I've seen the subject of 2_Gryphon's "encouraging suicide" Internet comments pop up a few times, recently, along with the lashing out from the social justice warriors who think he's a monster for making them. Personally, I find the whole thing to be a somewhat humorous representation of people fighting for the same thing and not realizing it. And yes, this is very tl;dr because it's a complicated subject that deserves a complicated perspective. Based on the comments that I have read and the videos/context to which those comments are tied, it's clear to me that there's one basic truth: Suicide sucks, it shouldn't happen, and it is preferred that everyone should go on living. Depite his ranty choice of words, 2_Gryphon's underlying sentiment is congruent with that truth. What I find to be humorous is that none of his critics on this issue seem to realize it. I can hear some of you saying, "But, Simba! He said horrible things like, 'If ____, then you DESERVE to be dead'!" Well yes, he did, but let's pull in some more context by taking what was in the blank and combining it with 2's public mode of opinion delivery (rants) in addition to the Cyberbullying video under which the comment was made: In the video, he draws a comparison between those who are really bad off, yet they choose to fight to go on living vs. those who give up and end their lives over what he considers to be trivial, temporary bullshit. At the end of the video, he makes the statement, "If you decide to throw your life out like garbage, then that's exactly what it's going to be. Think about that for a while." To me, the underlying message is, "Think twice before ending your life. Sure, you have problems, but everyone does - some far worse than yours. Suicide is NOT an acceptable solution." Whether that's an effective psychology or not, it isn't the message that someone who truly "encourages suicide" would send. In the blank above, I left out the quantifier that he used to define those who "deserve to be dead". It was those who, "feel so much pain that they need to end their lives because some other douche bag is calling them bad names". While I agree that's harsh, it fits with the hyperbolic/exaggerated delivery of opinion for which he is well known. It seems, to me, that he was lashing out in frustration toward those who would end their lives over what he views as petty, temporary bullshit. Again, that's exactly what the Cyberbullying video was about (in addition to frustration with the government reacting by imposing penalties against speech). Taking the comment purely at face value and trying not to read further into what else might be going on in their life: Committing suicide over some strangers on the Internet typing some rude and insensitive words is, in my opinion, absurd and hugely overreactive. Adding that they "deserve to be dead", they are "better off killing themselves", and that they should "get off the planet and make room for others" is equally and oppositely as absurd. In addition, by making a statement like that, he's providing an example of the exact kind of trivial, bullshit, Internet comment that he's referring to in the video - the kind that deserves nothing more than to be be laughed off as hyperbolic instead of taken seriously. That sort of hyperbole is what 2_Gryphon is known for. I mean... one of his comedy routines involved talking about eating babies - something else that he *doesn't actually do*. Instead of choosing to villify him for his hyperbolic choice of words, I realize that he's just trying to get people to know when they're being ridiculous and to learn to fight on, for a better life, instead of throwing their life away. It's about encouraging people to think twice before doing something rash, even if it was done in a reverse psychology kind of way. Before the barrage of, "But Simba! That kind of reverse psychology doesn't work on depressed, mentally ill people! It just makes it worse!", I have to say: Unless one is prone to depression and has gone through the feedback loop cycle of, "I'm worthless. Nothing I do is ever right or worthwhile. I'm better off dead", or studied mental illness, at length, it's nearly impossible to sympathize with the thoughts and emotional pain that result in someone taking their own life. More specifically, one is even less likely to fully grasp what comments are helpful and what ones push that line of thinking toward its tragic end. To someone driven by their survival instinct, scenarios where suicide would be considered as the only way out are either very few or completely nonexistent. Because of that, they aren't going to perceive any wrongdoing by simply making general statements, comments, or expressing an opinion. After all, if they aren't going to be driven to suicide by Internet words, why would anyone else? Poking at the absurdity of that notion is a logical reaction. When one doesn't perceive that they've done anything wrong, especially when, in their mind, they believe that they are helping, even when told that they aren't, asking them for an apology is just going to get a dismissive response. "Stop overreacting" will be the general sentiment. It doesn't make them a bad person. It just means that they're strong willed. Additionally, the "toughen up" / "suck it up" / "fight back", tough love psychology *has worked* and *does work* in a number of cases - maybe not in those who have already reached the breaking point where suicide feels like the only option, but maybe for those who have not yet hit that mark. It did for me,at least. There was a time when I was mercilessly bullied in high school and my default reaction was to just go sob in a corner for a while and contemplate what I had done to deserve that kind of treatment. This is real, in