admit, there is, and has always been, a beckoning to shut it all down, kill the noise in my head, turn off the input. Unplug, for good. I’ll never check though, regardless of how weighted living feels sometimes. As an empath, and an atheist — knowing I’ll eventually cease to exist — my greatest fear is feeling nothing at all. Forever.

Why to Choose Living

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Actor, Robin Williams; Fashion designer, Kate Spade; Chef, Anthony Bourdain all killed themselves. Prodigal computer hacktivist, Aaron Swartz, hung himself at 26 years old. Miss USA, Chelsi Smith, is the most recent ‘influencer’ suicide as of this writing. In 2020, it’s estimated 1.2 million of U.S. attempted suicide, and over 126 a day actually succeeded in killing themselves. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., after cancer, car crashes, and Covid-19.

Clearly living is a choice most all of us make every day we live.

Almost 42,000 of U.S. will consider suicide today. Have you? I have. Not once or twice during hard times, and in passing, but many times throughout my lifetime, from my tween years, likely till I die. Yet, virtually daily, I make a conscious choice to stay living.

I don’t believe in any higher power than the laws of physics. There is no “Jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) watching, or judging our behavior from ‘beyond’. There is no heaven or hell. I cease to exist when I die. I’ve never been able to pretend we are more than the collection of cells, chemistry and neural conductivity that make up our bodies and consciousness.

I can choose to go hang myself in the doorjamb of my office after I finish writing this without fear of damnation. The only eternal soul we possess is our hope that we matter past our limited time alive. But we don’t. Not really, beyond our effects on the lives we touch while we are living, like our family, and a handful of friends and colleagues. Even if you’ve done DNA ancestry, other than their genetic contribution to your existence, your dead lineage are names in a ledger, nothing more.

Too dark a view for ya? It ain’t depression. It’s reality, and a scary one knowing that regardless of what we believe, our life adds up to what we DO with our short time of awareness.

Individually, we really have very little effect on, well, anything beyond our small realm. Even those who have ‘made it,’ like celebrities and ‘influencers,’ most will be forgotten over time, and lost to later generations. And we’ll never even know the names of most innovators, especially women, who invented the tech we use today.

For the religious reader, this blog probably isn’t for you. I’ve likely lost you in the opening bit, as suicide in most sects is a ‘sin’. If you are a true believer, it is equally likely you won’t off yourself. The only reason to continue reading is if you want to help someone who seems like they may be suicidal.

How do you know if someone is suicidal? You don’t, and likely won’t. Each of the above celebs were either flat out rich, or at the very least financially comfortable. So, it wasn’t poverty that drove them to suicide. They ‘made it’ doing what they loved, instead of a lifetime at some crappy job just to pay the bills. Yet, each made a choice to die. Why?

Every day I make a conscious choice to keep living, but a lot of days the choice to stay is hard. Very hard. Some days, hope drives me with purpose, that I can make a positive contribution to those I touch. But other days, on days where it feels as if I reach no one, or I get nothing done, or humanity is doomed to our own stupidity, hope abandons me.

Give it up. Walk away. Stop trying so hard. You’re getting nowhere. If there is nothing beyond death, and what I do doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, then why not just check out, be done. At times, my life feels as if it defaults to the mean of hardship, and I obsess about exiting the scene, fading to black, longing to feel nothing at all.

How do I stop the voices of fear and hopelessness, either before they ramp, or even after they do, when I look up from I laptop to notice I’m not breathing? I think of checking out, conjure my exit strategy. I imagine taking pills, or maybe going into the garage, turning on my car and rolling down the windows.

What stops me?

I picture coming on to the Oxycontin, or choking on carbon monoxide, then throwing up, then blacking out. Then nothing. Ever again. No awareness, no consciousness once the neurons stop firing. No taking it back. No second chance. No waking up. Feel nothing, ever again. Or I try and feel what it feels like to feel nothing, but obviously, this is an oxymoron. Living and feeling are synonymous, as are death and feeling nothing forever— beyond black— non-existence.

When I’ve lost all belief in myself, my work, my world, I’m left with only one reason that keeps me here. Regardless of how lost I feel, how insignificant, how hopeless, I hold on to the one truth I know is real.

Every day I make a conscious choice to stay living— to FEEL.

Living is all about FEELING— glad, sad, mad, good, bad, proud, humbled, jealous, accomplished. And the list goes on… I get to feel them all, and many more throughout my lifetime, expressed in a thousand ways. Enjoying chocolate mint ice cream while watching TV. In awe of natural wonders. Heartbroken with loss. Swooning in love. From the physical to the surreal, we all get to feel— experience being alive.

Strip away the religious sales pitch that rewards us for charitable behavior, in exchange for an eternity in paradise. Ignore the social pressure that tell us our value lies our physicality, or our job title, or the acquisition of wealth. Let go of the pretense we are going to make a substantive difference to anyone beyond our small circle of connections. And the point of living becomes simply to feel the moments of our life.

Death— feeling nothing ever again— will come, regardless if I hasten it. The permanence of suicide becomes daunting when I consider I’d never get to taste anything again. I’d never see, smell, or feel rain on my skin, or someone hold my hand. If I take my own life, I kill even the possibility of feeling different, and finding ways to enjoy more moments of my brief existence.

