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    chickaboomRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:26pm

    I judge an individual based on an exhibited pattern of behaviour. This individual has chosen to reflect their own character through a series of their own writings in a manner that reflects what most people view as narcissism, apathy towards others, vanity, and a certain quest for notoriety that is unbecoming. If they now regret the notoriety that they so ardently thirsted after perhaps it’s time they reflect on their choices and goals rather than blame others for the reaction they recieved.

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      Apricot Poodle Riding Eeyore Across a Rainbowchickaboom
      5/20/16 5:28pm

      This is such a good comment.

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      benjaminalloverchickaboom
      5/20/16 5:30pm

      Too measured, waaay too reasonable. Too much “reflection”. Get the fuck out of here.

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    TraceRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:26pm

    “Maybe if someone is not doing well and doesn’t know how to help themselves and reads that and thinks, Oh my gosh, it could come to this, maybe I should talk to a therapist, or a psychiatrist, or, Maybe I should do something to help myself, that was why I wrote it

    This is the most backpedaling backpedal I have ever seen. Literally before it was deleted there was a byline that stated that her friend was ‘beyond help’. How exactly am I or any other person dealing with mental illness supposed to take anything away from this loaded piece of shit article than ‘you might just be unfixable if you have a mental illness, you are a burden to your entire family and friends’? Thankfully I am removed from the days something like this could cause instant intrusive thoughts to spring up, but I have seen so many people today hurting because of this woman. She know she’s done fucked up and she’s trying to make herself look better instead of apologizing profusely and trying to learn from her mistakes and educate herself about the intricacies of mental illness and the mental healthcare system.

    Of course she stands by her steaming pile of shit. Of course. Love the bit where she blames the person for reading the article, she sounds like a pleasant person to be around.

    I’m a little disappointed this conversation wasn’t used to call her out for deciding for “Leah”’s family whether she was a burden to them or not.

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      gooutsideandplayTrace
      5/20/16 5:33pm

      But, she wasn’t even dating! Of course she was unfixable.

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      goddessoftransitoryTrace
      5/20/16 5:38pm

      But don’t you see it’s YOUR fault for reading it? Not hers for writing and publishing it on a public site?

      /s, in case it has to be noted

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    SMDRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:37pm

    “You can’t judge someone as a whole human being based on some of the stuff they wrote,”

    Except that, sometimes you can. Sometimes a single piece of work is so awful, so telling, that judging the person who wrote it is the only appropriate action. Fortunately, Amanda Lauren has amassed a HEALTHY volume of work where her noxious personality and self-centered nature are in full display, so no need to rely on just one.

    http://itsamandalauren.com/epic

    http://www.xojane.com/sex/ive-been-o…

    http://www.xojane.com/sex/why-i-didn…

    http://www.xojane.com/relationships/…

    She really is the worst. I also find it telling that a 40 minute conversation had be edited down to this.

    Death threats still aren’t cool, though.

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      LouderThanTeslasSMD
      5/20/16 5:44pm

      Death threats are definitely not cool. Putting that aside, the “Stay Hot for My Husband” article may be the worst thing ever written in the English language.

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      CheeseSandwichSMD
      5/20/16 5:47pm

      I’ve made this comment several times in various forms but here it is again:

      What is it about average looking 20 something white girls who feel the world is screaming to hear about their “adventures” in book form.

      We must end this scourge. We must wipe them from the face Earth.

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    benjaminalloverRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:27pm

    “I tried to help her many times, but I also realized when I had discovered this that there was nothing I could do to help her,” said Lauren in response. “I am not as powerful as that illness. I have other stuff going on in my life twenty four hours a day. I really thought about helping her, but I also realized this was not going to be a battle I was going to win.”

    Nah.

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      Apricot Poodle Riding Eeyore Across a Rainbowbenjaminallover
      5/20/16 5:28pm

      The amount of backpedaling in 2 sentences is really quite glorious.

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      benjaminalloverApricot Poodle Riding Eeyore Across a Rainbow
      5/20/16 5:34pm

      Just based on that quote, in any context, I do not believe this person. Of course, it’s also this lady, in this context so, nuh-uh.

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    ThatFatScatCat fucking loves muddy puddlesRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:45pm

    I have a friend who’s struggled his whole life with mental illness. We met in 7th grade and used to be inseparable. For years we were best friends. We were roommates for about 2. But eventually, sometime during the roommate phase of our friendship, it started to become glaringly apparent that his quirks and eccentricities that used to make him funny and interesting to be around were slowly turning into something else. Something darker. Something that was slowly squeezing the life out of his body and suffocating his joy with a pillow.