person, sometimes physical, *actual* bullying that I'm talking about. Unlike the Internet, it had no easy-to-reach off switch or block button. Then, I had a couple of people ask me, "do you truly believe what the bullies are saying? Do you want them to stop?" To which I responded, "Well, no. I don't truly believe what they are saying about me because it's not true. Yes, of course I want them to stop." "Well, if you don't believe what they are saying, don't give them that power over you. Just ignore it or bite back. If they get physical, fight back." So I did just that - in my own way. I came to realize that they were saying those things in order to get each other to chuckle. It was their brand of humor. I learned that if I fed the bad humor with different humor, they'd laugh and started treating me more like a legitimate source of fun instead of a target for a cheap laugh. Among other things, the physical bullying usually involved a daily struggle to try to give me the biggest wedgie, ever. I was usually squirrely enough to get away, but when they finally succeeded, I thought, "enough is enough", and hauled off and socked one of the guys in the face. He was on the football team and was one of the most muscularly defined dudes in the school. He picked himself up off the floor, slammed my back against the lockers, and told me to calm down. "Can't you take a joke?!", he said. That wasn't the reaction I was expecting, but he could see the anger in my eyes and hear the seriousness in my voice when I responded, "No! This isn't a joke to me!" He let go and followed up with, "Well, just calm down." We both calmed down, and that was the end of it. Word got around that I punched the football star in the face, and nobody physically bullied me after that. Plus, that was around the time when I started weight training, and it was starting to show. It wasn't until much later in life, when really contemplating his "calm down" reaction, that I realized he was just being a kid and having fun and he probably didn't realize that I wasn't simply playing along - until I let him know in no uncertain terms. Reviewing the scenario presented in the Cyberbullying video and in 2's controversial comment: People on the Internet said hurtful things to someone on the Internet. The recipient of those words responded by killing herself and left a note stating that the suicide was for the purpose of making the people feel sorry; to make them feel bad. The end. Without any other context, everyone tries to fill in all of the blanks that would describe what else was going on in the life of the departed. They'll infer mental illness. They'll infer depression. They'll infer a lifetime of torturous parental and peer misgivings. They'll infer an unrealistic set of societal personal appearance expectations. ... or what have you. Lots of assumptions and inferences are made. 2_Gryphon, on the other hand, chose to take the scenario at exact face value, as presented, with no other context. Basically, "You killed yourself because of some Internet words and want us to feel sorry? Out of all of the possible ways to react to Internet words, THAT'S what you chose?! What the fuck?! Are you stupid?! If you're that stupid, good riddance! Also, I don't feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for your friends and family, but not for you." ... because that's how a rant works. Different people react to tragic events in different ways. Some people feel sad, some feel empathetic, some feel the need to find and destroy every inkling of a trigger for the tragic event on the Internet, some feel frustrated, some feel angry. A rant is the embodiment of reacting in an angry way. If 2 wants to get angry and rant about people killing themselves over what he believes is stupid, trivial bullshit, that's his choice. That's his shtick. Suggesting the removal of his show from Anthrocon because he expressed his reaction in that way is ridiculous. Plus, I don't think this particular subject is part of the material included at his Anthrocon show, anyway. Similarly to 2_Gryphon, I, too, get angry when I find out about someone who made the decision to commit suicide. "Why angry?", you may ask. Well, as a single example of many that I have: One of my best friends lost his brother to suicide - a violent, disfiguring, terrible suicide. The blast radius of emotional pain, anguish and confusion that it causes to family and loved ones is devastating and heartbreaking. That was in addition to the literal blast radius of his blood and body tissues that *his family* had to clean out of his dorm room. I had to hold my friend while we were both sobbing on the floor, wondering what we could have done, differently, to maybe prevent it. And before you chime in with, "you could have shown him some compassion instead of telling him to toughen up", I'll tell you that there was *no* bullying, no early signs, nothing. He was never told to toughen up because there was never a reason to tell him to toughen up. In fact, HE was often the one to tell OTHERS to toughen up. His note simply read, "I love you, mom". So yeah... I get angry because I am painfully aware of the wake of anguish that his decision left behind. My friend and his family were never really the same after dealing with all of that, and all he had to do was decide to seek help instead of pulling the trigger. The pain that I felt while being bullied paled in comparison to the pain inflicted by his suicide. Hurting loved ones in such a devastating way is, in my opinion, far, far more cruel than bullying someone that the bully barely knows. So, again, yes. I get angry at that level of cruelty. Combine that with a suicide note which stated that it was done specifically for the purpose of causing some of that