The Misery Machine - The Tragic Death of Ronnie McNutt | We're in a Suicide Epidemic | How the Internet Exploits Suicides

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In light of this very important month, Drewby and Yergy discuss the tragic death of Ronnie McNutt, and young veteran from Mississippi, who took his own life on August 31, 2020 while on a Facebook livestream that was not taken down for many hours, despite many reports from people watching. Unfortunately, the footage got into the hands of internet trolls who decided to splice the footage into innocent videos and post them to TikTok, with the intent on traumatizing children, which is TikTok's largest demographic. We discuss the death of Mitchell Henderson, who became the target of 4chan trolls after taking his own life in 2006, Nikki Catsouras, whose accident photos went viral after unscrupulous police officers leaked them online, and the victim who was likely impersonated and made the topic of the "Sh*t Was So Cash" meme who died in a car accident. In all these cases, the victims families were subject of harassment after dealing with the loss of their loved one.  Suicide and loved ones who have struggled with mental health issues are both things that have affected both our lives very deeply. You are more than welcome to reach out to us if you feel you have nowhere else to turn. Email, Instagram DMs, our Discord, whatever medium you prefer. Please don't go through this alone. We are unfortunately living in a time where mental health issues are not only stigmatized, but people who die by suicide are either ridiculed, exploited, or lavished with comforting reassurance that could have easily been brought their way when they were alive and struggling.  This is a multi-faceted problem that will be very difficult to overcome, but the first step in tackling it is being more willing to reach out and be there for people in our lives who are suffering. Right now, there are arguably more people affected than ever before due to COVID-19. Let us all work together to be better to our loved ones. It's the only way our society will have a chance. Link to Ronnie's Funeral Fundraiser: https://celebrationchurchms.churchcenter.com/giving/to/ronnie-s-funeral-fund?fbclid=IwAR2On_sPyZjj5C0pdfTqo-HkB3axBqmrAqOwoVsfRNuSVJtl4ZfLlqD-GHs Suicide Hotlines Worldwide: http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html LGBTQ+ Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/help-yourself/lgbtq/ Veterans Crisis Line: https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/   Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #podcast #documentary #truecrime #suicideawareness #suicideawarenessmonth #mentalhealth Links about suicide during COVID-19: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/202006/are-we-facing-post-covid-19-suicide-epidemic?fbclid=IwAR2On_sPyZjj5C0pdfTqo-HkB3axBqmrAqOwoVsfRNuSVJtl4ZfLlqD-GHs https://www.psycom.net/covid-19-suicide-rates?fbclid=IwAR2On_sPyZjj5C0pdfTqo-HkB3axBqmrAqOwoVsfRNuSVJtl4ZfLlqD-GHs

This is an episode that I've been kind of wanting to do for a while. I haven't really know how to frame it because I feel like there's a lot of moving parts. And I found out a couple days ago about the Ronnie McNutt video. And I'm going to say this first and foremost. The video's not on here. We didn't watch the video. We're not going to watch the video. We're not going to suggest you watch the video.

But there's a problem here that needs to be talked about. And there's a lot of things we're going to touch on on the fact that people are feeling the need to put this video on TikTok, hidden in videos that seem rather innocent. And like completely traumatized little kids. Yeah. And this isn't the first time this has happened either. So we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about how there is this epidemic, in my opinion, an epidemic of suicides lately. and people not really seeming to care when people are suffering. But care the minute they're gone.

Yeah, making all these posts and acting like you're all about mental health awareness. Or you're all about that person when you couldn't be there when it was time to be there? Yeah, so I'm gonna, I say this later in the video and I'm gonna say this right now. A lot of people be out sharing the suicide hotline. I think you people are just going after the low-hanging fruit, most of you. What I'm going to say is if you know you have a friend or family member that's hurting, step up and reach out to them. Be a good friend.

Be a good friend first and foremost. And if you're suffering, reach out to somebody. I know it's really easy when you're suffering, you feel alone, you feel isolated. You feel like there's no one there for you. Try to push past that feeling, think, is there anyone out there that would listen to me right now? Because there's more than you think there are. And truly, if there's no one else, if you truly have no one to talk to, then call the suicide hotline. But I'm not just going to plaster this everywhere and think that this makes a difference.