    By 25 he was a complete wreck. Off and on homelessness interspersed with shorts stints of sobriety were the norm. My girlfriend and I took him in for a while, but eventually we had no choice but to kick him out. He was starting to become a danger to the kids. Each manic episode was clearly drawing him closer to the edge, and that’s just where he lives now: on the edge. On the edge of what, though, I don’t quite know. Suicide, maybe.

    I see him once every few months when he’s pulled himself together enough to try to get help. (Trust me, no amount of trying to help this man when he wasn’t ready for it had or will ever work) We talk. he hangs out. Visits with the kids. The kids love him, they really do. He’s practically a giant kid himself. On his best days he’s a joy to be around. Seriously.

    But in between what I’ve started to (maybe insensitively) call his “lucid visits” I only know him through Facebook updates. They’ll be things along the lines of “Finally going to do it. Maybe tonight. The world is black. I blame you all for this. Maybe you’ll appreciate me on the other side.” Cue the influx of “Oh, no honey, we love you!” and “you can always talk to me” and “theres always light in the darkness buddy. dont take the easy way out.” I’ll call him. He won’t answer. I’ll start freaking out and call his mother. She calls him. No answer. She starts freaking out and calls the cops. 20 minutes later my Facebook feed will read “Just had the pigs show up at my door. My tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.”

    This is his cycle. His nasty, self harming cycle. He’ll be on top, then something will trigger his internal hate machine and he’ll start burning himself with cigarette butts or punching walls until his knuckles bleed. He’ll brood for days, ignoring the world. He’ll get upset that the world is ignoring him back and make a grand gesture; something that’ll assure the world knows he’s here, hurting, quite in the corner with nothing but his own pain to speak to. And it works. Suddenly he’s noticed. He’s said somethings, or done some things that’ve hurt some people along the way. But it’s “ok” now. People love him again. He’s harmed his body. He’s come close to overdosing on shit I’ve never even heard of. But it’s “ok.” He didn’t. And he’s “fine.” People love him again. He’s again free to awkwardly ward off the concern and fretful panic of his loved ones with sarcasm. And that’s all he ever wants, right?

    He hurts. Both himself and others. He contributes little, if nothing, to me aside from the occasional joy his happier presence brings to my kids. He’s burdensome. Talking to him is laboring. Knowing him is stressful. Attempts to help him have failed and made me feel like shit. My own thoughts of dismissing his plight to make my life easier have made me feel even worse than that. But he deserves to be here. Just like I do. Just like you do. The same way my kids do and not in too different a way than some endangered species of smoothie frog does. His death would not be a blessing by any stretch of the word.

    tldr; If my friend died tomorrow it would most definitely not be a blessing, even if his life is tragic as all hell.

    Also, fuck this author. Not Rich. You know, the shitty friend one.

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      cooper281ThatFatScatCat fucking loves muddy puddles
      5/20/16 7:23pm

      Notice how much detail you put into this post about your friend. Now look at how much detail Amanda had about Leah in her really abysmally written piece. That’s the difference between a good writer and a bad writer, and that’s the difference between someone who clearly knows the person they’re talking about and someone who knows little more than the possible fact that she didn’t really keep her apartment clean. Talk about reaching!

      I have seen comments about this all over FB and here today and I’m really surprised that not once has anyone mentioned the word troll. Because isn’t that what she did? Troll all of us?

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      ThatFatScatCat fucking loves muddy puddlescooper281
      5/20/16 7:37pm

      Now that you mention it, it is a bit surprising that she’s not yet been outed as a troll. And it should be so obvious, too. But we’re all still too caught up in our fervent condemnation of her terrible fucking cry for undeserved attention that we’ve all failed to see that we’ve given the troll exactly what the troll wants: the attention of the ruffled feathers.

      Don’t feed the trolls, they say. And here we are, chucking out raw chicken chunks to the alligators of shit journalism.

      (Again, not Rich. He’s the only true journalist on this site. For real.)

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    Sid and FinancyRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:18pm

    I think we need considerably more information before we can draw useful lessons and conclusions here.

    Just HOW hot is she keeping herself?

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      CatelynSnarkSid and Financy
      5/20/16 5:23pm

      I’m not impressed unless it’s ‘50s housewife level of commitment. Never let him see you without your face on!

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      LeftoverSpillsSid and Financy
      5/20/16 5:31pm

      These difficult questions, demand answers!

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    Steve_Buscemi's_OrthodontistRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:16pm

    “What would you have changed the title to?” I asked.

    “She Called Her Friends Death a Blessing. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next”, she said.

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      weirwoodtreehugger3Steve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      5/20/16 5:23pm

      Feel relief over your frenemy’s death with this one weird trick!

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      Ph Dad wants an ally cookieSteve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      5/20/16 5:34pm

      “People with mental illness hate her... justifiably!”

