RL Anger

[Arkandel]

Double post! But I read something interesting on Slashdot just now (which I linked since the original includes actual links for fact-checking purposes), so I'll paste it verbatim here:

"Do you screen the games your kids play for deer crossing the road [youtube.com]? Would it surprise you to learn that deer are more dangerous than school shootings?

There have been about 250 fatalities from school shootings over 18 years [washingtonpost.com] (excluding suicides and gang violence). That works out to (250)/(18) = 13.9 deaths per year. Since there are approximately 51 million K-12 students in the U.S. [ed.gov], a student's odds of being killed in a school shooting in any given year are (51 million) / (13.9 per year) = 1 in 3.67 million.
About 120 Americans are killed every year by deer [vox.com]. (325.7 million Americans) / (120 per year) = 1 in 2.71 million.

So a student is more likely to be killed by a deer than from a school shooting. Where are all the walk-outs and protests advocating deer population control?

For some perspective on the scope of the school shooting problem, look at the stats the CDC puts out. For 2015, the leading causes of death [cdc.gov] among the 15-19 year old demographic were:

3,919 deaths - Accidents (mostly automobile accidents and drug overdoses). 282x more than school shootings.
2.061 deaths - Suicide. 148x more.
1,587 deaths - Homicide (mostly outside school, and gang related). 114x more.
583 deaths - Malignant neoplasms (cancer). 42x more.
306 deaths - Heart disease. 22x more.
195 deaths - Birth defects. 14x more.
72 deaths - Influenza (the flu). 5.2x more.
63 deaths - Chronic lower respiratory diseases. 4.5x more.
61 deaths - Cerebrovascular diseases. 4.4x more.
52 deaths - Diabetes. 3.7x more.
41 deaths - Complications from pregnancy and childbirth. 3x more.

A protest over excessive rates of teen pregnancy could potentially save 3x more lives than a protest over school shootings. Likewise, teaching kids not to each too many sweets, to exercise, not to smoke, get the flu shot, use sunscreen, not to join gangs, to buckle their seat belt, not to use drugs, and offering them counseling for depression, would all be much more productive uses of our time and effort than worrying about or debating school shootings. For that matter, controlling deer populations to reduce the number of fatalities from striking deer could potentially save 1.35x as many students' lives as lost to school shootings.

If you want to tackle a life-threatening issue that students face, probably the best choice is suicide. It results in more than a hundred times as many student deaths as school shootings. But when's the last time you saw the media run a story about teen suicide? The only reason school shootings are even on the radar is because of the media using them to play the "think of the children!" card against guns."

[surreality]

@arkandel The 'absurd on its face' part of this is that there are movements on all of those fronts as well.

Many counties and states have deer culls. If someone wants to shoot and kill something, many parts of the country will ask you to please please please go shoot some deer at various times of the year.

Drugs are already illegal, barring prescribed drugs and a handful of over the counter drugs (since people can overdose on those also).

Suicide is a mental health issue, and the mental health resources in this country are less than ideal, but since they're health issues... have fun with that one; lots of people are loud on this, too. (This applies to all the health-related concerns, too -- yeah, sure, that kid could have prevented their birth defect? Really?)

Anti-gang initiatives exist.

Kids can't go get a flu shot without parental consent, and again are part of the health care issue. Has this guy even heard of anti-vaxers? Kid in question may not even be getting a say here.

Healthy food choices were the previous first lady's main issue to push for 8 years; industry changes on this front are consistently moving forward in support of ensuring people know what they're putting in their body and what it can do to it.

Not even going to touch the abysmal state of sex education in the US, or the aggressive stance taken against women's health clinics where many women (not just teens) get their primary gynecological care, including pregnancy and prenatal care.

Plenty of folks are involved on these fronts, too. It's laughable to think otherwise.

[Derp]

Also, they don't run stories about suicides after the CDC found that running stories about suicides caused teens to try and copycat the dead one so that they could be dead and famous too.

[Arkandel]

@derp said in RL Anger:

Also, they don't run stories about suicides after the CDC found that running stories about suicides caused teens to try and copycat the dead one so that they could be dead and famous too.

