#this is the reason every “call your reps” post i reblog gets a new script attached

[writing-with-olive]

How to make a call script to talk about a bill

Alright, so if you're here you've probably seen those posts about "call your senator/rep/whomever about xyz" but then don't include a script. Here's a formula to making your own. Remember that you will likely to be talking to an aide, not the person themself, so you'll be using third person (he/she) rather than second person (you/your). Once you fill in the script for yourself on whatever your issue is, pass that new script around. Calling your representatives is a numbers game, not a uniqueness game, and a completed script helps with accessibility.

If you want to do this but need help, especially if you're trying to call a politician who usually doesn't align with you, feel free to send me (op) an ask and I'll lend a hand. It's a good skill to have, but it's not always intuitive if you've never done it before!

Option 1: The Basic I've never had this version take more than a minute, and since the bulk of calls are boiled down to a yea/nay without much regard for content outside of that, it does it's job.

Hi. I'm calling today from [place your person represents] as a constituent of [name of your person]. I heard about [bill number], or the [name of bill], and was calling to express my [support/concern] for it, as it would seriously [benefit/harm][name of your person]'s constituents in my community. Because of this, I'm calling on [him/her] to vote [yes/no] when the bill comes to a floor vote. (They'll say that they'll pass it along) Thank you, I appreciate that. Have a good day. *hang up*

Option 2: The Deluxe This one takes a little more effort, but can help your call stand out a bit, which helps indicate that you actually do care. Before you call, look on their website to see if they've supported any initiatives similar to the one you're calling about (even if it's kinda tangential). This works because most people call to complain, so saying "you're doing a good job" is a nice change of pace. They're people too, even if they're detached.

Hi. I'm calling today from [place your person represents] as a constituent of [name of your person]. I heard about [bill number], or the [name of bill], and was calling to express my [support/concern] for it, as it would seriously [benefit/harm][name of your person]'s constituents in my community by [main selling point of your bill/reason to vote it down]. As someone who expects my [office of person]s to look out for the people of [place your person represents], I was pleased to see [name of person] vote [for/against] the [name of bill] bill, showing their commitment to [main selling point of example bill/reason to vote it down]. To continue this trend, I'm calling on [him/her] to vote [yes/no] when the [name of bill] comes to a floor vote. (They'll say that they'll pass it along) Thank you, I appreciate that. Have a good day. *hang up*

[mwuhhahahaha]

We need to take action!! 

Edited! Made all links clickable as well as added more information. I will continue to edit when someone post other important information so everyone can see it!! So its all easily found in one location. 

Edited once again!!! Added more pics and more details. Because it seems its not syncing in. Or not seeing the bigger picture. 

If you don't know about Net Neutrality well you need to know about it now. This is no joke or a game because if we don't do something living expenses are going be harder to meet.

What is Net Neutrality:

It allows internet providers such as Verizon, AT&T and etc from controlling/limiting the public to access the internet. Currently they are only allowed to charge Americans internet speed but otherwise we have access to the internet without limits. 

Without Net Neutrality:

Instead of just paying the basic speed internet you’ll have to pay packages which give you access to certain things. 

If you thought being a college student is expensive bc of books and tuition imagine what you'll be paying just to do a research paper.

If you were against paying for YouTube red well it won't matter bc you'll have to pay just to access the website. This goes for all social media sites as well. You'll have to pay to access your email.

Forget paying for basic internet speed you'll be paying for packages that will only allow you to access certain websites. It's these packages is the reason why many cut cable and only pay for Netflix. To access the internet will become more expensive and controlled. Let that sink in if it hasn't already.

Don’t believe check out this site: 

https://www.battleforthenet.com/

And as of privacy it seems not a lot of people isn’t aware about the new online privacy law that was passed around March which allows internet providers to sell your browser, streaming and download logs to 3rd parties. 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/28/technology/house-internet-privacy-repeal/index.html

I highly recommend looking into Dish and Kodi 3rd party add-ons law suit. Its a good example why vpns are important. 

