Avatar film causes depression/suicidal tendencies

[RC-1162]

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

 

 

I mean I can understand if people felt bad and/or disappointed with Avatar for not living up to expectations storywise (I know I was), but really, I can't understand how people actually took that CGI realm to their hearts and were deluded enough to think killing themselves would result in a "rebirth on Pandora"

[Litofsky]

For some reason, I recall a thread about this, but am unable to locate it.

[Alkonium]

There's a reason I say "Never underestimate human stupidity." This is that reason. Let's have a look here at the many ways these people are idiots.

 

1. Dead is dead (that one's up for debate, if you want to get philosophical)

2. It's just a movie, and if you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, you've got bigger problems.

3. There's nothing in Avatar to suggest that something like that would happen.

[Ghost]

It's because of this freaking propaganda that people believe this, if people are retarded enough to think the movie is reality then they have some serious issues

[True_Avery]

People will believe pretty much anything I've found, and if you present something that pulls at the right brain strings you'll get a good number of people who want to believe it exists. Considering the many different origins of religions, fanbases, roleplayers, and so on it doesn't really surprise me. This film was also cater made to do specifically, well, this.

 

What does sort of surprise me is why people would choose Avatar. The world... sucks. It is pretty, but you essentially want to be born into a backwards society with no technology, medicine, and so on surrounded by a ton of animals that want to eat you. If you want to replicate the experience then go live with a tribe in Africa.

[Darth Avlectus]

You know, it never ceases to amaze me this kind of reactions to..... fiction.

Over certain music, or something that hits close to home I could understand.

 

One thing the definitely gets is an epic facepalm. I don't know whether to be more amused with or disturbed at this kind of reaction on such a large scale of people.

 

There's a reason I say "Never underestimate human stupidity." This is that reason. Let's have a look here at the many ways these people are idiots.

 

1. Dead is dead (that one's up for debate, if you want to get philosophical)

2. It's just a movie, and if you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, you've got bigger problems.

3. There's nothing in Avatar to suggest that something like that would happen.

 

Right on. QFT

 

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

 

 

Yeah, there are things out there that are somewhat a personal revelation, and it is individual thing. If you're reacting in this way, you need to sort it out. I'm sure we've all had that reaction at one point or another to various things.

 

Other times, though, it's indulgence or coping mistook for personal revelation--sadly which our increasingly entertainment centric societies are conditioning its audiences to have: Indulgence. I remember hearing about how the whole "Pink Floyd The Wall" had some kind of similar (though much smaller) reaction. Does it really hit home to that many people? Somehow I doubt it. I wonder if "powerful subconscious suggestion" (AKA hypnosis ) really has anything to do with it, or if it simply a result of what people are becoming from their dependence on entertainment media.

 

Some people really could do with tough love. Aye, ye olde irish solution be a swift kick in the arse and told to stop obsessin' with a film of fantasy. Aye, a gold doubloon to the people who continue to see reason and be not led astray.

 

From the article:

(CNN) -- James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

 

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.<snip>

IF there are any mental health professionals who are in a charitable mood, here's a good place to start.

 

 

<snip>

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

 

"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.

Having nothing else to do could be part of it--getting up and getting out is advisable. And doing something, anything that makes you feel better about yourself and the world. Just a suggestion. I'm no mental health professional, but it really only takes a little common sense. Yes, it is rerouting that effort and energy, to something more constructive. I suggest you do it yourself while you're still capable and in control BEFORE you lose control and intervention is required.

 

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

Video: Depressed after 'Avatar'?

RELATED TOPICS

 

* James Cameron

* Movie Reviews

* Entertainment

 

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

 

This one has crossed the line IMO. Should probably get help.

 

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

 

Well, your disgust is understandable, but it's directed wrongly. If you see something wrong, do something about it... which would require that you be engaged in reality.

 

Cameron's movie, which has pulled in more than $1.4 billion in worldwide box office sales and could be on track to be the highest grossing film of all time, is set in the future when the Earth's resources have been pillaged by the human race. A greedy corporation is trying to mine the rare mineral unobtainium from the planet Pandora, which is inhabited by a peace-loving race of 10-foot tall, blue-skinned natives called the Na'vi.

 

In their race to mine for Pandora's resources, the humans clash with the Na'vi, leading to casualties on both sides. The world of Pandora is reminiscent of a prehistoric fantasyland, filled with dinosaur-like creatures mixed with the kinds of fauna you may find in the deep reaches of the ocean. Compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia.