pain, it's no surprise to me that 2_Gryphon got angry enough to rant about it. One of the other points that I've seen people try to make is that 2_Gryphon is "blaming the victim" and accusing them of "choosing to be sad". Just... no. They likely didn't "choose" to be sad. What they *did* choose was to end their life. I don't care how it's spun or what kind of anguish someone is experiencing, choosing to go through with suicide is definitely that: a choice. What drove them to that decision may not have been a choice, but following through and "pulling the trigger", per se, is definitely a choice. Deciding *not* to pull the trigger, while in that state of mind, is something that 2_Gryphon and any other decent person would commend and praise. As far as "blaming the victim" goes, it is my firm belief that at no time or circumstance can it be at all possible, ever, to be a "victim" by reading words on the Internet. "But, Simba! Cyberbullying is a real thing!" No. It really isn't. I've been on the Internet for 24 years, and by now, I would have seen a method by which someone can inflict an atomic wedgie through services like IRC, AIM, Twitter, Facebook, or Telegram. It simply cannot happen and does not happen. "What about doxing?!" "Oh, you have my address, now. I wasn't expecting company, but if you'd like to come over, when can I expect you? I'll prepare some tea and we can have a nice heart-to-heart." Before you bring up that people have had their careers ruined by trolls taking Internet drama to the target's workplace, I'll concede that once the trolls decide to take their campaign *outside of the Internet*, it is another level. However, it then becomes something beyond what I believe falls under the bullshit term "Cyberbullying". I guess the point is: In my opinion and probably 2_Gryphon's opinion, killing oneself is a far worse action than typing *anything* into the Internet. Transmission of characters/data/words through a packet switched network can never be as bad/wrong as purposefully inflicting enough bodily harm to end a life, even if the data/words are literally, "kill yourself". In the end, those words don't actually make the decision to pull the trigger. Additionally, I suppose that, in the purest definition of the word "victim", the deceased is a "victim", but only by their own hand. They're simultaneously a murderer and a victim. Personally, I have no tolerance for murderers. The fact that they're a "victim" just gets glazed over by the fact that they're a murderer. The most common counterpoint that I encounter is that people in the state of mind, capable of resulting in suicide, are affected by words in a way that drives them to "not have control over their mind and actions"; that they can't see any option other than suicide. I have trouble not dismissing that notion outright because it's absurd to me that a scenario exists where one doesn't have control of their own actions. If one doesn't have control over their *own* actions, who the heck *does* have control?! Random shitbags on the Internet?! I'm not saying that it's impossible, because I've seen stranger things, but yikes! Relinquishing control of your actions to randos on the Internet is a terrifying notion. I have also seen people make the assertion that because 2 is high profile in the community, he has some kind of duty/responsibility to "handle serious issues in the right way". I have to laugh at this for the simple reason that he gained his notoriety by producing these "edgy" rants. The thing that earned him his "high community profile" status was exactly this type of thing. Now that people know who he is, he needs to suddenly stop doing the things that put him there? That's ... amazing logic. In the end, he's just some dude who expresses his opinions in a way that a number of people find to be interesting and humorous. This doesn't give him any obligation, responsibility, or duty to craft those expressions in a way that is politically correct under someone else's personal ideal of what "politically correct" means. 2_gryphon actively encourages people to have different opinions and viewpoints than he has. A number of people who regularly watch his shows and other material have very different views than he has, yet they find the way he presents his viewpoints to be interesting enough to spark a thought or a conversation about a topic, so they continue to watch/listen. Whether someone agrees with him or not, he has a way of getting people to think. If his critics don't like what he says, they're not obligated to listen to it; just as much as he's not obligated to cater to their ideal of how he expresses himself. His critics should also feel free to express their disdain and counter views up to, but not crossing, the point where they try to prevent him from expressing his, regardless of how passionately they disagree. Even after all that I have said, if your general impression on my opinion, as expressed in this file, is still, "I can't believe you're defending him!". All I can say is that I hate seeing a lynch mob of well- meaning individuals set out to lynch another well-meaning individual. It's clear to me that the end goal is the same for "both sides": Help people realize that suicide is not the solution. The methods used to reach that goal, even if some are possibly flawed and counterproductive in some situations, are as unique as the individuals trying to reach it. If anything, 2's comment certainly got people talking about and raising awareness of the bigger issues of mental health. Maybe we can *all* learn something from it. "But, Simba! He literally told suicidal people to kill themselves!" No, in fact, he didn't. Since he doesn't reference any, particular news story, I have to assume that the person