As for those outside of US you should be concern as well. 

youtube viewings will drop alarmingly fast. Popular youtubers will no longer provide the creative content you love and enjoy. 

fandom will also produce less. fan art, fanfics, etc. that a lot enjoy. Sites like tumblr won’t be the same. 

you may not need to pay like we do but the internet content will decline. So best to reblog this and help spread the word. 

That is why we need to take action. And this post will make it easy for you to do that. 

Sign this petition: 

https://www.change.org/p/save-net-neutrality-netneutrality

been told Non-Us can sign as well. 

Fill our FCC comment Form 

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express

Filling # is 17-108 according to @profanefame

in the comment section just use the Letters section of this post to use a template. I’m being told they are getting rid of any letters or response that is copied.  

Send Letters to your Representatives: 

Email the Chairman Ajit Pai himself

http://act.freepress.net/call/internet_pai_nn/?source=FPblog

These sites will do all the work all you have to do is fill in your information.

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-quit-trying-to-sabotage-net-neutrality

https://www.battleforthenet.com/

You can also use Resistbot. it will tell you what to do.

https://resistbot.io/index.html

or text RESIST to 50409 and follow the text steps.  

Don't know what to write in the letter well I got you covered, already pre-written. But I’ve been advised by @501arceus that you shouldn’t copy n paste but use these as a template!!!

They are trashing the ones that are copy pasted!! Be more original. Remember more personal the better!! Use them as a template. Put it in your own words. 

this site has it all written out and all have to do is sign your name

https://www.battleforthenet.com/letter/

Or copy n paste this wrote, and lots of thanks, by @gothamess​ is pretty good as well.

I am writing to express my support for Net Neutrality. The internet is and has been such a vital tool for so many people, and we must ensure equal access to the internet, and equal access to knowledge. 

Various companies such as Facebook and Google are also against this act, as they acknowledge that the repealment of Net Neutrality will allow telecom companies to play favorites with their customers. That is not fair. How many more services and institutions must fall victim to elitism, to classism? Simply because some detached wealthy people in high places want to restrict access to an extremely valuable and revolutionary resource?

Are people not already paying for Internet access? Why must we restrict them further? 

This is not just about the consumer; it is about companies as well. Smaller companies will not be able to keep up in this proposed environment, as they will be charged more by telecom companies for faster connection speeds. 

Repealing Net Neutrality restricts access to knowledge, restricts our freedom, hurts small businesses, and has the potential to further the economic divide in American society. 

I urge you, as our representative, to take our interests to heart and act against Ajit Pai and his plan to destroy Net Neutrality. Just take a moment and think, think about how practically every single aspect of our lives ties back to the Internet. Your decision will impact millions of lives. Thank you 

Call:

I cannot express enough how important it is to call your representatives!!! This would be the most important one. And do it multiple times, preferably daily.  

Not only does this site gives you all you need to know about Net Neutrality but helps you contact Congress and gives you a script on what to say.

https://www.battleforthenet.com

Here is more information provided by @profanefame 

Call your Rep. https://whoismyrepresentative.com/

Call the FCC: 888-225-5322

Call Ajit Pai himself: 202-418-1000

Use this script when calling

“I'm calling to tell Chairman Pai that I will not stand for any attacks on Net Neutrality or my rights as an internet user. We need an FCC that will protect everyone's access to open, private and affordable broadband. Thank you.”

Not a talk on the phone type of person well fear not you can pre-record your message by downloading the STANCE APP

Download from Itunes/App Store 

Download from Google Play Store

Protest!

On December 7th there will be a protest in from of various Verizon locations. 

http://verizonprotests.com/

put on your Sunday best, get out there and protect our rights!! 

Tweet: 

No matter your age or where you are from spread #NETNEUTRALITY 

we need this to trend everyday 

If you're not from US:

Singal boost this. Reblog this and spread it like wildfire. Because if they get rid of Net Neutrality it will affect you as well.

You can also trend on Tweet: #NETNEUTRALITY

We only have until December 14th, 2017. You have no excuse not to take action I've gave you many different options how to take action. All the research is done for you. This is important and for the best results contact daily.

Singal boost this! Spread this like wildfire. Take action!!