It doesn't make a difference. We're going to do this respectfully. This is not a video to glorify what had happened. because we don't just touch on Ronnie McNutt as tragic as it was. This unfortunately has happened a countless number of times prior. Many times, and there's just many times a lot of people's films get exploited for the purpose of shock value. Yeah.

Because people, especially the cops, couldn't be bothered to not leak footage. And it doesn't go away. Like, these videos don't go away. So, again, this video is not to exploit what happened. And this is to talk about not only that, but a deeper issue that's getting worse and worse, in my opinion, as time has gone on. And if you dislike this video, I'm assuming you're one of these people that came here hoping to see the video or wants to share the video. Or wants a reaction video. We're not doing that.

No. I'm not giving that the time of day. So, I don't know. You have anything else you want to say about that? Okay. then here's the episode we did. I also want to say as a precursor before we start this episode, if you're going through something and you don't have anyone else to talk to,

just DM us or send us an email. Our Instagram DMs are open. You join our Discord. You message us that way, whatever you want. Just if you have no one to talk to, reach out to us. We love you and we care. We love you and we care. And also one thing that I want to mention is that I think a lot of people who are doing

reaction videos to this are posting pictures of Ronnie at his lowest point. And I just think that's terrible. I would rather post pictures of him when he's happy. And if you want to donate to his funeral fund, there's a link to it in the description. If you happen to find the video, which it shows Ronnie looking grim sitting at a desk, please don't watch it, report it, not just for your own sake, but to protect children who are seeing this. Okay. And this episode isn't just about Ronnie. It's about other people who have suffered the same fate, either by being exploited by the internet after they've taken their own lives or have been made a laughing stock. Yes, that has happened in the past. So we're going to go into that. And also, I'm just sick of the

uptick of suicides lately. I just don't want to see this anymore. This needs to be talked about. So, okay, with that other way. This has apparently been a very popular topic that's been trending. I did not find out about it until last night where somebody made a Facebook post that referenced this, Ronnie McNutt, who is a veteran who just recently lost his job and his girlfriend, and he decided to take it to Facebook and live stream him shooting himself. Yes. This happened originally on August 31st of this year. I mean, it went on for a little while, but it happened at about 10.30 p.m. A lot of controversy happens because Facebook didn't take down the live stream.

It was still available and was allowed to go viral because it was still up until 2 a.m. the following day. It was up for a while, despite a lot of people reporting it. And people were claiming their reports were returned saying that no community guidelines were violated. That led to some people, speculate. And this has been a long, speculated thing is that the community guidelines reports are automated and not handled by real people. If they are handled by real people, they're handled by some pretty sick people. If a reasonable person took a look at these reports, they would have taken this video down immediately. And unfortunately, this isn't the first time this has happened.

But unfortunately, we now live in the world of TikTok, and people have been doing some things on TikTok with this. So because this was allowed to stay up for so long, people ripped the video, saved it, and have been uploading it to TikTok. And not just uploading it in full. They have been splicing it into your run-of-the-mill TikTok videos. So say you're somebody who's on TikTok, and what do you think you'll see? Vine adjacent stuff or dancing videos or some sort of lip syncing. Cat videos. So it'll start with that.

And right when you're about to get to the climax of the video, it's the exact moment where he blows his head off. Right. And the unfortunate thing about this is a lot of TikTok users or minors. They're generally preteens. Yeah, a huge portion is under the age of 17. Yeah, so this is pretty traumatizing. I have not seen a video. I, in the past, used to seek out things like this. I know Drewby and I have done reaction videos to two snuff films in particular on the show. These were ones that were long since past and not only that this was back at a time where when something like that was recorded. It was really grainy. And I, if you remember, if you've been watching for this long, my thing with Hammer Bros was my mind was registering it as fake because to me it looked fake. I know it wasn't fake, but it looked fake because of how grainy the video was. However, the picture in this looks like it's going to be crystal clear. I can imagine seeing that clear as day is probably

