A call to action in the gaming/twitch community after Reckful's suicide

[Max_V]

@Michael569 You're welcome, I'm glad it helped. It did a lot for me. I miss Byron a lot.

Also, I cannot help but feel bad for not having responded to some of your responses on my threads in the past. I do really value your suggestions. Sometimes I feel too overwhelmed by all the replies and I end up ditching it. Sorry.

@Preety_India Yeah, he was an awesome guy. Rest in peace.

[Michael569]

49 minutes ago, Max_V said:

Also, I cannot help but feel bad for not having responded to some of your responses on my threads in the past. I do really value your suggestions. Sometimes I feel too overwhelmed by all the replies and I end up ditching it. Sorry.

Hey no problem mate  If you every want to chat about anything, feel free to reach out

Edited July 7, 2020 by Michael569

[Farnaby]

Just found out about this gamer and watched the video with Dr.K. 

Reckful seemed like a real nice dude, sorry to hear that he commited suicide. 

@Carl-Richard Personally, I would be careful with putting anyone on a pedestal.

From an ethical POV, Dr.K made quite a few mistakes, draw big assumptions without enough information and asked questions that implied a concrete answer. That's not such a good thing to do as a psychiatrist/psychologist. 

Another thing I didn't like is how he interrupted Reckful so often. It looked like he was more interested in showing "how much he knows". 

Lastly, a therapist should be very careful when talking about certain subjects, especially without enough therapeutic relationship. 

That being said, it probably helped Reckful feel his repressed emotions and let them come out. Dr. K was probbaly right in many of his interpretations, but I think he should be careful and not take them for granted and especially not push them onto the person he's talking to.

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, Farnaby said:

@Carl-Richard Personally, I would be careful with putting anyone on a pedestal.

I'm not putting him on a pedestal by simply characterizing his mission as being grounded in turquiose values

[Farnaby]

@Carl-Richard My bad, then, sorry. He does seem to promote those kind of values. But I don't feel like he truly embodies it. I liked a lot of the stuff that he talked about and he seems very charismatic. But he isn't careful enough when evoking painful memories for Reckful. 

[Danioover9000]

@Farnaby

On 2020-07-07 at 5:37 PM, Farnaby said:

Just found out about this gamer and watched the video with Dr.K. 

Reckful seemed like a real nice dude, sorry to hear that he commited suicide. 

@Carl-Richard Personally, I would be careful with putting anyone on a pedestal.

From an ethical POV, Dr.K made quite a few mistakes, draw big assumptions without enough information and asked questions that implied a concrete answer. That's not such a good thing to do as a psychiatrist/psychologist. 

Another thing I didn't like is how he interrupted Reckful so often. It looked like he was more interested in showing "how much he knows". 

Lastly, a therapist should be very careful when talking about certain subjects, especially without enough therapeutic relationship. 

That being said, it probably helped Reckful feel his repressed emotions and let them come out. Dr. K was probbaly right in many of his interpretations, but I think he should be careful and not take them for granted and especially not push them onto the person he's talking to.

   This is what I was trying to say. People must be careful, especially when this situation is framed as emotional and addressing the death of someone, which makes the message more powerful, the mind's distortions more real and projections assumed more real than fiction. There are many examples from politics and history that every leader(s) that gave passionate speeches in front of the crowds.

[wavydude]

With all due respect to his death I don't really think these calls for mental health awareness in "gaming community" will do much.

Twitch community is basically bunch of people playing video games all day long and buch of other people paying them thousands of dollars to do so, that can't be healthy at all. It's much deeper problem on sociatal level and I don't think not writing kys in chat is a solution to this problem.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, wavydude said:

With all due respect to his death I don't really think these calls for mental health awareness in "gaming community" will do much.

Twitch community is basically bunch of people playing video games all day long and buch of other people paying them thousands of dollars to do so, that can't be healthy at all. It's much deeper problem on sociatal level and I don't think not writing kys in chat is a solution to this problem.

Even if we accept your assumption that this is a community of broken people, that doesn't mean they're not open to change. Dr. K has become one of the biggest Twitch streamers over the course of a few months, and that is virtually unprecedented on this platform. I think you're underestimating the range of psychological development that exists of professional gamers and political streamers. Many treat it as a genuine career and are decent people. I feel your observation is mainly coming from a place of prejudice and bias.

