Had to record this thought: I imagined a Japanese person reading about US people being confused about why someone would commit suicide, and the Japanese person laughing at how people could have such poor understanding of the problem and saying to themselves, "We Japanese have a really good understanding of the reasons for suicide, it's why we have so many of them."
This post was supposed to be about what someone could do if they didn't want to waste time. But it is now also about a person who killed themselves. I think the most important thought I was in danger of forgetting was this: a dramatic action in which misunderstandings can result from timing (as in Romeo and Juliet, with the letter) is the consequence of problems in society. A story in which such misunderstandings can't result is more boring, but better, even if people are not interested in hearing about it.
I'd forgotten something that another thing, which I've also forgotten, made me think of, but I hope that was it, or at least more important than the other thing I'd forgotten.
Question I ask myself here is, does it matter if people think I'm crazy? Other than the mysterious "B" who commented on a post a few years ago and knew who Sherine and Yara were, I've no evidence that anyone except perhaps the US's FBI reads this site. So even if it's embarrassing to speculate publicly that anyone could care enough to read this post and follow the suggestion in it, if no one knows about this post, it isn't embarrassing.
If you don't want to waste time: contact Yara, at https://twitter.com/___yaara, and ask her if she's interested in me, or if that's too much, if she remembers me at all. If you don't want me to waste time, you can let me know the results of this conversation, or attempt at conversation. You could also do it privately, like by sending an initial message then continuing in direct messages and deleting the original message.
The evidence that causes me to be uncertain about the truth of this matter, instead of being able to simply say "no": I started looking at Yara's account around the start of this month. I wrote an unpublished post around July 1, or possibly submitted something to Reddit, which frustrated any attempts to do nothing for the month, but I deflected by acting like it didn't matter and that I had not changed my behavior in months, which implied that enough time had passed to make a decision. That was to say that Sherine might have died based on her inactivity, but it would take too long to determine, and I needed to look at someone who was more active. Apparently Twitter does a really bad job of updating in realtime if you leave a web page open on an account, but when I finally refreshed the page after a few days of doing nothing online but leaving that web page open (with my computer on even while I was asleep), it turned out she had protected her account. I finally put my computer to sleep then, maybe turning it on briefly to do a quick web search related to something I said to no one in particular maybe six years ago.
When I checked again later, Yara's account was no longer protected, with nothing to explain why it had been protected. The point is that it seemed like an unusual event. Since Twitter doesn't seem to reliably refresh profiles while viewing them now, I don't know when she protected her account.
Some other stuff, I emailed the FBI (about 90 personnel in leadership roles) with no reply, there was a misunderstanding and the police thought I might kill myself so they put me on a psychiatric hold. I decided not to eat during this time. So I didn't eat breakfast at the general hospital where I was at, and sometime during this time period, Yara retweeted a status about starving yourself before a meal. Her next status after that was around 11 am my time, so it's possible she could have retweeted the one about food after the hospital learned I was refusing food. I didn't eat food for a total of about 110 hours before they became worried from my low blood sugar level, after which I agreed to eat, but Yara acted normally during this time.
After I came home (maybe nine days ago), I was basically looking at Yara's account constantly for several days. Then one morning, I didn't connect my computer to the Internet or even answer several landline phone calls that were likely 'spammy' (none exceeded about five rings). When I did randomly decide to go online, Yara's account was protected again. Later on in the day, it was unprotected again.
Around this time, I noticed that when trying to look at Sherine's account, it said the account didn't exist. I did a search for any messages sent to her old account name and the conversation said that the account was protected, so she had changed the account name and protected it. However, a day or two later, it was back to the previous name but still protected. If I remember correctly, the last time she said anything on her account was Christmas 2018 (~Dec 25, for the Russians who use a different date).
That's basically all I can think of. Some accounts getting protected or changing usernames. Sherine's account is here: https://twitter.com/KlLAMNYAZ
Both Yara and Sherine were fans of One Direction. (Kilamnyaz and Kilamzayn were already taken; it's based on what one of the other band members said to that member.)
I've discussed the idea on this site a little with my aunt. I suggested there isn't any way for her to help me now, even though in the past she could have signed petitions (the first had a goal of 100,000 signatures, I believe, but got around five, and initially just two.) That is because she is old and therefore not cool, I guess? I believe that a young female trying to contact Yara could have an effect, even one of my sisters, but I'm not sure if a male would be ruled out from doing anything. Maybe a male could have offered to be in a relationship with Sherine or something similar, but Sherine basically stopped doing anything after she reached 150k statuses on Twitter several years ago. The only ways I know of for contacting her would be on Twitter or to search for her parents' phone number and address, and she could easily deny receiving any messages sent to her on Twitter due to her inactivity. If someone wants to send an anonymous email to the administrator of this site (as seen in About page), I could tell you Sherine's family name.
Summary: contact Yara if you don't want to waste time. (She blocked me on my Twitter account, which is banned, but she only did so because Sherine blocked me because I was threatening to contact Sherine's crush on Twitter.)