 

<snip>

 

That's it? A SIMPLE PLOTLINE as this?! :facepalm: Aye porfavore, gimmie a break.

 

THIS is what is ALSO disgusting about the human race.

 

"Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far," said Dr. Stephan Quentzel, psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect."

 

People even partially routed in firm reason don't have these sorts of reactions.

 

 

The bright side is that for Hill and others like him -- who became dissatisfied with their own lives and with our imperfect world after enjoying the fictional creation of James Cameron -- becoming a part of a community of like-minded people on an online forum has helped them emerge from the darkness.

 

That's good to hear. However, the fact that these kinds of reactions exist on such a large scale should say something about the way that we live our lives.

 

<snip>

 

Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack, in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

 

There you go. Some people IMO could really stand to be smacked upside the head. Repeatedly.

[Totenkopf]

There's a reason I say "Never underestimate human stupidity." This is that reason. ............

2. It's just a movie, and if you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, you've got bigger problems.....

 

Too true. It's almost amazing the number of clearly fictional ideas people will latch onto as a reason to kill themselves.

[Ctrl Alt Del]

The world... sucks. It is pretty, but you essentially want to be born into a backwards society with no technology, medicine, and so on surrounded by a ton of animals that want to eat you.

Civilization, for some poor sods, is pretty much what you have described too. Just a bit more metaphorical.

[Samnmax221]

It's nice to see natural selection at work, at least something good will come of post 95' James Cameron.

[True_Avery]

Still, why Avatar? I'd take the Harry Potter or Pokemon universe over it any day

[Revan 411]

I'll admit that Avatar was a good movie, and I admire the message it delivered, but the fact that these people are depressed from watching it is... disturbing. It's true that the world in this current age is a bit "gray", but dreaming about some fantasy world won't fix that, and suicidal thoughts will just make things worse for the individual.

 

Plus, Earth is just as much wonderful as Pandora. The Planet Earth series, along with the 2007 Earth documentary pretty much proves that.

[Jae Onasi]

These people a. need to sever their connections with the Mother Ship and b. seek some serious professional help.

[LordOfTheFish]

Everyday I lose more faith in the human race. And I'm still young.

[JediAthos]

It's nice to see natural selection at work, at least something good will come of post 95' James Cameron.

 

^ This

[Shem]

I'm not a bit surprised by some of the idiots out there. After seeing what people have written on my YouTube videos, I have pretty much lost all hope in the direction humanity is going. Sometimes I laugh at it, but other times when I think about it more seriously, that alone is depressing.

[Ghost]

It's amazing how the human race still prospers with the idiocy factor out there

[Jae Onasi]

Everyday I lose more faith in the human race. And I'm still young.

 

I'm not a bit surprised by some of the idiots out there. After seeing what people have written on my YouTube videos, I have pretty much lost all hope in the direction humanity is going. Sometimes I laugh at it, but other times when I think about it more seriously, that alone is depressing.

 

If you look for the bad, you'll always find it. If you concentrate on finding the good, you'll also find it, and it might inspire you to greater things as well.

[Darth Avlectus]

It's amazing how the human race still prospers with the idiocy factor out there

 

Really? I'd personally say that there is a ton of prosperity from idiocy. That's the sad part of it.

[ChAiNz.2da]

I'm depressed I don't have a lightsaber... or a holodeck... or a Quarian with an accent *sigh*

 

[Darth Avlectus]

^^^If it makes ya feel better, I got smacked in the head with a fluorescent light tube a few years ago doing BYW.

[ChAiNz.2da]

^^^If it makes ya feel better, I got smacked in the head with a fluorescent light tube a few years ago doing BYW.

 

in a sadistic kinda way.. it does. Thanks for the early morning laugh

I laugh only because you obviously survived

 

I used to launch fluorescent tubes in a trash compactor years ago and watch them collapse on themselves... you know, before I learned that it isn't a good thing to do. >.>

[RC-1162]

That's it? A SIMPLE PLOTLINE as this?! :facepalm: Aye porfavore, gimmie a break.

 

Especially after this started floating around (spoilers) : Lookie

[Ping]

The problem is some (okay, judging by the article, alot) of people can't differentiate between reality and fiction, probably because they were never shown or outright told the difference.

[Web Rider]

For those of you who don't live in the trust-fund-baby, hippe-community that the California North Coast is, I'm not surprised you find this so surprising. While certainly people here don't watch movies much less shower, those who did see Avatar use it as more connon fodder in their destroy-society-live-like-the-animals arguments.

