Come on, a more accurate headline: “Man who was struggling with mental health issues and suicidal ideation for years finally ends his life. In typical, tragic fashion, the family can’t accept it, and needs to find something or someone to blame other than their deceased loved one. Cynical asshats in media both traditional and social leap on tragedy to make empty points.”
It was probably not the main reason he took his life, but algorithms do exacerbate mental health issues by aggressively recommending more suicide and MH content to users based on browsing history, pushing them into a downward spiral.
Only five percent of the population has attempted suicide. They know it’s not rational and are generally dissuaded from those thoughts by other people. However they also get stigmatized, judged and even compassionate people sometimes can’t understand so they feel isolated. Formative years are especially bad as they’re spending all day with just the 20 kids (US avg) in their elementary class. Do the math there.
So they go to the internet to find people who understand, but since there’s no real guidance they end up reinforcing each other’s disordered thinking. The internet has 5.6 billion people using it every day. Five percent of that is 280 million people. Massive echo chamber.
What they don’t cover is how many people committed suicide because their dog or a very compelling Doll convinced them to. “What’s that you say Baby Tinklepants? Kill them all?”
UpTownKong says
Skynet’s first victim and we’re all just fine with it?
What did you think would happen? Motherfucker’s never saw a movie?
This is some real I toldja shit.
Throwaway08080909070 says
Come on, a more accurate headline: “Man who was struggling with mental health issues and suicidal ideation for years finally ends his life. In typical, tragic fashion, the family can’t accept it, and needs to find something or someone to blame other than their deceased loved one. Cynical asshats in media both traditional and social leap on tragedy to make empty points.”
Gulbahar-00 says
It was probably not the main reason he took his life, but algorithms do exacerbate mental health issues by aggressively recommending more suicide and MH content to users based on browsing history, pushing them into a downward spiral.
Only five percent of the population has attempted suicide. They know it’s not rational and are generally dissuaded from those thoughts by other people. However they also get stigmatized, judged and even compassionate people sometimes can’t understand so they feel isolated. Formative years are especially bad as they’re spending all day with just the 20 kids (US avg) in their elementary class. Do the math there.
So they go to the internet to find people who understand, but since there’s no real guidance they end up reinforcing each other’s disordered thinking. The internet has 5.6 billion people using it every day. Five percent of that is 280 million people. Massive echo chamber.
Fake_William_Shatner says
What they don’t cover is how many people committed suicide because their dog or a very compelling Doll convinced them to. “What’s that you say Baby Tinklepants? Kill them all?”