Fox Live Suicide Options

[BigMistake]

Just read about the "Fox accidentally airing live suicide" (linky) and saw the accompanying video. Now the article has both the clip itself and the networks apology. The clip has a warning above it saying "Needless to say, it's an unsettling video". I watched it, and I wasn't unsettled. And I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. Why am I not somehow upset or at least affected about watching a man taking his own life? While people of course react differently to these kinds of things, you'd expect most people to at least care. It's left me a bit puzzled, and maybe a bit worried.

[Pikasyuu]

I do find it unsettling - same with the millionaire who poisoned himself in court live after a guilty verdict. Watching someone, even from a distance, experience the kind of misery that would drive them to take their own life is deeply disturbing to me. I suspect it might be more intense for anyone who has had their own serious suicidal thoughts before or has lost someone to suicide since it can act as a trigger to memories of what your own self-harming urges felt like. Having been there, all I feel when I see that kind of thing is a deep sense of sadness.

[Yannick]

Definitely unsettling. I rewatched it though, and deliberately sought it out on YouTube when I couldn't get the video in the link to work.

Do things generally upset you?

[Pikasyuu]

good question.
do you think video games/frequency thereof/lack of personal experience with death might impact whether or not an individual finds this personally upsetting? the video game reference would be that very broad 'does virtual death desensitize us to real death?' question. i would personally say no, considering i could watch a virtual guy get shot in the head repeatedly and not raise my eyebrows, but if an actual person/animal/fictional person dies, i overreact probably as a reflection of my own feelings on death.
do you react badly to the deaths of characters you've become attached to on tv or books? is it the fact that we don't know him as a person that turns him into 'random guy shooting himself' in your eyes? how do you feel about the concept of death as an individual and are you afraid of it or at peace with it? do you think you'll feel differently if it becomes imminent?

curiosity box opened. i feel like i need a suit and a lounging couch.

[BigMistake]

It really depends I guess. When my dog died I sobbed like you wouldn't believe, and the same goes for when for example my grandparents died. Hell, I can tear up a bit when a favourite person in a tv series dies. But this video didn't do anything to me. Which is weird. I think Syuu's in the right direction with the "because you don't know him" part?

[Pikasyuu]

that makes sense.
all you see is a guy run around frantically for a minute and then a very non-graphic death - i can see how if you don't think on it too much, it wouldn't feel like a lot. i was still pretty taken aback. hopefully his suicide was more of a split second decision and he didn't spend too long dwelling on it. even that wouldn't be an upside, though.

[Mata]

I remember being quite shocked by the videos from the Iraq war in the nineties - you'd see a few guys through some kind of thermal/night-vision thing, doing random stuff, then they'd just break apart - hot chunks of them flying off into the night, pretty much dissolving as enormously high-powered chain-guns are fired at them from helicopters flying a mile away... That their lives just stopped so suddenly was... I don't know. It was horrible. I know that's war all around, but it didn't stop it from being shocking for me.