Just when you think people couldn't get any stupider, you come across an article like this, that makes you realize how great it is to be a cynic.
James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora
Okay, let's please read this again, shall we?
Some people saw a movie, and not only did they like it, they liked so much that they're going to kill themselves because it's not real.
And somebody wrote a 1140 word article about it.
...
You can't really get any dumber than that. Except that I'm not only reading this article, but writing a lengthy "Fisking" of it. But let's move on.
On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope.
Why does it not surprise that hopeless fanboys would hang out at a message board?
The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their
confused feelings about the movie.
This is news? Overspill from other threads leading to the creation is quite common. This is only news to a moron who's never been on a message board.
Shit, why am I reading this again?
"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth.
Maybe its because Earth actually exists and isn't a made-up movie fairyland.
Anyway, I can't be too upset that we don't live on a Dinosaur Planet with 7 foot tall Blue Kitties. But that's just me.
I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."
People who spend every waking hour on the Internet are living in "a completely different world." It's called Mom's Basement.
A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.
"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.
So you could go from one obsession to another! Thanks for revealing how big a fucking loser you are.
A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.
The unasked question here is whether or not he contemplated suicide before seeing the movie.
"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them.
Watching Lawrence of Arabia made me want to be a millionaire Oscar-winning film director who shags anything in a skirt. The difference is, one of our dreams is (theoretically) possible.
I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted.
This sounds pretty close to what I experience when I see a really great movie. Who doesn't break down crying watching the epic panning shot in Lawrence of Arabia, or watching the flashback in Once Upon a Time in the West, or watching Deborah leave Noodles on the train platform in Once Upon a Time in America, or listening to Lara's Theme? Well, who doesn't that's not named Groggy Dundee, anyway?
So, nothing at all wrong with that, but then...
"I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"
Well, it ain't gonna happen. You'll be a loser in any life.
Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.
Well, I suppose that is what comes from being picked on in school your whole life.
The world of Pandora is reminiscent of a prehistoric fantasyland, filled with dinosaur-like creatures
Because human interactions with dinosaurs always go well:
mixed with the kinds of fauna you may find in the deep reaches of the ocean
You mean like these guys?
Yeah, how magical.
Compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia.
That is a matter of opinion.
Ivar Hill posts to the "Avatar" forum page under the name Eltu. He wrote about his post-"Avatar" depression after he first saw the film earlier this month.
"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray.
So you woke up color-blind?
It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."
You're only saying that because your toaster oven is on the fritz, HughesNet is cutting back on your broadband connection, and your dad scrambled the Playboy Channel. And worst of all, Mom is making you get a job.
Reached via e-mail in Sweden where he is studying game design
Wait, you called a random guy all the way in Sweden to ask him his thoughts on Avatar!?!
Jesus H. Christ.
Hill, 17
Well, he has an excuse. But the moron who wrote this article doesn't.
"Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far," said Dr. Stephan Quentzel, psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect."
I'd say duh, but this is the one sane person in the article (except possibly Stephen Lang) so I'll let it pass.
Fans of the movie may find actor Stephen Lang, who plays the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in the film, an enemy of the Na'vi people and their sacred ground, an unlikely sympathizer.
I hope that even the fans find his character the enemy and not the actor. I guess this was an attempt at cleverness by the guy writing this.
But Lang says he can understand the connection people are feeling with the movie.
So Ike Clanton, Stonewall Jackson and Charles Winstead is a fanboy!?! Say it ain't so!
The bright side is that for Hill and others like him -- who became dissatisfied with their own lives and with our imperfect world after enjoying the fictional creation of James Cameron -- becoming a part of a community of like-minded people on an online forum has helped them emerge from the darkness.
They find a community of people who are even bigger losers than they are! That will cheer them up because they didn't think that was even possible until now.
Quentzel said creating relationships with others is one of the keys to human happiness, and that even if those connections are occurring online they are better than nothing.
I guess that's true.
"Obviously there is community building in these forums," Quentzel said. "It may be technologically different from other community building, but it serves the same purpose."
If the purpose is to make people completely unable to function in real life, then mission accomplished.
I know all too well the ravages of Internet addiction, but the worst I can be accused of is posting too much on IMDB or being a David Lean fanboy:
Which doesn't quite qualify me as a nutcase. (Other things do.)
Some people are just beyond help. It's one thing to be socially awkward and to try to escape into books (remember those?), movies and even the Internet - that's something I can certainly relate to. It's quite another to devote yourself utterly the world of the movies, living your life through its characters. I may find T.E. Lawrence a relatable character in many ways, but I don't wish I was him, or that I lived in the Hijaz killing Turks for a living. And it's pathetic because these people will never be able to function in real life.
If you're going to kill yourself because your movie world doesn't exist, you are beyond pathetic.
This reminds me so much of that Simpsons episode with Emily Blunt as the crazy girl who creates Equalia with Lisa because her life is so boring. Lisa was able to realize just what a nutcase her friendly really was, though it took being locked in lobster cages by Jimbo and his bully buddies to snap her out of it. I doubt most of these people will, even when they turn sixty and are still living in their (now-deceased) mother's basement like a techno-Norman Bates.
Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack,
So cope with depression by doing things that remind you of what depresses you. I gotcha.
in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.
This seems like telling a serial killer to stop killing people and go make popsicle stick houses. It ain't gonna happen.
I don't think there's really a story here, just pathetic fanboy losers being interviewed by lazy reporters cashing in on Avatar's immense popularity. Thanks for alerting us to their existence, Jo Piazza. Even your name sounds like a fraud.
Maybe I'll actually see this damned movie this weekend. Hopefully I won't be so awed by its splendiferous splender that I'll feel all suicidal like and go on a killing spree when I get back to Oakland. I'm more likely to feel that way if it sucks, quite frankly.
Besides, I don't think General Allenby would take it too kindly if I found a new obsession just now. And you've got no disguise from Allenby's Eyes!
Blech.
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