going to weigh on a person a bit differently. Right. I don't feel I have. any intention of watching this. I am not even in the correct headspace to be dealing with something like that right now. I do know quarantine and everything of that sort has been affecting us all pretty terribly. I happen to see an end clip of the video and I will say it is graphic. Someone had posted a still somewhere. Yeah, they posted a still frame. I unfortunately came across that as well. It's bad. If you're somebody from 4chan from back in the day that went to be or if you were just an edge lord from the 2000s or before and you saw oh i don't know beheading videos you'll remember those videos were very grainy you might have been in your teens maybe you're a middle school or something

when you were coming across the stuff imagine being eight years old and seeing this because there are tic-tok users that are that little that stuff just wasn't that just wasn't available when i was that age there's a lot of kids that age have candles now and that type of stuff's on there I mean, geez, I've known kids as young as three years old with smartphones with internet access. Granted, they only use certain apps, but would it be out of the realm of possibility for me to think somebody in kindergarten has access to TikTok? I firmly believe that's happened. They absolutely do. And it's not only just that, oh, this is getting uploaded to TikTok, it's being uploaded in a way that tricks kids into seeing it.

You know, that wasn't a thing in the 4chan days. I mean, I had seen some things where I was tricked into viewing things I didn't want to view on Forch. And there would be animated gifts that would start as one thing and would end up with it being a dog being hit in the head with the hammer. Why TM&D had stuff like that too. But you think of the type of people who are on those sites. It's not going to be young children usually. Right. Not to saying that it didn't happen, but I'm trying to stress the point.

These are people who are targeting a platform where the overwhelming majority of users, are young children. This has gone way too far. Unfortunately, TikTok isn't doing, they say they're doing enough about it. They say they're removing videos, but they said there's just too many going up. I think what really sickens me more right now is the fact that this is happening during quarantine, not just the fact that everybody's hurting right now, but it's because we're having a silent suicide epidemic right now. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. I'll get them. But The suicide rate has spiked during COVID. And just yesterday, the day we're recording this, I found out one of my classmates took their own life.

You know, nobody talks about things like that. You know, this wasn't somebody who reached out for help and this was somebody who, by all rights, came across as a pretty happy person. I mean, people don't talk about it. parents will not say that their child died by suicide and obituary. It's, you know, so-and-so died unexpectedly or went off with the Lord or something. You can't just be honest about what happens. I mean, I partially get it because if you say your child killed themselves, there's a stigma that's placed on the parent.

And we all know it's not exactly that way, but I can understand why a parent wouldn't want to say it. But I guess I'm really disgusted right now, because we're living in a society with a culture that celebrates suicide. And it's not just now. This has been going on for a very long time. It was even fetishized, I'd say, in the early odds. Oh, for sure.

For sure it was. People literally got kicks out of the idea that somebody could be killing themselves and encouraged people to do it. People were actively encouraging people to kill themselves. Well, it became fashionable, too. But I mean, there's been, you know, suicide-packed culture, even in the 80s and stuff like that. But I think the difference between seeing kids of the era we knew and goth kids, people earlier, loners, is that now in the MySpace era, there was a platform to put out your suicidal thoughts. There was a lot more avenues for tortured artists.

And honestly, like, good for them because you have an avenue now and people who will listen to you. There were support systems. The internet gave us many more support systems. And I have to say that as a young kid, growing up in the chat room area, living in the middle of nowhere, internet friends definitely were a huge support system for me to the point where I don't know what my life would have looked like without them. So there's some good things that did. But also there's that ugly side of the internet that now made this a lot worse, promoting suicide. pushing people to suicide, making fun of people who did commit suicide. One of the first instances in 2006, this boy by the name of Mitchell Henderson, and there's not a ton known about him. A lot was

speculated, but he killed himself. And the exact reason wasn't clear he did not leave a suicide note. However, somebody on 4chan going through his social media found him complaining about a lost iPod. So B took it and ran with it saying that he killed himself over this iPod that was stolen. Other people alleged that he was being sexually abused by his parents. None of these things have been confirmed. And a lot of this could be B doing it for the lulls. They were definitely doing it for the lulls. So basically his school had put up a MySpace page as a memorial for him. And someone said something to the fact of he was such an hero. Yeah. Unfortunately, this person's opening line was Mitchell was N hero, A.N. space hero.