to whom he references in his Cyberbullies video is fictional. He made up a hypothetical (ie. not real) scenario whereby a person had hypothetically already committed hypothetical suicide for a hypothetical trival reason to whom he said hypothetically deserved to be hypothetically already dead and hypothetically wouldn't be missed. Literally EVERYTHING ELSE that he has stated on the subject has been in favor of everyone going on living - Basically, "I neither want anyone to kill themselves nor encourage anyone to kill themselves". Yet, somehow, the only quote that gets passed around is the one that I referred to in the beginning, and, as a result, he gets seen as some kind of monster who wants people to kill themselves because of it - even though the quote is about a completely hypothetical situation and everything else he has said on the subject has been encouraging people to live on and grow stronger. This contextless, cherry-picking, hate-mongering bullshit is ... frustrating. This community should be better than that or at least have better reading comprehension than that. It's bad enough that such a large number of folks gleaned the opposite message from what he was actually saying, but to continue to drag him through the mud is an appalling level of hate from a community that touts itself as being loving and accepting. Along the way, I also ran across folks claiming that 2_Gryphon has "committed crimes" by "aiding or encouraging suicide". I am not a lawyer, so obviously, nothing I say should be taken as legal advice, but it is my understanding that the laws that are on the books with regards to this matter were put there because of cases like Dr. Kevorkian, who would actually be present and help the person to commit suicide by providing or administering the method by which an actual death occurred. It also covers cases where someone was directly coerced into suicide under duress or force, imposed by someone else. Upon reading recent comments, it seems that the wording in some of the laws could loosely be construed, by a layman, to include verbally encouraging suicide of an individual by way of indirect comments on the Internet - a place where no actual direct threat or force can occur. The trouble with using the "committing crimes" angle is that, as far as I can tell, the laws were not written in order to prosecute "offenses" like the one that 2_Gryphon supposedly committed. He made a blanket statement, not directed at anyone in particular. If it was directed to someone in particular, it was someone who had already committed suicide, so they had no way of reading it. Something like that could almost never be legitimately used as an example in a court case where violation of these laws was the charge, especially when no actual death has occurred. His nonspecific, blanket statement would be protected under freedom of speech constitutional rights. The only time when it would maybe, possibly be even a slight consideration would be if someone actually committed suicide and he had made similar statements directly to that person before hand. Even then, that's not what the laws were written to combat. The likelihood of a conviction would probably be pretty slim. Moreover, once again, his intention was not to actually get anyone to kill themselves. He has already clarified that point in a video that he released in response to all of the recent attention ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=315&v=b8KJKN4zj4I ). He doesn't actually want anyone to die. He just wants them to think first before doing something that he considers to be supremely stupid and he doesn't feel the need to apologize for that. With everything I've said, I also acknowledge that the tough-love, "they're stupid for having committed suicide" notion may, in fact, feed into the social stigma aspect of someone experiencing mental health problems - stigmas that could lead to someone not feeling like they could/should reach out in a time of mental desperation, and theoretically contribute to a tragic end. Everyone processes things differently, and given how individual each case is, 2's very public, tough-love presentation / statements could conceivably worsen some people's situations rather than help them. For that reason, feeling like 2 has been irresponsible for publicly presenting his tough-love opinions is definitely valid. I just feel that the hyper zealous, hate-filled backlash reaction that he receives has drowned out what little constructive criticism might have been part of it. This has led him to basically dismiss all counter opinions as just more unfounded hate, which is understandably frustrating. He doesn't feel that he has done anything wrong because the underlying sentiment of "everyone should go on living and *not* commit suicide" is the "correct" one. "It's ridiculous that so many people are upset at me for having a wholesome underlying sentiment" seems to be how he's processing the response, so he doubles down on it. Does this mean he's a horrible person? No. It just means he's human. Finally, as a humorous aside, if you look closely at the comment that keeps getting displayed by his critics as the example of how awful he is and that "he needs to apologize" for - the one that I quoted a large portion of, above: The first word in that comment is, "Sorry". So, if you think about it, he apologized before he even started. (I wrote this in July 2015, but it remained just as relevant in March 2017 when I added some more to it, and then more in April 2018, and a bit more in September 2020) Someone who read this file called it "fucking disgusting". I think I'm now convinced that if I had just boiled it down to "I'm not OK with suicide and neither is 2_Gryphon", they'd still respond the same way. :p