 

It's nice that some of these people are getting help, it's sad they exist to begin with, and sad...though not AS sad that they killed themselves.

[TKA-001]

I'm not a bit surprised by some of the idiots out there. After seeing what people have written on my YouTube videos, I have pretty much lost all hope in the direction humanity is going. Sometimes I laugh at it, but other times when I think about it more seriously, that alone is depressing.

I should hardly think that comments on YouTube are representative of the decline of humanity. It's the internet. People say stupid **** on the internet, they use bad grammar and spelling because they're particularly young or they don't care (with good reason, since it's the internet), and many are just feigning stupidity to rile other people up and take off steam from real life, and no, it's not pathetic or indicative of mental instability to do that (because trolling is very easy to do and takes no time at all unless lots of effort is put into it). People killing themselves or letting the things that matter in life stagnate and rot or over obsession with sources of entertainment (especially Avatar, of all ****ing things) is a far cry from 13-year-olds not understanding a video game's plot & older people trolling about it. This is why I sometimes am sad that really good movies and stuff exist, because they're so easy to get and dive into, and use as escapism to an unhealthy degree. In light of experiences I've had in the past year, I frankly feel terribly sick for the unlucky people, who, unlike me, either started to pull themselves out of obsession with Star Wars (for example) years past the point where I did, or never did at all. There is simply too many great things in the world that exist which people to go out and find for it to be justifiable for a person to just not go out there and get them. There are so many possibilities, so many glorious things that a person could accomplish in one day - one day - if they opened their mind and tried - just tried - to ignore the boundaries, both those which are given to us, and those that we give ourselves.

 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (also known as Seneca the Younger) said: "Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery." I think that saying applies greatly to the people of today. Almost all of us, especially those with internet addictions and other time parasites, live trapped in loops, almost reliving the same day over and over, but rather than the exact same thing, like in a time loop on a Star Trek episode the name of which I have forgotten, each day is a slight variation on the last. Many of the factors of these loops are ones which we ourselves build, bit by bit, just as Jacob Marely built every chain for himself that he wore in his afterlife in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (or was it Mark Twain? Or David Copperfield? Just looked it up, it's Dickens.). The sinner puts these chains around himself, and even as he hates them, he hugs them tight, because they are familiar. He has spent years building and wearing these chains, they're one of the only things he's ever known for so long. They sicken him, make him wretch for how they hold him back, but he doesn't quite grasp to the extent that it is not the chains that hold him back as much as it is himself, because just as he built those chains, so also could he destroy them if he so chose. It sure as **** wouldn't be easy, because they're ****ing chains, but far from impossible. Almost none of them actually know this. Trapped in their own chains, their self-established loops, they keep doing the same thing over and over. It is similar to insanity which is often said to be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, however, there is a key difference in the fact that they don't expect a different result. They don't expect a different result because they've been in the loop for so long that they don't know what different results they ever could expect or bring about. If their eyes were ever opened, however, for one day - one single twenty-four hour day - so many things might change. They would see the folly of their pointless endeavors, the hundreds upon hundreds of hours wasted, and for what? I won't lie here, not even to you - you people on the internet whom I will probably never meet in real life, and if I do I will never know so even that doesn't matter - I used to have the idea for the best Star Wars fan fiction saga ever - I spent so much time on that, pouring my life and soul into this well that my imagination had built.

 

For over a year, after some spurts of productivity on it, actually making progress ground to a halt, at which point it should have died, but it didn't. It ****ing didn't. But I just couldn't let it go. It was so good, so brilliant, it would have been the best thing ever. I just went on and on and on, agonizing over it when I could have been doing so many more productive things - studying, writing something that I wouldn't be ashamed to tell another human being about, praying for my own salvation, or what-have-you. But still it went on until I took a foray into the real word, the real ****ing world, and I ****ing saw what I was doing to myself. I had spent three days outside of my home, doing things with other people, doing stuff that I actually enjoyed, not a chore, a perversion of creativity that I was inflicting on myself. I was with people I liked, doing things we all believed in, nothing that we'd be ashamed to talk to each other about, unlike the story I was trying and failing to write. After those three days were over, I ****ing saw. And I knew that there are some things in the world that matter - and that saga that I was agonizing over, wasting my time on, was not ****ing one of them. So that story is now gone. But then.... About a year later, I did it again, sort of. But it was different now. This came after I started to truly despise the online community in general, with all its vanities and wastefulness, but more especially that of Star Wars, and even more specifically, that of a little-known spin-off series called Knights of the Old Republic.