Or something as the effect of good on him for taking that shot, which was actually in poor taste to say it because he shot himself in the head. Did he shoot himself? Yeah, he took his parents 22 long rifle and shot himself. Be latched on to that N hero comment. She meant to say was Mitchell was a hero. She said N hero. And so now the 4chan term of killing yourself was N heroine. So people would say you should just end hero, me and kill yourself. And this got way worse. There was prank phone calls being called to his parents, accusing them of sexually abusing him, accusing them of killing him. They would say, hey, this is Mitchell. I'm downstairs. I'm a ghost. Let me in. Or I found my iPod

and people would go to his grave site and leave iPods and take pictures. They leave broken iPods or they'd take pictures of the iPod. There was more vandalism of his grave, from what I understand. Somebody actually hacked the MySpace Memorial page, I believe, and made his profile picture a zombie-looking version of Mitchell. So this is very sick stuff. I'm not telling you to do this, but if you wanted to look for examples, there's tons and tons of gifts people have made, of him with dancing iPods around him, and just all sorts of crap. And this is a hard thing for somebody this day and age to consider that this happened. Something like this to this extent

where it's just so gleefully celebrated probably wouldn't happen today. However, things are a lot different now. One of our patrons posted a picture on their social media, and I won't mention them in case they don't want to be mentioned, but it was a very eye-opening meme because it showed the difference between suicide and suicidal.

Suicide. Considered a tragedy. Everyone feels bad. Everyone is present. Everyone wishes they saw the signs. Everyone wishes the person hadn't done it. Now versus suicidal considered attention seeking. Everyone feels irritated by the person.

Everyone tries to avoid them. Everyone dismisses them. No one believes they'll ever do it. And this was a reshare from the Depression Project. I was like, wow, that is absolutely true. So now we have a problem of, instead of self-examines, celebrating. And there's still some people celebrating and promoting suicide. But now you have people that come in to these posts and make all these, God bless you, you're with God now. I wish you realized

you mattered. And they don't even know this person. Yeah, yeah, your pain's over. You're in God's loving arms. These are people who are just getting their feel good out in virtue signaling. They're virtue signaling. Back to Ronnie McNutt. If you go to his. page, his Facebook page, his last post, which I will read, because I think it's important, someone in your life needs to hear that they matter, that they are loved, that they have a future, be the one to tell them. And this was a matter of hours before killing himself. And all these people who don't know him are just posting, you matter, you matter. It's kind of too late for that. All these people want to celebrate more in these people who've killed themselves, but won't even

reach out. They want to make themselves part of it after. All these people, every time some major celebrity kills themselves, I see people virtue signaling posting the suicide hotline. Like, seriously, fuck you for doing that. Not because the suicide hotline isn't useful, but it's because all these people think that this is activism is reposting the suicide hotline.

How about you be a good fucking friend to people? How about you check on your friends? How about you ask people how they are? especially you're happy and your strong friends ask them how they are really ask them really check in on them and i know we can only do so much and check on so many people but most people aren't even checking on one or two people and we're just going to let people die and then just post a suicide hotline afterwards and say some trite words the real work that matters is the work that people cannot see you do that's what matters not not these bullshit posts i hate this

I hate this so much. And none of this is going to get better. The fact that this happened with Ronnie, it just shows me that we have a long way to go and that I can't really see a way of fixing it in the near future. No, and none of it's gotten better. The fact that it went this far to target kids after the fact is just ridiculous. I don't think we touched on what Ronnie was going through. Again, he was a vet.

He lost his job and his girlfriend. He, I believe, lost his dad the prior year. It was very much still mourning him. He was posting memorial posts about him. He, from what I understand, had some sort of a strange relationship with his family. Now, I didn't watch the video. So if I got this wrong, I'm sorry, please correct me. Not that we're telling you to go watch the video, because please do not.

I'm just saying that if you have, if you have, if you have, I've heard people give accounts that in the video, he was trying to call his mother. His mom either wouldn't talk to him or wouldn't pick up. And he just got fed up and did it. I don't know. The video that's online is a very short clip. I do know at one point he's playing around with a gun and accidentally just shoots a bullet off randomly.

I read that from an account as well. And so I don't know if he shot the bullet off accidentally then felt like he had to go through with it because he lives in a, I don't know if he lives in a crowded area. He lived in an apartment. I don't know if it was a complex or just a regular apartment, but I do know police were called. I don't know whether or not it was the people who were watching the live stream that got them there. I do believe that was the case, but the police didn't really do a whole lot.