The other issue. A person who "was the highest rated player in @Warcraft, now the creator of @PlayEverland", killed himself. Some other high-profile people who have killed themselves recently include the mother of popular singer Utada Hikaru; Robin Williams; and the German finance minister. I read about how Byron had become less interested in playing games; I can't find where I read this, but he expressed as much on his Twitter account early this year.
We look at this: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sra64l
And this: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sradgv
Quote from second:
Poor Becca. I was around them when they dated. They weren’t soulmates
and she wasn’t the key to fixing Byron. He had a girl over a couple
months ago that he seemed ecstatic about but she lived far away. When
she left I asked if he had thought about Becca or missed her during the
time, his answer was a firm “no”.
It wasn’t drugs, it wasn’t Becca, and this didn’t happen out of nowhere.
So why did he ask Byron about Becca?
Byron responded to a recent status from Becca about a game culture hostile to females, or to anyone who acts decently and expects the same in return.
Exhibit A, this comment thread from February of this year:
https://twitter.com/Byron/status/1229478832341757953
Byron: "life isn't about games"
Becca: "it's fine to spend all your time playing games"
Exhibit B, from three days before Byron killed himself:
https://twitter.com/BeccaTILTS/status/1277658772429664257
I just wish I had more information on how to deal with detrimental thoughts at a young age so that I wouldn’t just default to trying to escape them through distractions like video games instead of working through them
Stronger mental for all
Becca: "Video games are a distraction"
Second point: society is not functioning correctly. That was true when Byron killed himself, and of course is still true. Byron in March:
https://twitter.com/Byron/status/1239655157001891840
https://twitter.com/Byron/status/1239763104952504321
everyone stays home 2 weeks, the sick continue to quarantine, the rest return. but humanity is irrational
(He could have picked up on Elon Musk's misinterpretation of the graph here, but people make mistakes.)
Then: "Covid and the 90+ degree Texas summer hit around March and really
isolated Byron. He loved food and nature, we couldn’t go to restaurants
and we couldn’t walk around and explore."
Yet, "He was very lonely and sad. Getting him to go float on tubes on the
river, something he would have previously loved, with a group of 6 girls
and me took 30 minutes of pleading irl, 4 phone calls, and eventually
us pulling up and throwing him in the car. He ended up having a great
time and was super thankful we dragged him out."
"I went out Wednesday night and didn’t sleep at home. He spent the night
with our 3rd roommate and his friends, they said he had been more
talkative and fun than he had been in a while. They spent the night
talking, watching movies, eating at one of Byron's favorite restaurants,
he had two entrees and a boba tea."
Why go to restaurants when there is higher chance of infection with coronavirus than in March? Because people were not acting optimally.
I once asked my aunt and uncle what they thought the purpose of art was, but even I can't remember what I thought the answer was then (15 years ago). Hopefully, it was the same answer I would give now. Art makes people think in different ways. If the apparent result of the existence of a piece of art is just that people stand in front of it for a while, staring at it, then it at least gives people a new goal: "stand in front of art and stare at it, perhaps thinking about it". Since even the richest person on earth has limited time, this means the person has conflicting goals with what to do with their time, which forces them to construct their own value system for measuring achievement, which teaches or reminds them to look for the flaws in other systems that measure ability or intent (i.e. signals).
The same thing can result when someone does something confusing, like killing themselves despite having a plan to go to an expensive treatment facility in the near future, or despite that doctor-prescribed drugs have alleviated the chemical symptoms of depression. It forces people to think about their options in a new way, which encourages them to think in a way that can lead to them helping to fix problems. One person's death rarely makes any difference, though.
I should point out that if people are already accustomed to thinking critically about the systems they encounter, someone killing themselves for confusing reasons does not cause people to think in a new and beneficial way.
A comment about this:
Imagine going through a week of that in a loony bin (a bit insensitive
of a term but think of a place built for people in straight jackets)
A short story. Two individuals. Both somewhat older. I'm bad at ages but I'd guess they were both between 40 and 75 years old. A male with African ethnicity and dark skin. When talked to, he would sometimes respond with something that seemed relevant, but it was often syllables that seemed to have no connection to words. But he laughed at situations that other people found funny, like when I tried to use an entry on the schedule of "music appreciation" to gain access to a room with musical instruments.
A female with European ethnicity and light skin, somewhat less fat than the average for the US where 40% of females are obese and another 26% are overweight. A family member of hers had died recently and she often didn't look at whoever in a group was speaking, but she did smile at times. During a meal, she goes over to a chair to sit down. The male in this story, who is already sitting at the table, immediately reaches out and grasps the back of the chair with his hand, and just as quickly the female turns away and heads elsewhere. I call out her name, Karen, twice, and when she turns around she sees the male has turned the chair to allow her to sit on it.
(The title is a reference to the Korean scandal. Also, I already used this title on 22 Aug 2018, in a post that has since been returned to a draft. Lame.~)