Ugh, 13 Reasons Why's second season is trying so hard to cover their asses about that. Warnings before, disclaimers after, I'm surprised they don't have breaks in the episodes to alert the audience.

[Derp]

@arkandel said in RL Anger:

13 Reasons Why'

I'll admit to having heard of this series, and yet I still have no idea what it is.

[Arkandel]

@derp Since it's been a year+ since Season 1 came out there's no need for spoiler tags. It's about a girl in high school who gets bullied, commits suicide then sends out tapes about why she did it and who contributed to it... and the fallout from that among school faculty, friends, etc.

S1 was good. S2... I felt it stretched things a bit too thin to squeeze another series out.

[surreality]

@arkandel It is still impressively well done. It's not an easy watch, even for an adult, but it is incredibly well done. For a lot of us who grew up before the age of cyberbullying, it's certainly an eye-opener. It isn't just teens doing this, too; it's interesting to see how many of the issues we have in the hobby are reflected in that series in some form or another.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality It's also fuckin' terrible. Allegedly they went against every piece of advice from psychologists and therapists when making said series.

[surreality]

@arkandel Quick double: S2 gets into some of the issues of sexism more than even the first. It's a different set of issues, essentially, and not focused purely on the suicide.

[surreality]

@tinuviel We're just going to have to disagree about the terrible part.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality Well yes, given that those terms are subjective. And you're wrong.

[surreality]

@tinuviel I'm wrong a lot, but as somebody who has been suicidal for over a year, that show helped chill me out quite a fucking lot on that front, as that result is anything but terrible so far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure as shit not wrong to feel that way. So, bluntly, fuck you. Your snark routine is uncute and grossly misplaced in this case.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality It's not a snark routine. That you find it helpful is great. That so many find it unhelpful to the point of actually causing problems is not great.

Given that not one but two rapes of young girls occurs, and a scene of actual suicide appears on screen (except in Australia) is evidence enough for me that it is not great.

It's fine for you, well done. It's not fine for everyone.

[surreality]

@tinuviel Bluntly: I disagree with your opinion that it's terrible. You can tell me I'm wrong for having a different opinion all you want, obviously, but it's just making you an asshole in this case.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality We can disagree about whether the entirety is horrid, certainly. But I believe we can agree that some things I have mentioned need to be... reflected upon sensibly in its third season.

[surreality]

@tinuviel Sure. But here's the horrible part: the things that happen in that series really happen. They happen disturbingly often, and people don't want to see them. And the don't want to see them often causes them get swept under the rug and not addressed properly when they happen in the real world.

It is not something to watch lightly. It is incredibly hard to watch. It's a very unflinching look at these subjects, with all of the conflicted emotions and complications that come with them.

People can't 'don't want to see it' out of happening in the real world. Yes, it's jarring as hell to see 'this is what that actually looks like, and it's fucking horrifying', and people generally don't want to see that.

The problem is, more people need to see something on TV in graphic detail these days to recognize that it's really something that happens. Is that also fucked up? Sure. But it's like refusing to show the bodies coming home from recent wars in the US for so long: it supports the sort of denial of reality that enables horrors to continue, because no one has to look at them.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality Oh. I know.
I'm a member of the 'not quite right in the head' club.

Yes, these things need attention. Yes, a strangely popular show is perhaps the way to do things.

It also needs to be handled delicately. The people that need to see these things are not the people that suffer and experience these things. And yet, at least out here, that is to whom it is advertised.

[Arkandel]

@tinuviel One thing I did like from both seasons is that it gives us a compelling reason for that oldest of gripes about highschool movies/TV shows in general: "Why doesn't she/he go to an adult? Why not tell a teacher or go to the police?"

Well, that's why. The whole series is very consistent about how much leeway and benefit of a doubt is given to certain kinds of people compared to the burden placed on everyone else, and the extent they are punished even when it's shown they crossed the line.

[Tinuviel]

@arkandel I'm fully prepared to agree that the whole series is valuable.

I am not, however, at all prepared to state such without big goddamn caveats.

[surreality]

@tinuviel Honestly, 'You are not alone' is an important message, too. I haven't seen the marketing around it to know if that's the targeting, but that is valid.

I was pretty shocked they didn't warning label the shit out of the first season (maybe they have since), because they should have.