It's all fun and games until somebody dies
So. Since I know a lot of C&Ters read this journal, I'd advise that if you feel for Richard, don't read this. And if you read it anyway, don't treat me badly. ----
Is it bad that when somebody online dies or disappears you just don't care? The subject about "What if I die online" and anybody caring has come up a lot of times. With a few internet buddies, and myself.
When I was really suicidal(before I was on Gaia), I set up a seven day rule. If I was gone for seven days, someone needed to call me over the phone and see if I was okay. And if I wasn't, they had the job of telling somebody else.
Well, times have changed, I got better, no need for a rule like that.
But still the apathy remains the same. Being online for the majority of your life really hits you somewhere.
You get people who claim they love you, but then really don't(My first online relationship), You get people who have identity crises, ask you for help, and then take your advice about committing suicide(Phil) so you're the only one to blame. You've got your friends having Depression and hacking other people's accounts to say they committed suicide just to see how your online friends would react because you're an attention whore(Cass), the people who enslave and rape you(MSN Chat), the boy who is your best RP friend asking if you can run away with late one night to Canada, and then the next day he's in the news about a columbine plan(Matt Lovett) and the people who grow up to be the worst acting stoners ever(Miz) and then webcam you while they masturbate(Feit).
So when you're a preteen, and you're disposed to the teenager and midlife crises too early, you get screwed up in the head. And you get Apathetic.
So by the time you reach your teenage years, history finds a way to repeat itself through you and onto other people's unwilling eyes.
Everything I just listed actually happened. Every time it happened, I cried for days, weeks sometimes. After Matt Lovett's, I was numbed out. By the time Miz and Feit came along, I just didn't care. I stopped caring. Richard dies? Okay. WHat's next tomorrow?
Jovo blocked me. I forgot about him. Evil Disco Blocked me, I forgot about him. TuffGhost doesn't IM me anymore, I forgot him.
Richard came on some, he was cool, but he's gone, and that's the end of it. He's wiped from my memory. Do you know how it feels to just not care? It feels great, honestly. But the sad part of not caring is that not everyone is like you. Everybody is caring and you aren't.
When one of my friends had his first kissed, and a week later the girl who got kissed killed herself, I didn't care. When my friend and his mother were tied together and bludgeoned to death(Ethan Mincher) I didn't care. When my great grandmother died, I didn't care. When my grandmother pleaded for me to go to her funeral, I said no, because I said to her, "I don't care." Pretending to show Sympathy when you aren't sympathetic is wrong in my opinion. Utterly wrong. Lying is one thing, completely falsifying your emotions is much worse, to me. I'd rather have you say "I hate you" to my face than play it off like you don't.
Dying is such a natural process. People come and go in your life, just like time. It's been five minutes, but you don't think on and on about those past five minutes, you move on. He's dead, get over it.
But nobody else feels this way. So I started trying to find a reason to care. I made up reasons to be sad because everybody else was sad. Withdrawl symptoms from Depression, that's pretty lame, isn't it?
And that's not the worst part. The reasons I made up for caring are stupid. "What a waste of donation items. I could sell those to help for my quest" "What are going to happen to those items?" "I didn't get a friendslist request from him before he died, I must not be good enough" "I didn't know him that well, I don't hang out in C&T enough."
These thoughts make me seem like a really superficial jerk. Maybe I am one. I don't know. But I sure hell do know that I won't wash the walls if the walls don't need washing.
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