Fear sells papers

Contrary to the oft-promoted view, the emo subculture does not conjure up feelings of depression in the teenagers it “ensnares”. People gravitate towards emo culture because of already-existing feelings of depression and isolation.

A characterisation of an already misunderstood group of people as shallow as the one with which we have been provided is only going to promote fear - fear of an insidious, cult-like subculture that turns ordinary teenagers into morbid depressives - and antagonism towards them. And antagonism towards “emo kids” is only likely to increase their feelings of isolation and persecution, causing more problems, and more self-harm, down the line.

By contrast, the descriptions of MySpace were much more factual and informative, with The Age running two stories explaining how the site works and the implications for those that use it (“Public face of a personal world” and “Mirror with two faces, only one real”, April 24, 2007).

The stories were on the mark in describing it is an online community where users can create profiles describing themselves and their interests, write blogs, upload music, and communicate with people all over the world. The reports also correctly highlighted the issues that can arise from broadcasting private thoughts onto such a public space.

But regardless of their veracity, such reports were only necessitated because MySpace was imposed onto a story where it didn’t really belong - as the prime angle. Mainstream media sources attested that the site was the means by which the girls built and maintained their friendship, and that it was utilised to plan the suicides.

The evidence cited was cryptic, vaguely-relevant messages and poetry which gave “clues” as to the girls’ mental states and intentions, such as “Let Steph n me b free,” and “it feels like it always rains” (“Tragic last words of MySpace suicide girls”, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 24, 2007).

Even ignoring that the girls’ friendship occurred primarily offline (they were schoolmates), there is no record of the girls using MySpace to plan their deaths, unless morbid poetry and vague messages can be viewed as ironclad evidence to the contrary.

Though some have interpreted what the girls posted on the site to be, retrospectively, a glimpse into the mindsets of two suicidal teenagers, the fact is teenagers have expressed themselves in such a way for years - all that has changed is the medium. The printed journal has been supplanted by its online equivalent. And though it can conceivably be considered a warning sign, not every teenager who writes about depression is suicidal or even depressed at all.

According to the latest figures available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), more than 2,000 Australians commit suicide per year - far too many for all of them to be big news. Two added ingredients (the misunderstood subculture du jour and a popular social networking site) sexed up reports of one particular suicide pact, turning it into the story of the week.

This is not to suggest that the disappearance and suicide of two teenage girls is not newsworthy - it’s much more than that. However, tackily branding the teenagers the “MySpace suicide girls” and distorting the role both the website and the emo subculture had in the girls’ deaths is, quite frankly, a despicable way of reporting it.

With all the attention devoted to the peripherals, focus was all but completely diverted from reasonable discussion of what factors actually were responsible for two young girls losing the will to live.

Many stories mentioned, at least in passing, that emo kids are often antagonised or vilified by other subcultures, or by the mainstream. But it is the issue of antagonism - that the two girls were constantly the targets of bullying - that was most bizarrely overlooked by the majority of the mainstream media in any attempts to explain why the girls killed themselves.