Let me get this straight:
Some kid logged on to the myspace web site.
Said kid is a fan of something called "emo".
??The kid has posted a suicide gesture??
Said child is also currently logged-on, so maybe the gesture is hot air?
Is this right? We're laughing because the kid hasn't really done himself in?
I hope?
LawDog
Thats what I got out of it.
From what I understand, any parent with teenage or preteen kids might want to brush up on the whole Myspace thingie. Its a big thing for that generation. Several coworkers read their kids myspace religiously.....and to quote what one said to his teenager
"If you're dumb enough to post it on the internet I guess I'm dumb enough to read it...."
You take every male on his 13th birthday, and lock him and his peers in a gym with lots of basketballs and endless pizza. In five years, you open the door, and ask who's ready to come out and be an adult.
This is going to prevent suicide, or what? Ages 13-18 spent in a smelly gym with only males, basketballs, and pizza? I would certainly figure out a way to kill myself with a basketball within the first 2 weeks.
I guess you have to have caught part of the "internet generation" while growing up to really understand the humor of the whole thing. THe whole deal with "emo" kids (its a new term for an old thing, high strung whiney little momma's boys would be more generally understood) "killing themselves" and then starting a new account to watch people lament is pretty old-hat. its an internet cliche, as old as the one about guys pretending to be girls while online to get attention.
Exactly. They're all little attention whores/drama queens.
You'd have to understand emo.
Oh, no, I don't.
- NF
LawDog, I think I'm going to print that out and post it somewhere prominent. Thanks.
There's one by Rudyard Kipling in a similar vein, but more upbeat:
[IF]
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
--Rudyard Kipling
- NF
One of my professors has an idea to solve these problems. You take every male on his 13th birthday, and lock him and his peers in a gym with lots of basketballs and endless pizza.
That is about the most apt description of Hell I've read in quite some time.