BigGaayAl

Well I've written this when I was reading the following article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6935768.stm
Perhaps someone is interested in the subject, or wants to talk about this.




There is an ugly duckling clogging the tubes. Society is being frightened by
new movements on the internet that embrace lovingly the darker sides
of man.

I'm talking about a series of web communities, devoted to anorexia,
bulimia, suicide. According the the theories I studied, these illnesses
have a lot to do with self-control, and the lack thereof allowed by
significant others at a young age.The example my professor at the
time gave was: will you allow your baby to try eating himself, throwing
food all over the kitchen, or do you take the spoon out of the baby's
hand, and feed it as if it were a foie-gras goose?

The truth about these human problems tends to get suppressed by
most of society. Most of society insists on believing that they have
reasons (in the case of anorexia) like models on catwalks being to thin, thus ignoring piles of research that contradicts this hypothesis.

Yet just as their parents weren't able to suppress their child's
individuality (it reacts with anorexia = taking control over you own
body), society is equally powerless and frightened by the emergence
of these ab-normal websites. Logically, the first question asked is
"should we shut it down?", under the assumption that these sites may
cause/aggravate disorders? Should we force her to eat?

The answer is easy: NO. Allow them self-control. Allow them
jurisdiction over their own body. Admit they have at last found
something they can control whether you want it or not. Just as
importantly, allow them to talk to the peers who understand them better
then you ever can.

Where it has been demonstrated in trauma research again and again,
that talking about trauma openly, is the only treatment that makes it
liveable, people insist on shutting websites made by traumatized people
down, shutting out their truth, locking out what Freud called
"death-drive" (difficult to translate "trieb"), or thanathos.

Society wants to forget about the awful little things in life, but history showed in my opinion that in an individual those things come back, always, and with a vengeance. So will they on the web.

I don't think websites about anorexia, bulimia, and suicide have been
banned at this time, yet let's all hope they won't. I wouldn't want to see
it when they come back, with a vengeance. These problems are the
sort of problems that in my opinion, aggravated by society's desire to
be blind about them, can cause individuals to make boundless praises
to the dark side of life, thanatos, in acts that include suicide, self-starvation, or even mass murder+suicide of the sort we saw in Columbine High school, and see every day in Palestine and Iraq.

All these acts seem to have in common that the individual feels some
truth has been suppressed, and it is their mission to show the world
that it cannot escape from the unbearable lightness of being, through
the destruction of their own body.

The reason I wrote this, is that I have a simple plea: let the internet
contain just as many different, ambiguous and disturbing content, as the
human mind contains.
The internet is already a remarkable analogue to
the human mind as is. Just think of what % of the internet is used for
porn, and then think of much of your brain is dedicated to how that girl
on her bike would look like naked. In fact I predict the internet will be
as diverse as the human mind, whether we like it or not. Therefore,
we'd better give up trying to make it otherwise now.


Ps: The comments in the article offer some interesting views from people with anorexia and bulimia, and also some people insisting that it's all the media's fault for showing thin people.

__________________
Support your right to arm bears. ~Cleveland Amory

ednos

Sweet Mary and Joseph! That's quite a controversial you've brought up there.

TheSkudDestroyer

Web 2.0 is going to try and clean up the web. a so called "clean slate"

Pretty much censorship as you mentioned.

__________________
|TG-6th|Skud, NA Deputy Lead Tester
-F- Skudly

ednos

Web 2.0 can die in a fire along with DRM and the FCC's approaching digital-only television policy.

=MAXx=

Good write up. definately +rep

__________________

After a hard long day on the battlefield, you just wanna play some ball but some idiot wont let you because he has an explosive bag of pitchers' powder....

Zephyr

The Internet can't be cleansed...it was never designed to be controlled, regulated, or monitored. It slipped in under the radar and now it really just is too late to do anything about it.

However, you'll note that a lot of people find it difficult nowadays to use the Internet for anything other than Facebook, a few games, and an RSS feed to the news website of their choice (usually the one defaulted in Firefox). People are self-censoring the Internet, as the vast majority of people simply do not have the curiosity to branch out into other venues of information.

The beauty of the Internet truly is that it reflects the human mind, but in the same way it will also reflect its desire for solace and as a result its own self-censorship. There will always be those who push beyond the boundaries into the realms of what people may call "wrong" and/or "improper", but by virtue of them being a minority they will be able to come to, hopefully, a sense of self-realization about what their group means.

In the case of these support groups, these individuals probably did not gain any more will to continue their strike against all things pertaining to weight gain, they merely gained a chance to not feel alone. Is that not what the Internet is about for us all? Finding a place, regardless of its virtual nature, in which we can feel that we are not a single individual against the world? Sure there is a fear that words of encouragement may push an individual towards furthering a negative goal, but fundamentally each individual is his or her own and alone has the responsibility for implementing the decisions that govern their life.


If a group such as this can continue to gain prevalence, can gain members of unbelievably large quantity, then the problem does not lie in the Internet's ability to bring us together but rather in our collective consciousness as a people.

-Zephyr

__________________
You were once like the newbie who needed a hand from above and TacticalGamer gave you it.

You owe the newbie who comes after you that same outstretched hand from above on your honor as a Tactical Gamer.

Tactics at TG come from trust and friendship, not meticulous detail and rigid discipline.

Everyone should be assumed mature until proven otherwise.

We are no clan.
We are not a single game.
We are mature, intelligent, and cooperative individuals.
We are TacticalGamer, a community above and beyond its name.

Switch

If these groups use services like Myspace or Facebook, censorship is at the discretion of the site owners and operators.

If someone wants to make their own site, then the content is not to be controlled. The internet is the one place free of censorship (presumably). If that should change, then we're all in big trouble. Google china worries me. If one country can adopt systematic internet censorship its only a matter of time until others do.


-- note on anorexia and bulimia

I spent several years working with an ex of mine who had both those problems, pretty severely. If anyone read this because they noticed the issue and they need help or has a loved one that needs help, I urge you NOT to ignore it. Face it as soon as possible, and be adamant about it. While the problem stems from the person feeling a lack of control, allowing them to kill themselves does not result in a therapeutic end. I can recommend a top notch clinic on the east coast. Very expensive, but most insurances will cover a majority. PM to keep it private.

__________________
|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

TheSkudDestroyer

Until 4chan.org goes away, all bad things on the internet will EXIST.

__________________
|TG-6th|Skud, NA Deputy Lead Tester
-F- Skudly