[nancygduarteus]

Suicide Memes Might Actually Be Therapeutic

In a recent post to the popular meme-sharing platform 9gag, two side-by-side storybook illustrations depict a girl watching snowflakes fall outside her bedroom window. The left panel is titled “kids then”: In a thought bubble, the girl wistfully muses, “I sure hope they cancel school for all this snow.” The right panel is “kids now.” The girl looks at the snow outside and thinks, “I hope a car loses traction on the ice and rams into me and I fucking die tomorrow.”

This is a joke—and apparently a very relatable one for its target demographic, the millions of Generation Y and Z digital natives for whom memes are a mother tongue. A casual scroll on 9gag, which receives 3.5 billion page views a month, will turn up dozens of memes daily about self-harm or wanting to die, and young people are sharing, retweeting, and reblogging similar content across the social-media landscape. You’ll find storybook illustrations doctored to show children dreaming of grisly deaths, Spongebob joyfully flailing to his doom during a bank stickup, and Obama about to throw himself off a bridge.

At first blush, these jokes couldn’t be in poorer taste. The World Health Organization ranks suicide as the second leading cause of death for youth worldwide. In the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed staggering 70 and 77 percent increases in suicide rates of white and black teens, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. In response, public-health officials and tech giants alike have been cracking down on potentially dangerous messaging on self-harm. Last Friday, Instagram rolled out a new policy banning “graphic” depictions of self-harm or suicide.

But memes about suicide remain largely uncharted territory. While disturbing, they’re far less graphic than actual depictions. And they’re often darkly funny. As the gatekeepers of social media are wrestling with how to police this trend, some suicide-prevention experts see a window of opportunity. Typically, suicide memers aren’t mocking suicidal thoughts; they’re commiserating and bonding over being suicidal. Morbid memes, these experts believe, may be a foot in the door to one of the most vulnerable and hard to reach populations: socially isolated young people.

April Foreman is a seasoned veteran of the dark web. As a licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, she’s clicked through the foulest content on the internet to keep tabs on the volatile and high-risk souls that live there.

Foreman wasn’t surprised when suicide memes began to percolate up into the surface-level internet after a long incubation period in more hostile and conspiracy-laden depths (see: 4chan). In a way, she’s heartened by the memes’ increased social acceptability. Like so many anonymous platforms, 9gag struggles with pervasive racism, misogyny, and old-fashion trolling. But while the predictable ‘lol, do it’ replies pepper the comment sections to suicide memes, messages of support tend to be buoyed to the top by hundreds of upvotes. Internet scamps with usernames like necrolovertown gently direct suicide-meme posters to local suicide hotlines (or, in necrolovertown’s case, provide his Facebook contact info and a standing offer to chat—“any hour anytime I’ll be there”).

[Read: Social media is redefining “depression”]

What we’re witnessing on 9gag, Foreman explains, is the writing of a new “social script.” Sometimes it’s tough to know what to say, “like if someone’s dog dies, or if you have to go to a funeral,” she says. But through experience, communities develop a formula for how to respond supportively, something like, “Dude, that’s rough. I’ve gone through it. Here are the resources, let me know if you need support.” Foreman has identified several corners of the internet that seem to have healthy social scripts for suicidal thoughts. “Reddit communities around certain video games”—like the Eve Online universe’s Broadcast 4 Reps–“tend to have communities where you talk about your mental health and you feel better. People help you.”

Still, Foreman cautions, destructive conversations about suicide abound deeper in the bowels of the internet. “We have people that go in there as trolls to really stir people up and make them feel worse,” she says. They make “‘sui-fuel,’ memes to get people even more depressed, with the idea that you might ‘rope’—which is kill yourself—or you might even go and do a murder-suicide.”

Foreman’s colleague Bart Andrews, another clinical psychologist and executive board member at the AAS, is a full-throated advocate for suicide memes as an alternative to these destructive depths. Andrews bucks the traditional wisdom on suicide contagion, the idea that suicidal thoughts can spread through a community like a virus. It’s an evidence-based notion that’s been widely unchallenged for decades, and informs national and international guidelines for media coverage of suicide. Andrews acknowledges that irresponsible reporting of suicide—such as sensationalistic, needlessly graphic descriptions of celebrity suicide—likely has population-level effects. But if safe-messaging guidelines prevent people from having meaningful conversations, Andrews contends, they can be deadly.

