This morning Citizen, the owner of GunZFactor finally came in. He called the possibly-suicidal's internet service provider, who in turn contacted the mother. Despite what some people say about the right to die, I'm not buying into that, especially not for someone who's only lived 17 years. Expecting my ego to fluctuate any time now.

Meanwhile I just finished my first short film and submitted it. Pulled off a decent job despite my team members consisting of an overly quiet guy and a bitch. Back to secondary school days again. Zephyre suggested I go nazi, and I'm glad I did. Nothing against the overweight, but she really did piss me off for all her dated competence and snide remarks. She edited a 30 second video when the target was 90, and took advice from a person who was sleeping throughout class. Just tried to leave her out of the loop and bulldoze through.

Apparently, the director is one of the last few truly dictatorial roles left in modern society. Great.

During all my time idly surfing across the internet, I've come across many stories: real world marriages sparking over craigslist, a guy on 4chan abusing a cat and posting pictures before having the cops called on him; the thief of an Xbox 360 being tracked down and forced to return the console, a virtual mob acquiring 16500 USD through an elaborate scam within the boundaries of an MMO... you see, the thing about many internet events is that it's often not that difficult to participate in the action, to actually be there and have some sort of small influence on the outcome.

Someone on my home forums (Gunzfactor) posted a thread a few days ago announcing his intention to commit suicide. He gave a date, and a short letter he was going to leave. The details in the note checked out when I did some research; I also found that he had weight difficulties and recently got busted for doing drugs. He's 17, and lives in Texas.

I think the reason why so many people in Singapore (from looking at my generation) rarely connect with outsiders is that the outside world has never been properly defined to them. It's always a vague fairytale; when people refer to them it's always in the context of tourism or basic history. Not to mention that too many of us have never had a proper conversation with a "real" foreigner that isn't trying to assimilate into our society. People don't feel real on the net.

According to the rough date and time he's given, the letter will be in his pocket for the last time on Monday morning/early afternoon SGT. It looks likely that he's not joking about being really depressed - what's uncertain is whether he has the will to carry out the final act. He COULD just be high, but yesterday he posted a second time, with the same intentions saying he "just wants out".

Sure, a couple of people on my forums have talked about really depressing things before. Falling in love with cousins, drunk father leaving the family stranded on a highway and driving off, etc. They've considered suicide out loud. But this guy says he's decided. He's given a date.

I noticed the thread on Friday afternoon, and alerted my fellow staff members at Gunzfactor. A debate on the appropriate way to help, and whether to help at all sprung up. It's at times like these when your mind gets forcibly expanded; suicide is nowhere near as black-and-white in the west as it is in Singapore.

We can't violate our privacy policy by giving his IP address away for the cops to trace. We're not even sure who to report this to. There aren't a whole lot of guidelines out there, despite that millions use the internet to vent their frustrations. Worst of all, the site owner hasn't checked in, so we're limited in what we can do.

The thread where the guy announced his suicide are 4 pages full of replies. Half of them ridicule him and egg him on; one of them sent him a nasty private message, then became afraid and asked the moderators to delete it somehow. We couldn't.

Remember what I said in the beginning about easy participation? I'm not just a guy halfway around the world any more. The internet places me seconds between me and him, me and the Texas police. If he dies, and I could have influenced the outcome somehow, I am partially responsible, no matter what our ignorant, backwards Singaporean morality says.

And even then I don't really feel urgency in me. Is it alright if I ignore a dangerously depressed person as long as I don't look him in the eye and don't know him? What do I do, dammit?

District 9 (2009) Review

Standards are getting lower, I guess.

District 9 is another one of those films with a premise so irresistibly provocative that you can't help but instantly generate lofty expectations in your head after you come away from the trailer. Scifi fare that combines fantasy with just enough gritty realism to make it real is my favourite kind of Scifi. Some works deliver with aplomb; Children of Men, Firefly/Serenity, and Karen Traviss's SF novels. Neill Blomkamp comes close.

District 9's plot stays pretty fresh for most of the movie - alien refugees appear in South Africa, the government takes control, and the aliens become the center of discrimination, xenophobia, exploitation, experiments, and lots of death. The themes recall apartheid and stories I heard of Aryan attitudes towards the Jewish. All very morally-provoking stuff - unfortunately it's serious themes fall apart after the second third of the movie, pulling District 9 into a decline that it never bounces back from.

It looks like the filmmakers just went through the motions of creating a group for humanity to bully just so we can feel shameful and then after that say it's a profound experience. Much of the originality I hoped for never showed up; cookie cutter lines and characters galore. Once you ignore the gore (gore is cheap these days) it goes into it's "serious issues" about as far as a half-hour cartoon would go - which makes sense, because the director chose to spend a third of the film on explosions and action scenes.

What Blomkamp has done, boys and girls, is to poke your sympathy with a stick by abusing a bunch of "those poor guys", and before you realize that the themes are about as shallow as a tin of cat food, dazzles you with a massive, gratuitous action sequence and hope that you don't notice. District 9 is half promising/disturbing movie, half pointless explosive wankfest. The only truly good thing about this movie is that it raises awareness about xenophobia and forced resettlement (albeit dumbing them down significantly).

These threads of glass

I feel really angsty.

I thought the past year or so have been a fairly bad year. I felt I de-matured, I felt I’ve grown weaker; in every sense of the word. I can’t run as fast now, I’m not as fit as I was before during my heydays and I’m not as emotionally stable as I was. Right now, more than ever I feel so mediocre.

I can’t take mediocrity. I desire excellence. But I really can’t seem to find the energy to squeeze that out of me. I’m not as driven as I used to be. In fact I feel old, tired, weary and supremely weak. I’m more accepting of defeat now, and more accepting of imperfections in my life. Some say I have mellowed. I just feel like I messed up some big part along the way that messed up the other parts of me.