Suicide Ain’t Painless

Eric Saeger
3 min readJun 12, 2024

I’ve had 3 close friends commit suicide over the years, but never did they ever threaten to do so on social media, basically because it wasn’t the monstrously ubiquitous thing it is nowadays. It’s so common to see that on Facebook and Twitter now, you know? There was another one today I never would have expected.

I don’t know how seriously to take people who threaten to do it on Facebook or Twitter, because everything we do on those platforms is all off-Broadway acting, but I do have a few thoughts on it. First one is that this too shall pass, if it’s not a debilitating, permanent injury where you literally can’t get any relief no matter what and five medical specialists have told you there’s absolutely, positively nothing that can be done. I mean, if you can still function in some capacity, like, all it is is that you’re disillusioned with the fact that Petunia dumped you or you didn’t get the stupid job, it’s a temporary setback. Do whatever you need to do to survive, the heck with it. The only thing self-destruction accomplishes is putting your friends or family or concerned acquaintance(s) through misery they’ll never forget. And it’s like walking out of a pretty interesting but kind of disturbing movie without staying to see the end of it, isn’t it? Right, like, did you stop watching War Of The Gargantuas just because the nice brown Gargantua good guy was getting his butt trashed by that green asshole?

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Eric Saeger

Author of “Russian Nazi Troll Bots! The Busy Person’s Guide to How Trump’s Trolls Won the Internet.” Music writer at Hippo Press. Software guy. Doomsayer.