Bring Out Your "Dead"
Welcome to the first in a periodic series of articles that will illustrate the many scenarios that can go wrong when you add desperate, maladjusted people to a high-speed Internet connection and public discussion forums. It should be no secret to anyone paying attention to the articles written by the entire Dead Rebel Society staff that every last one of us, regulars and guests alike, are a little addicted to Internet message boards. Boards attract people like us – frustrated writers with little to no outlet for our ramblings in our real lives. It should be no real surprise that most of us e-met on boards. Actually we met on one board in particular, a board that has become a bit infamous among Internet message communities for its pointless drama, stupidity, crassness, and toxicity to its posters’ real lives. Although we now of course have our very own board where we can support one another in our own collective neuroses, most of us find ourselves still drifting back to that other, dumber board like moths hopelessly drawn to the virtual flame of idiocy.
For long periods, that other board will remain on an even keel and offer little more than a numbing sameness of tone, much of this brought on by overanxious moderators who delete threads and ban posters when the natives appear to be getting too restless. They can’t be blamed for their incessant habit of erring far on the side of caution – this particular community has been known to cause beatings, nervous breakdowns, fire, flood, pestilence and legal action in real life among some of its more zealous participants. But then every once in a while, an epic drama will slip through the virtual net to entertain the community at large before being removed from virtual existence. This happened, most recently, a couple of weeks ago when a drama erupted around one of the oldest devices in the Internet Community Playbook – the "e-suicide".
A little while ago a drama with a little more flare than usual erupted and raged unchecked for several weeks in this community’s chat room. A female poster began making a point of chatting up a couple of the forum’s unattached men, indicating that her marriage was on the rocks and she was lonely. The old "he just doesn’t understand me" gambit drew one of these unlucky souls further into the woman’s web than he should have ventured. When he didn’t respond in the desired manner – which was apparently allowing the woman’s husband to give him a blowjob – a thread appeared on the boards announcing that the woman had killed herself. The poster who started the thread claimed to be the woman’s husband, and the initial post had the faintly hysterical timbre of real life to it. Enough responding posters bought the story to spark a bitter debate between those who believed the woman was dead and those who continued to crack jokes
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As this back-and-forth unfolded, posts from the principal players in the sorry-assed drama laid out the pathetic details of the situation which had until this point gone unnoticed by all other forum participants. Several pages, thirty posts each, quickly filled before the whole thing was revealed to be a hoax intended to make the man she’d hit on in chat look like shit. The board moderators deleted the thread but the principals took the idiocy into the Chat room, where it continued unabated for many hours of retardation.
For some reason, even though I myself was barely involved in the drama (I posted once or twice on the "Dead Thread"), the following morning I received a PM from a fellow poster for whom I had developed a fondness due to his smart, provocative political posts. This poster admitted to me that he himself had committed "e-suicide" before and offered to send me links to support his admission. Upon viewing the links, I quickly realized that if you’re going to commit a tragically realistic e-suicide, this poster should be your go-to guy. The brief poignant note! The frenzied responses and speculation among his fellow posters! The unanswered emails and PMs! It was all pretty cool…until he decided to stay dead. Then it just petered out. He’d done what he’d meant to do – too well. Apparently, his fellow posters speculated that he was really dead, which was really sad, but at the same time…disappointing. Where could the drama go now? Oh, well…next topic, please.
This account of a methodical, planned-out e-suicide serves to remind us that this is one area of Internet life that deviates the furthest from real life; very few e-suicides are carried out by people who truly intend to commit suicide in real life. They are a safe way for certain unhappy individuals to let slip their inner drama mama. Not to mention the fact that repeated threatened and botched suicides yield too many consequences in real life – like going to jail or a mental institution. The Net is still the last frontier of little to no accountability for asinine actions, because none of it is real.
Not to mention the fact that you can commit e-suicide over and over again.
The entire point of committing e-suicide is performance art. It’s meant to generate intense emotions and garner attention (of a sort) for oneself. The only trouble is that once the deed has been committed, the attention ends. Sure, you can form a new identity and start all over, but what fun is that? What fun is tricking strangers into sort of caring about you and making them think you’re dead if you can’t come back and gloat about fooling them? It IS no fun. That’s why it’s crucial that if you’re going to go e-crazy, go big or go home. Kill yourself over and over again. People will hate you at first but the great thing about Internet forums is that with all the deviants who contribute, even a pitiful suicide-faking armchair neurotic can develop a fan following of sorts. In fact, fakes are often remembered frequently and fondly.
So that is why, with a heavy heart and a handful of Valium, I bid all my readers a fond farewell. The pain of this mortal coil is simply too much to bear. My soul is tender and nobody understands. When you speak of me – and I know you will – don’t be kind. Dissect my meltdowns over and over again. Talk about the fake pictures I posted that weren’t really me. Whatever you do, though – don’t stop talking about me, ever. Because even though I don’t know any of you and we will almost surely never meet, stirring shit among you all has given me a validation. Like the warm handful of dog poo I have to pick up with that little plastic bag on my hand when I walk my dog, being talked about by anonymous strangers tells me I’m alive. Only now, I won’t be. Or maybe I will. Either way, I’ve kept you reading this far. See how easy it is?