“The very people we’re trying to reach, the youth—we’re telling them they can’t talk about suicide the way they talk about it,” Andrews says. “When you read the threads on these memes, people find them helpful. They don’t feel alone. It’s a way for them to anonymously communicate their inner pain in a way that’s artistic, super clever, and that people who are struggling identify with.”

Andrews believes that decades of an effective “gag rule” on suicide stifled conversation and perpetuated stigma—and that while the younger generations are more willing to talk, there’s still a vestigial wariness among listeners that the very act of discussing suicide could make their friends worse. He rattles off a list of memes formats that emphasize hope or resilience. Perennial favorites are “not today, old friend,” where Moe from The Simpsons decides not to kill himself, and “my mom would be sad.” “They get at reasons for living,” Andrews says. “And those can be really small.”

Another camp of suicide-prevention experts prefer to err on the side of caution. Jane Pirkis, the director of the center for mental health at the University of Melbourne and an expert on suicide-contagion theory, is the traditionalist yin to Andrews’ laissez-faire yang when it comes to safe messaging. “I wouldn’t say I’m alarmed, but I don’t think it’s very good,” she told me after reviewing a handful of 9gag memes. “The work we’ve done looking at traditional media definitely shows that representation that normalizes suicide or glorifies it at all can lead to so-called copycat acts.”

Pirkis concedes that the bulk of the scientific literature on contagion came from the pre-internet age, but she insists those lessons carry into social media. “They’re very basic, Psychology 101 principles about modeling behavior, and people learning what’s normal, what’s likely to get a response,” she says. “That’s why you don’t see depictions of smoking in film and television any more.”

This conversation around suicide memes is complicated by a generation gap between suicide-prevention experts and the communities they serve. I talked to several mental-health experts who were well beyond the age of the average memer and entirely unaware that suicide memes exist. Once they recovered from the initial surprise at this undercurrent of dark humor, however, they warmed to the idea that memes about suicide could have a capacity to heal.

These experts emphasize that it’s a fine line between destigmatizing suicidal thoughts and normalizing them. The right messages can let people know they’re not alone and that it’s okay to reach out for help. But overexposure could, in theory, lead to the belief that thoughts about self-harm are normal and not a cause for concern. Further muddying the waters, the very meme that could inspire one teen to call a psychiatrist could dredge up painful memories of a prior attempt in someone else.

There’s a dearth of experimental research on how people respond to non-graphic content about suicide, so social-media platforms are left to cobble together their own policies through high-stakes trial and error. The changes to Instagram’s self-harm policy last week, for instance, were reportedly spurred by the death of a 14-year-old in the United Kingdom Most social-media outlets draw the line at text, image, and video that appear to encourage suicide or self-harm. Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram have “hot words” associated with self-harm that automatically trigger messages to users about mental health and links to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a network of crisis hotlines that offer free counseling around the clock. But since image-based memes are hard for AI to parse, platforms generally rely on users to report sensitive material that isn’t simply text-based.

Foreman points to Tumblr as a platform that’s getting it right. Tumblr partners with mental-health advocacy groups, like the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and National Alliance on Mental Health, and reviews every post reported with the “self-harm” flag, according to Victoria McCullough, the company’s head of social impact and public policy. Depending on the post itself and its reception by the community, Tumblr might remove abusive responses, remove the post itself, or refer the creator to additional mental-health resources. McCullough says the company is very cautious about removing content altogether for fear of “undermining those recovery conversations.”

[Read: Tumblr has a cutting (and an anorexia and bulimia) problem]

9gag only added a tag specific to self-harm in the past several months. “Personally, I don’t think any community can claim that users’ comments are 100% positive at all times. There’s no such thing in life either. LOL,” 9gag’s COO Lilian Leong told me over email. “Of course, we can always level up our filtering measures. But we are very cautious not to get over-engineered and overkilled.”