I teeter on the edge of suicide when all reason and purpose has abandoned me. But you can help me during these times, or others who stand at the precipice of ending their life. When I’m consumed by doubt, black and sticky, pulling me under, please don’t tell me to “Hang in there, it’ll get better.” Though it may be true, as feelings DO change, sometimes in minutes, sometimes days, or even weeks, it feels like bullshit in those moments of darkness, as if blackness is all I’ll ever feel.

To help me, or someone you know whose depression seems all consuming, remind us, with empathy, that living is about FEELING, and the fantastic range of feelings we get to experience being alive.

*National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Available 24/7: 800-273-8255

Living with Depression

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I imagine when all is black in my head and heart, I’ll write something brilliant that justifies the darkness within. But when I’m depressed like this, I can not motivate myself to create, or do anything beyond succumbing to my sadness.

This essay is simply on depression, living with it in a world that wears masks, puts on facades online and in-person, because we’re not allowed to feel bad, or at least show it. We’re allowed to feel frustrated, annoyed, disappointed, in moments, but they better not last too long, or be too intense, like when feeling angry translates into yelling. Even in anger, we’re supposed to retain our composure.

I suck at pretending. I can’t pull off the I’m OK Buddy, when I’m not. Most of you reading this are much better at wearing faces. Most people are. But depression, that feeling there is something stuck in your throat that you can’t swallow, that with every breath it feels as if you’re sighing— trying to shed the weight in your chest— makes putting on a mask particularly difficult because you’re spending so much energy just trying to breathe.

Commercials for drugs to combat depression are all over the media. They come with a list like: Using this product may make you dizzy; nauseous; stop breathing; feel even more depressed; become suicidal even if you didn’t feel that way before the drug; die. Wow. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t really need to take Lexapro to help motivate me to kill myself.

I’ve tried Prozac, a long time ago. I was allergic. It almost killed me. I’ve tried Xanax, which is by far the most popular drug for depression. All it did was make me sleepy. I’m already tired all the time.

Therapists like to talk, or for me to talk. And talk. And talk. Business 101— you make more money with continuing clients than having to find new ones. I want ACTIONABLE things to do, other than taking drugs or talking to a shrink once a week, which just makes me poorer, and even more depressed.

What is “depression” anyway? I mean, everyone gets depressed occasionally, regardless of the masks we wear. Technically, and absurdly simply, depression lies in our chemistry— dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin— these ‘happiness hormones’ are not adequately delivered to the pleasure centers of our brain. It is commonly accepted that some are born with inadequate levels of these hormones, or there is a problem with their release inside the brain. Clinical depression apparently has a genetic component, but this has yet to be proven as hard fact.

Episodes of depression effect most people when events in our life hurt us. For most, the length and severity of feeling sad is usually consummate with the event itself. Losing a loved one, or loosing the lottery generally solicits dramatically different responses. As it should. Most let their feelings of sadness dissipate, often forget them entirely over time. I’ve spent a lifetime envying these folks.

Those of us suffering from depression internalize pain. It resides in us, like a cut, or injury that just won’t heal. We hang on to our hurts, from minor slights to major loss. And whether born with an imbalance, or too many painful life events, when sadness sticks, builds up and gets thick, every day feels like wading through molasses. If depression festers long enough it will eventually kill you. It strips us of the single motivating factor that keeps us all alive through dark times… hope.

Curing depression for those who experience it, and those who have to live with people who do, is paramount. Over 90% of those who attempt or commit suicide are clinically depressed. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death worldwide, which is a shame, because so often emotionally wired people are the creators, writers, artists, innovators and builders of societies. It is believed Abraham Lincoln suffered from Depression.

The only way to help reverse, or at least halt the chemical cascade into darkness is to actualize pleasure. I realize an effect of depression is finding no joy in anything, but those of you living with that weight in your chest with most every breath KNOW that joy is attainable, even when we are consumed with sadness. That blackness is the ugly voice in our heads meant to perpetuate depression, and a LIE. A rainbow is still beautiful. A double-rainbow extraordinary. The taste of your favorite foods; a hug when we’re scared, or lonely; backrubs; creating something— these things are still pleasurable. The Pacific cresting at 40ft is still awe-striking; a field of blooming flowers still visually stunning…etc..;-}.

Living, existing as human, is all about FEELING. The good, the bad, the ugly, the wondrous, the awesome, the magnificent empowerment of feeling loved, respected, valued. The charge that comes with creation. The suffocating black hole with loss.

Are you living with Depression?

If so, SEEK and FIND joy, pleasure. NOT self-destructive behavior, like drinking or using drugs for momentary relief, as trying to bury feelings, even temporarily, will increase depression. DO things, stuff that turns you on, makes you feel— if not good— at least glad you get to see it, taste it, experience it—without regret later! ACCOMPLISHING TASKS also lights up our brain’s pleasure centers. String enough joy and accomplishments together, even simple things, and, over time, continually reminding your brain why you are choosing to live will reinforce your desire to do so.