A meme worth spreading

[desh]

Per rahaeli, the Abuse Team manager (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rahaeli/280239.html):

Please post your full name, date of birth, full address, and telephone number (plus cell phone number, if you have one) to your journal, as the first chronological entry (backdated) in your journal, with Private security, and leave a note in your userinfo indicating that you've done so. The life you save may be your own. In the event of an emergency, LiveJournal administrators can view this information -- and please believe that it is only used in the event of an absolute emergency. But you'd be surprised how many of those there are on a service with four million users. And in an emergency situation, every second counts.

Yes, the Abuse team occasionally hears of users who plan to commit suicide, but there are other situations where having this information could possibly be of use to the police. There have been, for instance, phone posts that were interrupted by physical violence before, and other such situations. The Abuse team often gets reports of these things, and oftentimes, there is nothing we can do to help, because we can't find you.

Please take a moment of your time and make this post. Your privacy will never be violated except in absolute need, and though we hope it will never be necessary, it could prove to be very necessary indeed.

---

Yeah, we had a draining night last night. It ended up okay in the end this time, but it's frustrating when there's only so much you can do. Please, follow these instructions, and pass them on.

Comments

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

makes sense. i did it, and i think i did it correctly, too.

:)s

[conana.livejournal.com]

somehow replying to desh in outcastspice's journal seems odd.

Yes, law enforcement can probably find better ways to get personal information. No, I am not depending on Livejournal's security to protect anything that I would not post to the public internet. But it just smells sketchy. The circumstances in which this is supposedly useful are pretty bizarre. I am posting to my lj about suicide (ok, not that bizarre) and I want to be stopped by having lj support call the police? Why the fuck? I have seen some reasonable (sometimes) suggestions for how the internet could report personal crime (best I can find just now) but the lj abuse team just seems like the wrong venue for this. Maybe if I were a whole lot more adicted to lj than I am.

Really, it sounds more like a few lj abuse teammembers who have been badly burned, feel guilty, and are trying to figure out how they could have fixed something that was not their fault. Full credit for trying, but I do not like the answer.

[desh]

Every time we get a report of a suicidal user that we deem urgent (based on our collective experience), it's a very stressful and draining situation for everyone who works on it, which is essentially all of us who are online and available at the time. And many, many times, the suicidal user is not making an informed, rational decision; and is instead just upset about something. To quote rahaeli, "But 'he left me and now I'm swallowing my entire bottle of Xanax with a Jack Daniels chaser', that's not even close to 'I choose to end my life early, but with dignity and peace.'" And sometimes, in the former case, we can find enough information to contact local police and direct them to this person, at which point it's out of our hands.

The purpose of this meme (in as much as suicides are concerned) is to increase the chances that we can more quickly do that. If there's one user who posts this information, and then at some later point gets upset and suicidal, and posts a suicide note that gets reported to us and that we deem urgent, then we will feel this meme served a purpose.

You're not the only one uncomfortable with this. Check out the original post, which I link to at the top of my version above, for some interesting comments (and some other comments) on the matter.

[desh]

Also, it's important to make clear, which I haven't yet, that although this meme was started and spread by members of the LJ Abuse team, it's not an official policy or anything. That's why it's just a meme. It's just something that would make us, as individuals, happier or less stressed.

[rialtus.livejournal.com]

I would love to look at the original post, to see the hopefully inntelligent discussion on this topic. However, the original post is protected.

(Yeah, color me late to the party...)

[desh]

The original post itself is essentially what I have here, but I can't help you about the discussion; sorry.