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    InTheStillRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:20pm

    “She offered an apology and caveat to those who found her piece to be triggering. “I’m sorry if this triggered anyone, but I feel like…sorry I’m just so overwhelmed right now,” she said, interrupting herself. “I feel like if you read a headline like that and you’re easily triggered, maybe don’t read the article.””

    Definitely not an apology.

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      FreeRonInTheStill
      5/20/16 5:44pm

      Triggered, twice, in about 2 sentences.. That’s rehearsed, insincere bullshit.

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      CheeseSandwichInTheStill
      5/20/16 5:44pm

      I mean, I could go line by line and let her know how exactly her piece is garbage but the school days over and I have high school essays to grade with more depth and self reflection.

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    CollectivePolemicRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:51pm

    Thanks, Rich, for giving this colossal idiot a space to sound halfway sympathetic. You, as a writer, are lost on a fool’s errand trying to relate to someone who is deafeningly not a writer, and you do yourself no favors by assuming all manner of contortions to make her appear as one. She should simply not be writing thins on the internet. She does not have the intellectual chops to be worth reading. You didn't even mention that her sociopathic screed smearing a long-dead acquaintance for slight annoyances and inconveniences is terribly, irredeemably shittily written. If you have to call a writer (or, in this case, someone whose transcribed a diary entry from a few years ago) to ask them what the fuck they were trying to say, then they've done a shitty job of writing. Yet you didn't even need to do that, because what this festering boil of a person is trying to say is right there on the fucking page, staring you dead in the face. Nothing that she wrote bears further examination. It can be taken strictly at face-value. All you've done is allow her to attempt a rewrite (which she can't even do without sounding like a vacuous shell of a publicity whore). You've basically done the bidding of Fox News, which will soon augment your misguided venture by indulging its "well actually gotta hear both sides" culture warrior impulse. Watch them as they breathlessly cast mental illness as a hobgoblin of "PC Culture." You wanna know what could have happened if six months ago had I read her diabolically un-empathetic assault on the word essay? Quite probably I would have thought, "Ya, I get this. My life doesn't amount to much either," and then shortly thereafter,"I too am not a very good person and I'm sure people will say as much after I kill myself...kinda like they did with my brother." So fuck her with a cactus. She gets no consideration or latitude from me to retroactively try to paint herself as an advocate of mental health issues by way of solicited caveats and softball questions. When someone writes a thing explicitly telling you they're a deeply shitty person, simply take them at their word and move on with your day.

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      Little Green FrogCollectivePolemic
      5/20/16 6:17pm

      Amen.

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      CantatriceChauveCollectivePolemic
      5/20/16 10:02pm

      Are you a writer yourself? Because, I’m pretty impressed by what you just wrote. Seems effortless.

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    Want a Taste of Religion? Lick a WitchRich Juzwiak
    5/20/16 5:45pm

    I get what she was saying here. She did it in an awful way and should issue some sort of apology. However I understand. I have a friend who is my age who has a whole slew of mental issues including alcoholism and little to no support system. I have literally made myself sick trying to help her, but I have a husband and three kids so I can’t be there all the time. She doesn’t help herself and her life seems to be spiraling out of control. Since we’ve been friends she’s tried to kill herself five times. She’s done the rehab thing, the voluntary commitment to a psych ward, gone to counseling and taken medication. Just like her jobs none of it sticks for long. If she died, I would feel like maybe she’s in a better place now and that finally the suffering from her chaotic mind has come to an end. However this is a person I speak to every week and see a few times a month. Not a frenemy I only see on fb. This chick back pedaled so damn fast she did NOT mean the article to be anything more than what it was. It COULD have possibly been a serious article about mental illness and instead she turned it into all about her a load of steaming crap.

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      dkfree2Want a Taste of Religion? Lick a Witch
      5/20/16 6:14pm

      I think I know what you are saying - and “be in a better place” is often used for people who have died after suffering - but we don’t real know, do we? We just know that the person is no longer suffering. My mom died in ‘01 after a battle with cancer. It was not a blessing when she died. She is not obviously in a better place. But her suffering ended. And watching that suffering was hard for all of us who loved her. Maybe a “relief” is a better than a “better place” or “blessing". Relief for her and, maybe, if we are getting real, for us(?).

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      Want a Taste of Religion? Lick a Witchdkfree2
      5/20/16 6:43pm

      Well I guess it depends on how religious you are or they were in whether you/they KNOW. But yes relief is the better term than better place. When my grandma died two years ago it was actually a blessing. She was miserable, I knew her well and being in a bed, not talking, not doing what she loved, stuck inside her own mind and other people taking care of her? She hated every moment of it and told my mom she was ready to go. She was a vibrant lady and death was better than the life she was living. So maybe it’s also about situations and people. But I’ve lived enough and seen enough that I know that death isn’t always a tragedy. However this lady was crass and awful about a person she didn’t even know anymore.

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