[Danioover9000]

@wavydude

2 hours ago, wavydude said:

With all due respect to his death I don't really think these calls for mental health awareness in "gaming community" will do much.

Twitch community is basically bunch of people playing video games all day long and buch of other people paying them thousands of dollars to do so, that can't be healthy at all. It's much deeper problem on sociatal level and I don't think not writing kys in chat is a solution to this problem.

   I understand where you're coming from, but in this case, raising awareness of this issue is probably a good thing. I wasn't aware of how bad it can really be for being in a Twitch community, as a game live streamer, playing games live for roughly 8 hours a day. This is true despite being a gamer in the past and having very little to no involvement in social media, including Twitch.

   Also, I wasn't aware of it, but there seems to exist some forms of psychology in that community. With the paying, it's donations from members of the streamer, if the streamers entertained enough to merit a donation, then it's reinforced with a positive reward, maybe a jingle sound or the streamer's approving reactions. Members are kicked out for expressing too many differences, of course including toxicity. Also, it seems that streamers, feel free to share if you were one, are mostly pandering to whatever trend and placing too high of importance of what opinions their audiences have.

[Arcangelo]

Every 40 seconds a person commits suicide. Why do we have to care about this particular gamer person?

[Carl-Richard]

16 minutes ago, Arcangelo said:

Every 40 seconds a person commits suicide. Why do we have to care about this particular gamer person?

He was the first big streamer on Twitch, legendary World Of Warcraft player and loved by the community. It's like asking: "People die every second. Why do we have to care about the death of Michael Brooks?". He was also one of the first guests on Dr. K's stream, which introduced his mission of spreading mental health awareness to the community.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Arcangelo]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

He was the first big streamer on Twitch, legendary World Of Warcraft player and loved by the community.

Yeah so? Why do we here at actualized.org have to care about his death? 270 killed themselves since your last post. What's the big deal?

 

[Max_V]

@Arcangelo First of all, I find the way you approach this thread a bit insensitive.

I shared what had happened because Byron's death sparked a massive mental health shift in a lot of online communities, with that mainly being Twitch and the gaming sphere. I grew up watching him, and he helped me a lot through difficult times. I'm very sad he's gone. 

Also, with this thread I was sharing the resource that is HealthyGamer.gg. This is a company run by Dr. Alok Kanojia, a psychiatrist that trained to become a monk, and now dedicates his life to help people gain more understanding over themselves. He is someone that shares a lot of good info about meditation, yoga, psychology, neurology, and more. For people who grew up on the internet and knowing what kind of mental place most people are on here, his contribution towards health and growing in consciousness is beyond valuable. 

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Arcangelo said:

Yeah so? Why do we here at actualized.org have to care about his death? 270 killed themselves since your last post. What's the big deal?

 

It's OK if you don't see the overlap between parts of the Actualized.org community and the gaming community, but you don't have to be a dick about it. His death brought a surge of mental health awareness in that community, and you can appreciate that as an outsider if you care about global issues. Online communities are infact global communities, and initiatives like Dr. K's stream is much more impactful than say Leo's youtube channel in terms of outreach. Have some perspective.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Danioover9000]

@Arcangelo

10 hours ago, Arcangelo said:

Yeah so? Why do we here at actualized.org have to care about his death? 270 killed themselves since your last post. What's the big deal?

 

   Because it's relative. You'd be singing a different tune if this was a family member or friend to you, but because you know little about him, that is proportional to the feeling you'd have, which is very little, which is one benefit of relativity. For example, if you were just a 9-5 cashier who lost a family member, and you want to cremate the body, it's very difficult to bring yourself to go through the entire process because of your emotional attachment to the person and lack of training on handling the body. But thanks to relativity, some other person who's a professional at handling bodies and cremation could do it for you, and would have have little to no emotional attachment to the body, and relatively higher skill of handling bodies compared to you. 

[Arcangelo]

Yes guys I am sorry, the isolation, the pandemic and my own frustrations made me write that silly post. I apologize.

 

Arc

[Max_V]

@Arcangelo

That's ok, friend. I understand

The pandemic really is a difficult time. I hope you're ok. If you need to talk to anyone, feel free to message me. 

[Arcangelo]

Thanks Max!