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, 9gag is a single-scroll platform; regardless of a user’s previous activity on the site, everyone sees the same grab bag of memes. What’s on the ‘hot’ and ‘trending’ pages is determined by users’ upvotes and any editorial choices 9gag makes. Leong did not respond to questions about specific curation decisions—like why users couldn’t search the tag “suicide,” but could search “kill myself” and “suicidal”—or describe the decision-making process behind the removal of a sensitive post. In the days following our exchange, however, 9gag plugged all the holes in its search system pertaining to self-harm.

At the end of my reporting for this story, I posted on 9gag asking users to talk about their experience with memes about suicide. You can see the full threads here and here. The replies were a case study of what happens when a diverse community is left all-but-unsupervised in their reactions to suicide memes.

Some users like dracothedragon told me to “F.O.A.D.”—or “fuck off and die.” But most shared stories about how suicide memes sparked feelings of belonging amid isolation. @angry_doge42 said, “I tried so hard to gather the courage to end it. But I remember this post about how this random dude from the other side of the planet turned his life around after surviving the attempt and was now doing his own thing (I think, making candles). Gave up trying to knock myself haha. You guys maybe pricks but most of y’all are awesome.”

@streethastle wasn’t going to let me off easy: “You’re going to set people up with false hope if you’re really going to pull through with a naive article filled with cherry picked examples of ‘supportive’ comments. This website is a fucking cesspool of social degenerates.” But @infexo rushed to my aid. “I don’t see any harm in shedding light on the positive side of 9gag, because like it or not, it does exist ... And a few lines coming out from a caring heart can change drastically a [tragic] act.”

Pirkis, the University of Melbourne mental-health expert, agreed with @infexo, saying it’s a deadly myth that only professionals can help people at risk of suicide. “This great unwashed population that we’re talking about has a role to play,” she says.

Foreman and her colleagues at the American Association of Suicidology look forward to seeing the dialogue expand around suicide memes, however inelegantly. “I’ve never known a single problem that got better by not talking about it,” Foreman says. “Not a single public health problem has gotten better by reducing conversation.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/suicide-memes/582832/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

Suicide Memes Might Actually Be Therapeutic

In a recent post to the popular meme-sharing platform 9gag, two side-by-side storybook illustrations depict a girl watching snowflakes fall outside her bedroom window. The left panel is titled “kids then”: In a thought bubble, the girl wistfully muses, “I sure hope they cancel school for all this snow.” The right panel is “kids now.” The girl looks at the snow outside and thinks, “I hope a car loses traction on the ice and rams into me and I fucking die tomorrow.”

This is a joke—and apparently a very relatable one for its target demographic, the millions of Generation Y and Z digital natives for whom memes are a mother tongue. A casual scroll on 9gag, which receives 3.5 billion page views a month, will turn up dozens of memes daily about self-harm or wanting to die, and young people are sharing, retweeting, and reblogging similar content across the social-media landscape. You’ll find storybook illustrations doctored to show children dreaming of grisly deaths, Spongebob joyfully flailing to his doom during a bank stickup, and Obama about to throw himself off a bridge.

At first blush, these jokes couldn’t be in poorer taste. The World Health Organization ranks suicide as the second leading cause of death for youth worldwide. In the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed staggering 70 and 77 percent increases in suicide rates of white and black teens, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. In response, public-health officials and tech giants alike have been cracking down on potentially dangerous messaging on self-harm. Last Friday, Instagram rolled out a new policy banning “graphic” depictions of self-harm or suicide.

But memes about suicide remain largely uncharted territory. While disturbing, they’re far less graphic than actual depictions. And they’re often darkly funny. As the gatekeepers of social media are wrestling with how to police this trend, some suicide-prevention experts see a window of opportunity. Typically, suicide memers aren’t mocking suicidal thoughts; they’re commiserating and bonding over being suicidal. Morbid memes, these experts believe, may be a foot in the door to one of the most vulnerable and hard to reach populations: socially isolated young people.

April Foreman is a seasoned veteran of the dark web. As a licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, she’s clicked through the foulest content on the internet to keep tabs on the volatile and high-risk souls that live there.

