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The Undying Holiday-Suicide Myth
- spapas82 4y agoRelated to that myth, I remember that the most popular usenet group for people that thinking about committing suicide was alt.suicide.holiday. That was more than 20 years ago of course!
- kragen 4y agoi always assumed the name of the group was a joke, like, have you thought about taking a suicide holiday it never occurred to me that it was literally about holiday suicides
- spapas82 4y agoIIRC there was a FAQ of that group that explained that it was true (at least that what the FAQ claimed) ; people thought of suicide more throught the holidays because they were more sentimental during this time if they were alone etc...
- kragen 4y agoi never read the actual group but the faq doesn't seem to have survived, though other alt.suicide.* faqs are at http://www.ibiblio.org/usenet-i/groups-html/alt.suicide.holiday.html http://www.ibiblio.org/usenet-i/groups-html/alt.suicide.holi... and http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/alt/alt.suicide.holiday.html http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/alt/alt.suicide.holida... the group's one-line description does seem relevant i guess strn and trn didn't show those descriptions? or i would have known
- OnACoffeeBreak 4y agohttp://ash.notearthday.org/FAQGuides.html http://ash.notearthday.org/FAQGuides.html
- kragen 4y agothanks, this is great i wonder how many people from that subculture are still alive today
- OnACoffeeBreak 4y agoI used to hang out there back in the day (under a different name). The frank discussion there got me through some really dark times. Once, I met one of the posters IRL. It went fine. We didn't talk about suicide. I wonder the same. There used to be a sentiment expressed back then with the phrase "waiting for the bus". I wonder how many of those folks are gone or are still waiting for the bus. This thought makes me want to cry.
- tolstoshev 4y ago/me raises hand. I remember a chart that was floating around that usenet group that showed you the ideal rope length for hanging yourself without either choking or popping off your head from too short/long. I think they sourced their info from this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Table_of_Drops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Table_of_Drops Good times.
- viscountchocula 4y agoWhat a poor word choice for the title: "undying", really?
- bunbunbun 4y agoWhat’s going on in August and September that suicides are, on average, so high then?
- blamazon 4y agoCrime also tends to peak in the summer in the US. My personal headcanon simplification of this very complex relationship is that humanity is sort of like an ideal gas such that when you pump energy into it, chaotic patterns of increased activity occur.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago> Crime also tends to peak in the summer in the US. Because nobody wants to steal copper from a construction site in Chicago in February and that drags the average down in the winter.
- bunbunbun 4y agoI think violent crime peaks in warm months but property crime peaks in cold months, IIRC. Am I correct in assuming you’re talking about violent crime?
- RajT88 4y agoI'd always heard from bartender friends that the biggest drinking days were the ones around the big family gatherings: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve Reason being: People without family go to bars to distract from not having anyone. People with family are stressed out from the inevitable family drama that comes from getting everyone together, so they go out to the bars afterwards. I can see it. No idea if it is true (quick search doesn't yield much). If true, it probably correlates with a bump in suicides as well.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoA co-worker from UK said to me the other day that she thinks UK Christmas tradition is the best: people just go to pubs. Coming from a country (Poland) with a strong family-oriented Christmas traditions, I can't say I disagree. I grew up in a split-faith household, with the more zealous side not celebrating common religious holidays, so I skipped on quite a lot of Christmas drama, though still got my fair share of it on other occasions, and of course I witness other people suffering through it. One Christmas Eve, an acquaintance asked me out of the blue if he can crash at my place for the night. Turns out, he wanted to skip the "Christmas spirit" experience and learned from our common friend that my apartment is a Christmas-free sanctuary. My wife came from a Catholic family. We have small children now, and still struggle with deciding whether or not we'll be doing the whole Christmas thing. On the one hand, we don't want to deprive our children of the tradition almost everyone else in the country shares. On the other hand, my wife enjoyed the full course of almost two decades of family holidays, and even more than me wants to spare our children the "Christmas atmosphere".
- pm215 4y agoIn my experience the UK Christmas tradition has a fairly strong "family get-together" component to it...
- suddenclarity 4y agoI don't follow, what's wrong when celebrating Christmas? Is it family and I'm just fortunate having a family where everyone gets along? Maybe you could downsize? Have Christmas with only the closest family.
- p_j_w 4y agoOnly vaguely related to the article: it's really screwed up to see the overall trendline of suicides: averaging ~75/week in 1999 to ~125/week in 2022. It's truly disheartening to see. Silver lining: COVID lockdown didn't seem to lead to a rash of suicides like some predicted it would, so I guess that's nice?
- lurquer 4y agoI blame Jimmy Stewart. For nearly a century now, every Christmas we have to watch him contemplating jumping into a frozen river and ending it all.
- philjohn 4y agoWhen I first started working in this area I was surprised to not see an increase around holidays - the numbers stay mostly flat throughout the year. Time of day, however, has a larger correlation (early hours of the morning).