They basically got the neighbors out of the building in case he started shooting off more and really didn't do anything other than like speak to him on a loud speaker. After he was already dead. Yeah. And I know from one account that I read, they had said if they would have went in there, it would have been a lot. worse than what would have happened. So I mean, sometimes that is true. And it doesn't feel like in situations like that that police do a really good job. No. Another patron and I, I'm not going to say their name because I don't know if they want to be known. When we worked together years ago, we ended up going to a standoff that was right next to our apartment. And we ended up getting

tear gassed and we saw them send the little robot in with food. They were there all night. I, believe the whole reason that we had walked down to see what was going on was because we heard gunshots. Well, when we heard gunshots, he actually had killed himself. But the police didn't do anything. They didn't try to do anything. They were sending in tear gas for hours. This is the problem is because police aren't really equipped to handle suicidal people. Maybe there's some hostage negotiator, I would surmise could be a good fit.

But they're not really in great supply from what I understand. though I don't know that side of things too well. From what I've been told is that you don't just have a bunch of hostage negotiators on hand. I've read so many accounts of police showing up and tasing people, actually shooting and killing the suicidal person. That happened up in Rochester. There was a black man who the family called the police because he was in crisis and needed help. He ended up getting exfixated to death because they put a spit mask on him and laid on him.

That's awful. It's just we're having more awareness about the shortcomings of police in these situations now. But for a long time, I was just getting shamed by surprisingly, mostly liberals who, despite having many problems with cops, think that if you don't call the cops on a suicidal person, you're a horrible friend and that they think the cops are best equipped to handle this. It just really, really stupid stuff. Let me tell you something. I hesitate to say this because I don't want to, you know, make myself sound. I don't want no pat on the back for this at all. I don't.

I'm going to say this because if you think that the only option when your friend is or family member is suicidal, if you think the only option is calling the cops, I'm going to tell you you're dead wrong. Because in my life, I have talked upwards of 20 people. out of killing themselves. I've never had a single person die on me that I've talked to. Most people just want someone to talk to. And I think about if I wasn't there, if I didn't think to reach out, if a person didn't think to reach out to me when I didn't realize what was going on,

how different things could have been for these people. But all I did was I talked to them for as long as they wanted. I stayed up as long as they wanted. I went without sleep. That's just be a human being. Just be a human being. I know so many people that will just call the cops. Oh, oh, I think they're suicide.

I should just call the cops. It just blows me away when all you have to do is just literally talk to your friend. Just literally, like, don't villainize them. By sending the cops in, you think they cannot be reasoned with. And I'm not saying that there's no situation where it wouldn't warrant the cops being called, but it is an absolute last resort and acknowledge that it is a very, very flawed resource.

So it really is absolute last resort. And it generally will escalate things. It will escalate things. There's been cases. Let's think it goes good, okay? You call the cops. The cops will arrest that person. They will be admitted.

They may be sent in an ambulance. They may be taken in a cop car. They get sent an ambulance. You've now got them a bill. And if they're committed, and I've known some people who have claimed they've talked themselves out of being committed. So, again, if somebody knows the game enough and can talk their way out of it, somebody who should be committed can get themselves out of help. And let's say they're committed and shouldn't be committed. Now, again, you have a burden placed upon them because a lot of these people, especially now, you know, they've,

don't have health insurance, they don't have money. A lot of people aren't doing well financially and you're going to throw a few thousand dollar bill on top of them. I'll tell you what, if I was feeling suicidal and a friend or family member called the cops on me to commit me instead of talking to me, yeah, I'd want to kill myself. I'd feel betrayed by my friends and family and now I have this financial burden. Think about these things. Put yourself in that person's shoes and what the outcome would be had that happened to you. That's the part that upsets me the most. So another case I want to sort of touch base on in regards to the fact that police aren't very helpful is the case of Nikki Katzoris. Now, Nikki didn't kill herself. This is something completely

different, but it kind of ties into the overall theme of the episode. So this was in October 2006. She had just got done having dinner with her parents and her mom was coming in the house. and saw Nikki peeling out of the garage in their Porsche 9-11 Carrera, which she was not allowed to drive. And everyone went looking for her. They couldn't find her. So they ended up calling 911. After reporting what had happened, the father was placed on hold for a few moments. And when the dispatch got back on the line with him, he was then notified that Nikki had been into an accident. She had been going in excess of 100 miles an hour down the highway, had clipped on. Honda Civic, crossed the median that didn't have any barricades on it, and had hit a unmanned concrete toll booth. This Porsche was a convertible. So she died on impact. It was very, very gruesome, very sad.