Foreman wasn’t surprised when suicide memes began to percolate up into the surface-level internet after a long incubation period in more hostile and conspiracy-laden depths (see: 4chan). In a way, she’s heartened by the memes’ increased social acceptability. Like so many anonymous platforms, 9gag struggles with pervasive racism, misogyny, and old-fashion trolling. But while the predictable ‘lol, do it’ replies pepper the comment sections to suicide memes, messages of support tend to be buoyed to the top by hundreds of upvotes. Internet scamps with usernames like necrolovertown gently direct suicide-meme posters to local suicide hotlines (or, in necrolovertown’s case, provide his Facebook contact info and a standing offer to chat—“any hour anytime I’ll be there”).

[Read: Social media is redefining “depression”]

What we’re witnessing on 9gag, Foreman explains, is the writing of a new “social script.” Sometimes it’s tough to know what to say, “like if someone’s dog dies, or if you have to go to a funeral,” she says. But through experience, communities develop a formula for how to respond supportively, something like, “Dude, that’s rough. I’ve gone through it. Here are the resources, let me know if you need support.” Foreman has identified several corners of the internet that seem to have healthy social scripts for suicidal thoughts. “Reddit communities around certain video games”—like the Eve Online universe’s Broadcast 4 Reps–“tend to have communities where you talk about your mental health and you feel better. People help you.”

Still, Foreman cautions, destructive conversations about suicide abound deeper in the bowels of the internet. “We have people that go in there as trolls to really stir people up and make them feel worse,” she says. They make “‘sui-fuel,’ memes to get people even more depressed, with the idea that you might ‘rope’—which is kill yourself—or you might even go and do a murder-suicide.”

Foreman’s colleague Bart Andrews, another clinical psychologist and executive board member at the AAS, is a full-throated advocate for suicide memes as an alternative to these destructive depths. Andrews bucks the traditional wisdom on suicide contagion, the idea that suicidal thoughts can spread through a community like a virus. It’s an evidence-based notion that’s been widely unchallenged for decades, and informs national and international guidelines for media coverage of suicide. Andrews acknowledges that irresponsible reporting of suicide—such as sensationalistic, needlessly graphic descriptions of celebrity suicide—likely has population-level effects. But if safe-messaging guidelines prevent people from having meaningful conversations, Andrews contends, they can be deadly.

“The very people we’re trying to reach, the youth—we’re telling them they can’t talk about suicide the way they talk about it,” Andrews says. “When you read the threads on these memes, people find them helpful. They don’t feel alone. It’s a way for them to anonymously communicate their inner pain in a way that’s artistic, super clever, and that people who are struggling identify with.”

Andrews believes that decades of an effective “gag rule” on suicide stifled conversation and perpetuated stigma—and that while the younger generations are more willing to talk, there’s still a vestigial wariness among listeners that the very act of discussing suicide could make their friends worse. He rattles off a list of memes formats that emphasize hope or resilience. Perennial favorites are “not today, old friend,” where Moe from The Simpsons decides not to kill himself, and “my mom would be sad.” “They get at reasons for living,” Andrews says. “And those can be really small.”

Another camp of suicide-prevention experts prefer to err on the side of caution. Jane Pirkis, the director of the center for mental health at the University of Melbourne and an expert on suicide-contagion theory, is the traditionalist yin to Andrews’ laissez-faire yang when it comes to safe messaging. “I wouldn’t say I’m alarmed, but I don’t think it’s very good,” she told me after reviewing a handful of 9gag memes. “The work we’ve done looking at traditional media definitely shows that representation that normalizes suicide or glorifies it at all can lead to so-called copycat acts.”

Pirkis concedes that the bulk of the scientific literature on contagion came from the pre-internet age, but she insists those lessons carry into social media. “They’re very basic, Psychology 101 principles about modeling behavior, and people learning what’s normal, what’s likely to get a response,” she says. “That’s why you don’t see depictions of smoking in film and television any more.”

This conversation around suicide memes is complicated by a generation gap between suicide-prevention experts and the communities they serve. I talked to several mental-health experts who were well beyond the age of the average memer and entirely unaware that suicide memes exist. Once they recovered from the initial surprise at this undercurrent of dark humor, however, they warmed to the idea that memes about suicide could have a capacity to heal.