 

After spending - Nay, ****ing raping and murdering so much time on the internet over these two games, debating the **** out of it with fellow idiots in my earlier days, I had come to despise that community the most, because it was the most specific fandom, the one that I had dived into the deepest, and I saw the dark heart of that abyss. I gazed into that abyss for so long that the abyss ****ing gazed back at me, into me, and it ****ing horrified me to think that I would go back to it after I had my revelation after the aforementioned three days. So I hated that fandom, truly I did, because it embodied everything, everything that I hated in my life - murder of time, waste of talent, squandering of one's gifts, doing it to yourself and knowing that across that vast, intangible domain that is the internet, many others are doing the same to themselves, and lots of them are even worse off than that, drowning in their own apathy, despite everything that could do with what they have. The KotOR fandom embodied apathy to me, embodied, stood for, or symbolized, in some way or another, everything in my life, everything in the world, that was wrong. So, after being inspired by such notable internet masterpieces as Halflife Fulllife Consequences (with several animated adaptations) and My Immortal (the best dramatic reading of which, by the way, is the one by three Scottish guys on YouTube known collectively as the LRMReading group, and I highly recommend their reading of the story as well as their other readings), as well as the novel Atlanta Nights (narrated on YouTube by a user known as manwithoutabody, but he does have a real name that I have forgotten) I figured that I would have my revenge by writing the best trollfic in the history of any fandom. I had had extensive experience in the fanfic community of the KotOR series, far more than I ever wanted, and I knew what the people liked, and what they hated. I had seen the worst **** ever produced in that community be praised to the best. And I read some of them and saw it as **** that it was, even though evidently nobody else in the entire ****ing universe did. I had seen it all; bad use of the English language, ****ty plots, idiotic wangst, self-insertion, blatant rape of established character traits and defilement of canon, all of it. I saw it and I was repulsed, but I also felt it was sad that apparently, while other popular franchises (Half-Life and Harry Potter to name two) had famously bad and hilarious fanfics written for them, Star Wars evidently didn't have any. So I would fix that.

 

I would write the worst KotOR fic ever, but it would also be the best. My sentiment at the time could be likened to the Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight: "All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm gonna give it to them." That's how I felt. All that community cared about was their stupid ****ing plots and stupid ****ing writing and characterization and everything else in their unholy, terrible ****. This fandom, I felt, deserved a better class of crap, and I would give it to them. A sprawling, epic masterpiece that was horrible, like their "masterpieces", but glorious in its awfulness, instead of just sickening. So I began. And like the disciples that accompanied Jesus to the Mount of Olives (don't remember what Gospel that's from), even though I was awake at the beginning, I had been awakened to what was horrible about how much time I had been wasting on Star Wars, I promptly fell right back asleep, so to speak. That was what happened. I had ****ing started over. Again I poured everything I had into this trollfic, and it truly was great. It was the best and worst fanfic in history, or, it would have been if it still existed today. But again, I had an epiphany, and again, I saw the horror that I was slipping into again, and I came to realize, after wasting an entire half-day, pretty much straight-through, on that ****ing trollfic, that if I was to have my true revenge - more importantly, though, my true victory - over Star Wars, then what I really had to do was just walk away and leave it to rot in the dead past where it belonged. This wasn't going to do me any good. It was hard, but I had to delete the story, even though I had made considerable progress. It just wasn't worth it. I had learned before, and I learned again, that there are greater things out there in the world. Great, wondrous things that I was going to miss if I wasted one more ****ing hour on this story. I knew that it was the best and worst fanfic that could ever have been made, but I knew what I had to do. Some sacrifices had to be made, and this story was one of them. Once again, I sacrificed my brilliant creation because it was the right thing to do, to save my ****ing life, quite frankly. For a time I was disappointed that it had come to this, that once again a product of my imagination, that I had put so much of myself into, would have to be destroyed. Regrettable, but the greater good must be served. True, it would have been a magnificent story. But again, some sacrifices must be made. And sometimes, the greatest stories of all are the ones that are never told. That story, like the ones before it, was one of them. And in the end, it will be for the best. Thus I saw, again. If I should misspend hours, days of my time, it should be out in the world, among other people. Making mistakes and finding myself. Not on the ****ing internet.

 

These Avatar-obsessed weirdos need an epiphany, I think.

 

If you look for the bad, you'll always find it. If you concentrate on finding the good, you'll also find it, and it might inspire you to greater things as well.

Finally, my search for one person on the internet who isn't out of their ****ing mind is over.