Well, what had happened later was police had leaked the accident photos. One police officer had just emailed it to himself to look at later. One had forwarded it to four other people, and before you knew it, they had made to the internet and they became viral pictures. It was all over 4chan. All over. Now this was a very, very, very pretty young woman. And she is not recognizable anymore. I accidentally happened upon these pictures many years ago. So what happened after this after the police completely dropped the ball?

Places like 4chan got a hold of it and other avenues got a hold of it and started emailing the pictures to her parents. Nikki's school also made some sort of MySpace page for her. her and people started posting direct links to the accident photos on the memorial page. It got so bad to the point where her parents completely just stopped using the internet altogether because it would just keep getting email to them in hidden files. I mean, again, this was something that got leaked and the internet just ran with it, completely and utterly ran away with it.

And yes, we have more visibility now on the internet. something like this probably isn't going to happen as much. But it still happens and it happens in a way that you would give somebody plausible deniability. Like when people shared Ronnie McNutt's video, oh, I wasn't doing this to be exploitative. You're always doing it to be exploitative if you do it. Yeah. It is inherently exploitative.

There is nothing from viewing that video that will suddenly give you an aha moment about suicide. There's plenty other ways to do it. Honestly, it's not going to give you any aha moment. If anything, you're just going to get sick kicks from it because that's just how you are. Or you're going to give yourself some severe PTSD and only be worse off for watching it. I guess I'll touch on the shit was so cash meme. I'm not going to read it in full because it's long. You can look it up if you want.

The meme is called shit was so cash. And this person who looked like what we would know then is a Jersey Shore type, attractive, with an attractive girlfriend and he posted to Forchands B calling everybody homophobic slurs saying, how he's so cool,

captain the football team, he just had sex, everybody on this board are like total losers. Get straight A's. Yeah. And this could very well and probably was

somebody who took his picture and pretended to be him. Well, they traced the photo and found out who this person was. He ended up dying in a car accident. And when B found that out, they took it upon themselves to make, died in a car accident, shit was so cash memes, then started harassing his mother, saying how much he deserved to die.

And for all we know, this person had nothing to do with the postmaid. He just had his picture stolen. He probably had no idea. Yeah, he probably had no idea. This was even done. And so his poor mother has to find this out in his one. wondering what's going on. And it's really just 4chan being 4chan at that point, the internet being the internet. So we could literally go on about this forever. There's unfortunately, it feels like

an unlimited amount of people who have turned to the internet for help or just to share their pain and it's been shared around, it's been exploited. Not to say there's not good resources on the internet because there can be, but we have a serious problem right now. And I don't really know how to fix it other than stop making depression and being suicidal a thing of stigma and to be there for your loved ones. Yeah, if we just stop being shitty human beings, like maybe even for a day, maybe some of this wouldn't happen. I know some people out there think that they can separate.

I know this sounds crazy to say, but I've known Edge Lord types like this that can separate exploiting these types of videos. but still caring about mental health. The problem is in sharing this, it does a couple of things, in my opinion. The first thing that it does is it desensitizes some people to the seriousness of this.

And while you would think somebody killing themselves on a live stream should instill the seriousness of this, and maybe for some people it does, I feel like the focus is then brought away towards people who have tragically lost their lives and not thinking about the people you can be there for right now. I feel like you put way too much energy on those that have taken their own lives and not focusing on the lives you could save right now. Again, I don't want to make this longer than it has to be because I could literally talk about this for three hours straight.

