Kulturkampf

[DavidCroquet]

The people who placed him in, and fought to assure he stayed in, a position he never should have had, bear the most responsibility for this.

My controversial opinion is that these people aren't at fault, nor are the people saying he should be investigated. Jason Arday is at fault for his own suicide.

My thing is that I feel like a lot of Current Year Discourse is rooted in this increasingly expansive concept of where to attribute blame when people kill themselves. Suicide is like 1% of all deaths worldwide--though I'm not sure if that includes countries like canada juicing the numbers--but I would say a lot more than 1% of discussions about why some cultural thing should or shouldn't be done invoke the specter of harm via externally-induced suicide to make their point.

You can't show that on TV, someone might kill themselves! 
You have to publish this book, or who knows how many people will kill themselves without it?!
We can't enforce the rules, don't know you know someone might kill themselves?

We really must put an end to butterflies flapping their wings....there's no telling how many suicides their thoughtless behavior will cause!

It's not wrong to be upset when someone commits suicide, but it is wrong to do these adhoc forensic inquries into who pressed the suicide button when it happens. There's only one person who can do that, definitionally. I'd say even in the most obvious cases it's questionable--I remember that girl who was texting that boy to kill himself over and over and think that's pretty clear cut...but then I remember the sage wisdom of tylerthecreator and find myself questioning again.

Not to mention that in the case of Arday, anyone actively participating in the discourse is deluding themselves if they want others to believe they have a sincere interest in uh...suicide justice? It's just the next stage of the already ongoing argument, only both sides are now freshly armed with a shiny new weapon.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Also it's probably worth mentioning that Arday was "found dead" and it's not a confirmed suicide. I don't expect he was struck by lightning, but there's still a possibility that something other than suicide happened. Though I'm not sure any cause--including lightning, because maybe Arday wouldn't have been standing there if he hadn't been unfairly lauded and/or severely scrutinized!--would stop people people from using his corpse to score rhetorical goals.