Let’s be honest here

If you were going to commit suicide, and I mean— you really, really just wanted to disappear, you probably wouldn’t post about it on your tumblr fandom blog or, even less so, leave a note to your favorite popular fandom blog.

No, I don’t know all of you. Yes, there could be someone out there who would leave a goodbye note on their tumblr and actually go through with it.

But I have seen too many cases in which X blog gets a mean message and posts their goodbye note, there is a mass effort to send them messages about how beautiful and perfect they are, they disappear for a few days to make us all really nervous, and then come back with some miraculous story about how they were saved by all our love. 

In the most ridiculous case, one person’s “relative” posted hourly updates on their tumblr explaining about how she was in the hospital and has lost so much blood and they don’t know if she’ll make it and you all should be ashamed of yourselves for being so mean to her now we might lose her!… And then, somehow, she was released from the hospital hours later.

Suicide is not cute. It’s not something that should be romanticized like it so often is on tumblr. If you are, and you know if you are, putting on this elaborate act, hoping someone is watching you slip deeper and deeper into the hands of depression from your brooding text posts about how your mom doesn’t understand you, until you finally post your goodbye note about how terrible a person you are, and then plan to sit there and wait for all the messages about how the world wouldn’t be as wonderful without you, and how you are beautiful and unique and special, it’s time to stop.

I’m not saying your mom not understanding you isn’t frustrating. Maybe you are depressed and have a lot of problems in life, but if that’s the case, talk to somebody about it. Someone you trust. Making cryptic text posts might make you feel better, but if you really want to hear someone tell you you’re great, just ask for it. By telling your friends that you are going to kill yourself, you are putting A LOT of pressure on them. And if you’re not legitimately suicidal, it’s a lot of unnecessary pressure that could have been relieved if you’d just said instead, “hey, I need someone to talk to right now.”

And what REALLY needs to stop is suicide notes to strangers on tumblr. For whatever reason, the Rise of the Guardians fandom has another WEE WOO WEE WOO SUICIDE ALERT every other day it seems, and a lot of them are made because they sent an ask to a popular blog about how they were going to kill themselves, but they wanted you to know that you were their favorite blog.

Suicide threats generate a lot of buzz when they happen. It’s a good way to get a lot of attention, and maybe get that popular blog to notice you. But the person who runs that blog is most likely a total stranger, and you’re putting a lot of pressure on someone who doesn’t know you to say the right thing that will pull you out of your suicidal trance.

This is going to sound really fucking awful to a lot of you, but it’s not their responsibility to save you. In the end, the only person who decides whether or not to commit suicide is you. In many cases that actually end in a death, nothing anyone said or did could have stopped them from doing it. It was a battle they’d fought in their own head. Most of the time, no one even sees it coming.

So, the tl;dr version is:

• Stop romanticizing suicide
• Stop threatening to kill yourself to get attention
• Stop placing responsibility on popular blogs to save everyone who comes to them with a suicide threat.

If you want to get attention, strive for positive attention. Make good art, do pretty makeup on yourself and post pictures. Sing, dance, whatever. Making yourself out to be a victim doesn’t help you in the real world, and personally, I make a point to only associate with people who bring positive energy into my life.