“I am about to make my company a co-beneficiary of my life insurance. And, I will take my own life after that. I want to make it work for my investors and my company. I am done with this life. I am sorry.”
Something tells me that any life insurance policies have clauses for suicide, especially if you posted online prior to your suicide that you were about to scam them out of some money. Overall I think that mental illness is a very serious issue, however I feel like a startups anonymous seems pretty silly from what I can tell. That's just my $0.02.
I don't want to make light of the situation, a teenager committing suicide is a horrible, avoidable tragedy.
Your comment reminds me of the first time I received the phishing scam where the email claims that your computer was hacked and that the hacker has a video of you pleasuring yourself that they will allegedly send to all of your contacts if you don't pay them money.
After immediately recognizing that it was a phish, my second thought was "I value that money way more than I value my dignity ... so even if this were legit ... sorry grandma!"
It seems like anti-suicide ads would be mostly funded by the Ad Council, religious organizations, and non-profits.
When I switched my evil bit on, I came up with a company that helps you make your suicide look like an accident, so that your life insurance pays out, and no one perpetuates hateful memories of you for taking the easy exit.
The premium service makes your suicide look like a civil offense against you, so that your family may also win an additional settlement from a large corporation or government entity.
The extra-evil service matches you up with a demolitions engineer from a terrorist organization that most closely shares your values.
The morally questionable service matches you up with rich people awaiting organ transplants, who don't pay you to kill yourself, per se, but rather to enjoy the final moments of your life in the vicinity of a particular hospital, without being burdened by worry about the future financial needs of your loved ones.
And that's where I turned my evil bit off, because I was starting to creep myself out.
Sheesh, that's fucking terrible. I had naively assumed that suicide hotlines would ring to someone who would really listen to you and try to give you some perspective in a non-intrusive manner, which is what I imagine myself needing if I was in that position. Although I guess it's not terribly surprising to hear it's the bog standard pattern of friendly-faced leadgen that passes off execution to a misincentivized backend.
It's more than that. They are suggesting to people that are homeless to take their own life who hadn't even considered it before. I know someone who this happened to. It's creepy.
The condition, according to the article, was not having taken pills and being dying, but "if a call-attendant believed a person might be at “imminent risk” of taking their own life in the next few hours, days, or week".
This is weak enough that it will happen many times for people who are not in a significant risk, but for whom such an intervention can be seriously detrimental to their life. Note that suicidal thoughts are most of the time just thoughts and not acted upon.
If nothing else, it should be made clear to the person calling what risks they are taking. Many people might believe that they have confidentiality and that they can talk freely without risk of consequence.
The caller left the experience feeling more disheartened and unsupported. Logically that seems like they were at an _increased risk of suicide_ relative to when they called.
Not a comment on the story itself, but rather on the postscript which follows it:
> If you are struggling to cope or have been affected by anything in this story, please contact the Samaritans in the UK at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. More information at mind.org.uk, samaritans.org and save.org
Years ago, unhappy but not suicidal, I decided to call a suicide hotline. I did this for the same reason we have fire drills and software tests - I was verifying whether it would work if I did need it.
It did not work. I was astounded at how disappointing it was. After my experience, I would never suggest to anyone to call a suicide hotline, and I realized that most people who recommend them probably have never used one and don't know what they're recommending.
The individual I spoke to asked if I was suicidal - I said I wasn't at the moment, but then that doesn't mean much, does it? _I'm still calling, regardless of what I say._ I would imagine a lot of people who call suicide hotlines might not be entirely honest about the urgency or seriousness of their emotional state. Their reaction was dismissive thereafter.
The person would not make any connection with me - they are clearly trained not to do that to avoid certain problems, but I feel that in a moment where what a person needs most is a connection and is calling to try to seek one out, the total refusal to answer any questions at all or be personable in any way was like having a door shut in my face. The individual continually turned the conversation back to a set of formulaic questions that were of no help whatsoever, and I ultimately disconnected feeling worse than when I'd initially called.
I do wonder if my experience is representative of the norm or not.
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