RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 21 2001 - 23:39:43 BST

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From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 18:39:43 -0400
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    >From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    >Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
    >Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 14:13:42 +0100
    >
    >Ah yes, of course, but that's not the same as is being implied in contagion
    >theory (again, not that this is what Paul is necessarily saying). My beef
    >is in relation to the mediation part of the issue- that mediated suicide
    >(e.g. press reports, or TV dramatisations) lead to suicides in previously
    >non-suicidal people. Again, I think this has relatively little to do with
    >what Paul specifically is arguing, I'm just trying to keep people from
    >making erroneous jumps of causation.
    >
    >
    I don't know exactly where popular music would fit into the contagion notion
    for suicide, but I do remember some rock bands getting into hot water over
    lyrics in their songs. Wasn't Ozzy attacked for the content of his song
    "Suicide Solution"? Metallica had a song called "Fade to Black" and there
    may have been other songs which had the moralists up in arms about suicidal
    themes.

    One skate/punk/trashmetal band had some serious guts and went all out,
    calling themselves "Suicidal Tendencies". Not a bad band overall, at least
    for their time period.

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