#about a touchy topic being discussed on-site in a thread about ads no less

[justliched]

just saw someone on the forums try to make the argument that suicide awareness & prevention advertisements are not appropriate for the site, i can only assume because they are not "child-friendly"?

i hope this isn't something FR has promised to report to hiveworks in the past? i don't know how to tell people this but children also struggle with suicidality? you know the point of suicide awareness & prevention, hotlines for such, etc. is to reach people who may be struggling with it, and that saying "no suicide is bad it doesn't belong here" is actively preventing it from reaching who it needs to?

and i don't want to hear a single person say "it's a triggering topic." yes and what do we do in the face of triggering topics? we ask people to put a warning at the top so we can avoid as best we can. we don't ask people everywhere to stop talking about suicide ever, because not talking about it is a huge part of the problem (though not the entire problem). an ad that says "having thoughts of suicide? crisis support is available 24/7" is not doing anything more than a warning for a discussion of suicide would. if you are triggered by simply seeing the word "suicide" in a suicide prevention ad in the sidebar, i'm sorry, i do empathize, that really sucks. i've been there! the solution is not to ban all suicide prevention campaigns. refresh the page or close the tab to get away from the triggering word, and take the steps necessary for you to manage your own health crisis, which only you know how to do best - don't deny organizations the tools necessary to do their outreach to help other people manage theirs.

if anything the only argument to be had here is that this is an ad for the veteran's crisis line, and children certainly don't tend to be veterans, but i don't think something being for veterans inherently makes it anti-child-friendly so long as it's not, you know, a pro-military ad. i'm as anti-military as they come and part of being anti-military is recognizing that much of the disabled & unhoused population in the US is made of up veterans who don't get the support they need because no one fucking does unless you can buy it. and that some of those veterans, and their kids, inhabit places on the internet! wild!

anyway veteran stuff aside, because the person in question didn't even mention it ("i got a suicide ad") and ultimately who cares when it's phrased like that, suicide prevention is needed for all ages. we talk about it in public schools, ideally in homes and among close friends (though often not, which is why further prevention, awareness, and intervention is needed), and i can't say the same now because i don't watch television now but at least when i was a teen in FR's demographic, mental health & suicide was even talked about in ad breaks & campaigns on television. some of those are responsible for keeping people i know alive today.

so i'm going to log off now because i've made myself emotional and i recognize that, but genuinely what the fuck.