There's enough information out there where we could literally go on. so many different cases of young people, not even just young people, older people, too, but a lot of young people. This just crosses so many things at once. And in the future, there's probably going to be episodes done on some of these cases or maybe an expanded episode on this. But there's several things at once. We have a suicide epidemic right now. I consider it an epidemic. And it's only getting worse with COVID-19 and all the circumstances around. right now. Yeah. Or people just put into this position because they financially can't support themselves. Also, this brings to light internet culture and how exploitative this can be around somebody

who's killed themselves. And that's why it makes it difficult. You can't stop all these things all at once. But again, it's stressed to you, especially Ronnie McNutt's video, don't watch this video. Don't do it. Literally nothing good will come of it. I know that some people. are a little more desensitized and can handle this, but I think instead of satisfying your sick, morbid

curiosities, it'd be best to think about what you can do to better this going forward. And I don't think I'm speaking to anybody right now trying to lace these into TikTok videos and get them up. And as I mentioned before, this is nothing new, unfortunately. there was death videos that have been put in TikTok videos a while ago, purely just to traumatize children. I feel like if those people clicked on this video, they already clicked off when they realized that I'm speaking poorly about these people or that there's no death video here. So if you're here listening to this, I'm sure me saying at this point don't share this video is kind of a no-brainer. but I would take a step past wanting to see this video and thinking about who you can help because I guarantee you right now you're likely to know at least somebody who is suffering that you're close to

where you have that ability to reach out and even if you aren't sure at least just check in with the people you care about most people are really bad friends good people even many good people are really terrible friends and that's nothing that you should guilt yourself over. It's very easy to get caught up in your own life, especially right now. A lot of people are hurting, so it's hard to reach out beyond what's going on with yourself. But it's something we all need to get better doing or else we're going to lose a lot more people. And I don't know this from personal experience. I tried to stress this to myself because I don't ever want to feel this,

but I don't want to lose somebody that I know if I tried, I could have saved. You don't want to feel that. I've talked to people who do feel that. I imagine the feeling's indescribable. We're only going to get through something like this if we start opening up and helping other people out. And if you're somebody who is struggling, I beg and plead you to reach out to a friend or family member

that will listen and stress, the seriousness of this. I know some people don't want to mention anything relating to suicide because they're worried that people will freak out. People will shun them. People will call the cops on them. So, I mean, I get it. Choose your words carefully, but don't let that be a reason to not reach out. And if truly you don't have anybody right now, then that's when I would recommend the suicide hotline, which we've put in the notes in the description. Some people would recommend certain support groups on the internet. And the only reason why I hesitate is because it can be tough to know where to look sometimes.

There's some good groups on Reddit I've found, but there's also some quite bad groups on Reddit I've found. If you're somebody that has found an avenue on there, found a support system on there, by all means, please keep using it. But if you truly have nothing, no one. And I want you to be honest with yourself, I want you to really. think and try to push past these feelings of loneliness because it's very easy to feel like we're truly all alone. And if you've found a really good resource, feel free to share that in the comments.

Yes, that as well. But I think it's really easy to feel isolated and feel like you have nobody. I think a lot of people feel that. But if you really sit and try to push past that, can you think of people that would gladly talk to you and hear you out? do that first and truly, truly objectively, if you can't think of a single person after that, if you're truly, have no resource, then that's when I'd recommend the suicide hotline. But I'm not one of these people that is just going to plaster that everywhere and think it's a cure-all because, if anything, it's not. I think a lot of people that post that.

Or virtue signaling, like we said. They're being careless at best. I don't know. If you have no one to talk to, talk to us. Yeah, if you want to shoot us an email or if you want to join our Discord, we've got some pretty awesome accepting people in there. I can't not at least put that offer out there if anyone wants to take it. Yeah, I've already lost a few people during COVID under unexplained circumstances that haven't really been made public in their obit. So I'd rather not see any more people be lost. Nor would I. I am not going to plug any of the social media. If you, if you, feel compelled to support us.

You know our social media links and all that. Thanks to all our patrons. Again, I'm not going to go too deep into that. This is just not an episode. Or it's appropriate, I don't think. Yeah, and this is something I feel very strongly about, and I'm seeing too much of this lately. So anyways, I don't have anything else to say,

and I feel like if I get on another topic, I'm going to go for another 45 minutes. Yeah. Okay. All right, we love you guys. I love you very, very much. Yes. Okay, bye.

Bye.