These experts emphasize that it’s a fine line between destigmatizing suicidal thoughts and normalizing them. The right messages can let people know they’re not alone and that it’s okay to reach out for help. But overexposure could, in theory, lead to the belief that thoughts about self-harm are normal and not a cause for concern. Further muddying the waters, the very meme that could inspire one teen to call a psychiatrist could dredge up painful memories of a prior attempt in someone else.

There’s a dearth of experimental research on how people respond to non-graphic content about suicide, so social-media platforms are left to cobble together their own policies through high-stakes trial and error. The changes to Instagram’s self-harm policy last week, for instance, were reportedly spurred by the death of a 14-year-old in the United Kingdom Most social-media outlets draw the line at text, image, and video that appear to encourage suicide or self-harm. Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram have “hot words” associated with self-harm that automatically trigger messages to users about mental health and links to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a network of crisis hotlines that offer free counseling around the clock. But since image-based memes are hard for AI to parse, platforms generally rely on users to report sensitive material that isn’t simply text-based.

Foreman points to Tumblr as a platform that’s getting it right. Tumblr partners with mental-health advocacy groups, like the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and National Alliance on Mental Health, and reviews every post reported with the “self-harm” flag, according to Victoria McCullough, the company’s head of social impact and public policy. Depending on the post itself and its reception by the community, Tumblr might remove abusive responses, remove the post itself, or refer the creator to additional mental-health resources. McCullough says the company is very cautious about removing content altogether for fear of “undermining those recovery conversations.”

[Read: Tumblr has a cutting (and an anorexia and bulimia) problem]

9gag only added a tag specific to self-harm in the past several months. “Personally, I don’t think any community can claim that users’ comments are 100% positive at all times. There’s no such thing in life either. LOL,” 9gag’s COO Lilian Leong told me over email. “Of course, we can always level up our filtering measures. But we are very cautious not to get over-engineered and overkilled.”

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, 9gag is a single-scroll platform; regardless of a user’s previous activity on the site, everyone sees the same grab bag of memes. What’s on the ‘hot’ and ‘trending’ pages is determined by users’ upvotes and any editorial choices 9gag makes. Leong did not respond to questions about specific curation decisions—like why users couldn’t search the tag “suicide,” but could search “kill myself” and “suicidal”—or describe the decision-making process behind the removal of a sensitive post. In the days following our exchange, however, 9gag plugged all the holes in its search system pertaining to self-harm.

At the end of my reporting for this story, I posted on 9gag asking users to talk about their experience with memes about suicide. You can see the full threads here and here. The replies were a case study of what happens when a diverse community is left all-but-unsupervised in their reactions to suicide memes.

Some users like dracothedragon told me to “F.O.A.D.”—or “fuck off and die.” But most shared stories about how suicide memes sparked feelings of belonging amid isolation. @angry_doge42 said, “I tried so hard to gather the courage to end it. But I remember this post about how this random dude from the other side of the planet turned his life around after surviving the attempt and was now doing his own thing (I think, making candles). Gave up trying to knock myself haha. You guys maybe pricks but most of y’all are awesome.”

@streethastle wasn’t going to let me off easy: “You’re going to set people up with false hope if you’re really going to pull through with a naive article filled with cherry picked examples of ‘supportive’ comments. This website is a fucking cesspool of social degenerates.” But @infexo rushed to my aid. “I don’t see any harm in shedding light on the positive side of 9gag, because like it or not, it does exist ... And a few lines coming out from a caring heart can change drastically a [tragic] act.”

Pirkis, the University of Melbourne mental-health expert, agreed with @infexo, saying it’s a deadly myth that only professionals can help people at risk of suicide. “This great unwashed population that we’re talking about has a role to play,” she says.

Foreman and her colleagues at the American Association of Suicidology look forward to seeing the dialogue expand around suicide memes, however inelegantly. “I’ve never known a single problem that got better by not talking about it,” Foreman says. “Not a single public health problem has gotten better by reducing conversation.”

Article source here:The Atlantic