Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Jane says she will kill herself in 90 days.

UPDATE:

90 Day Jane's blog has moved here. The latest entry is vague, but it appears that this is not the genuine diary of a young woman planning to kill herself, rather an art project that will be abandoned within the next few days. Are we relieved or disappointed? Regardless, it's an interesting experiment if only for the hundreds of comments that the blog's readers logged for each entry ... for every heartfelt expression of kindness, there are three vicious attacks along the lines of "why don't you get it over with you fucking attention whore" and far worse sentiments than that, believe me. And these are from people who accepted the 90-day suicide plan as something real that they had a right to weigh in on -- few of the comments expressed any suspicion that the whole thing was a put-on.

So what has "Jane" taught us? That we're so desensitized to people exposing and celebrating their ugliest impulses via reality TV, questionable "self-help" talk shows and internet networking websites that we aren't even shocked when a young woman seemingly charts her last ninety days on a blog? And not only are we not shocked, but we join in as sport, taunting her for our own pleasure. I use the royal "we," of course, as there were plenty of folks offering support and trying to help change her mind, but surely some of those people were operating with voyeuristic rather than altruistic intentions (myself included -- I left no comments but added the link here because of my own morbid fascinations). Perhaps Jane's jaundiced view of life among the humans isn't all that inaccurate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

bad link?