As I watch this video, I can’t help but recall moments of darkness and despair in my own life when I imagined the huge wave of grief that would be unleashed by my own funeral. I dreamed of my tormenters’ lives forever ruined by their guilt for having pushed me over the edge. Everyone else would know who they were, and they would shun them the way I was shunned. Who’s sorry now, huh?…
But is it so obvious to other Lady Gaga fans? To other teenage, bullied, depressed, and hopeless Lady Gaga fans? A Lady Gaga fan who would kill for that kind of a shout-out, even if it is a posthumous one?
– Box Turtle Bulletin‘s Jim Burroway discussing the song that Lady Gaga dedicated to 14-year-old suicide victim Jamey Rodemeyer and the dangers of “suicide contagion” in his article “Beware The Heroes We Create.” Suicide contagion is “an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media—also known as the Werther Effect from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Wolfgang
Before Germany declares war on this site for toying with their greatest names, that particular book was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published approximately 100 years before Mann was even born :-))
Daniel Villarreal
@Wolfgang: Very good, Wolfgang! We got our novelists confused and have corrected the error. Five gold stars!
Kev C
Psychologically, expecting copycat suicides increases the likelihood of copycat suicides. It’s called the Subject-Expectancy Effect, or the Pygmalion Effect, or an aspect of the Placebo Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject-expectancy_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
Eljas
This article and the whole way it approaches both advocacy and the tragic death of a young person is disgusting. What has gone wrong, Queerty?
Fagburn
This article – like everything else Queerty has written about teen suicides – is so dumb and dangerous you should delete it.
Please!
Josh
Great, queety. U’ll do everything to make Lady Gaga look bad, wont u?
Michael
Disgusting title person who wrote that should be ashamed of themselves.A good way to shit on the memory of people like Jamey also.Queerty for shame.
Velocifero
Lady Gaga’s celebrated losing one of her
Fans, not the human that was this teen.
And like everything – she made it about her
and never got to the root of the problem.
Suicide is oft done for attention but her
so called tribute has not solved the issue.
The kids who bullied him were quoted as
saying they were not ashamed in the
slightest. So why doesn’t Gaga take her
fight to them? Because it wont have as
many hits on YouTube I suspect.
Little Kiwi
Oh, so apparently it’s her fault and not the fault of the legislators, high-ranking politicians, parents of children at the schools and in fact the anti-gay bigots in society.
Got it. It’s not the fault of those who continue to promote anti-gay bigotry, it’s the fault of a woman, who’s spent so much of her time since becoming the biggest thing in music, for dedicating a song to him. RIGHT.
That makes sense. Riiiiight,
Sara
The teenager was tormented by his bullies to such an extent that he’d rather end his life than to take one more day of bullying. He was severely depressed, he did NOT kill himself because he wanted attention.
I suggest the author to inform himself a little bit about this case and bullycide in general before making a mockery of this serious issue.
Dave
Really, she’s doing her part to stop teen suicide. She’s sending a clear message: kill yourself, and I may very well dedicate a performance of “Hair”, a song so appallingly ridiculous that it’s impossible to tell if it’s cleverly-disguised satire or just the schmaltziest ham-fisted extended metaphor of all time, to you.
If that’s not a disincentive, I don’t know what is.
Little Kiwi
time spent complaining about Lady Gaga is time wasted. Use that energy to write to congress, write to school boards, get actively involved in pro-Equality measures, and indeed perhaps offer to talk to schools about being LGBT.
Lady Gaga is not now, nor will she ever be, the problem.
How does coming online to let everyone know how much you dislike Lady Gaga solve anything? We have elected officials in politics telling people that gays are dangerous sick evil sinners who will destroy america and are worthy of being discriminated against.
bigoted anti-gay discrimination is written into law in most States. bigotry is learned. you have to be carefully taught how to hate.
railing against Gaga is a waste of energy. Fight the real enemy.
ismail
@Velocifero: But she HAS done something about it. She paid $40,000 just to ask Obama a question about his stance on bullying and is pushing the NY senate to create a law that would criminalize bullying as an act of homicide
JODIE
Are you being serious? This is beyond sick, I think I’m going to try and get this website deleted. There’s a freedom of speech and then there’s just being naive. You utter cunt.
Michael
@JODIE:
Agreed while you’re at it delete a number of posters here who dont deserve to be here to begin with.
Mav
@Little Kiwi: I completely agree with you.
Anyone who criticizes Lady Gaga’s myriad attempts to bring attention to gay rights issues and is not an ACTIVE LGBT activist is an ungrateful hypocrite and a whiny bastard.
And no, posting Queerty comments does not count as activism. Sorry, armchair warriors. You’re gonna have to do more than spout vitriol and press “Submit”. You have to actually CARE about gay rights, not just hold a position on it.
At least that is one thing I can say for Gaga. She cares. Which is more than I could say for a lot of apathetic queers who can’t do anything but complain about their lot in life.
Little Kiwi
complain less about Lady Gaga and complain more about the elected officials who promote anti-gay bigotry to the masses. for real.
actually, don’t complain about them. write to them. write to your families about them. get your non-gay family and friends to be Visible and Vocal advocates for LGBT Equality.
http://youtu.be/qiloehlRthM
this is how we win.
RT
In light of what’s REALLY happening(teen suicide), is the title, “Lady Gaga Fans To Start Killing Themselves Just To Get A Dedication Song” really appropriate? This guy Daniel Villareal, he does this all the time. He writes some senseless articles to forcibly connect Lady Gaga with some evil.
The guy who wrote this, I get that you hate Lady Gaga. You don’t simply dislike her, you hate her. I see that, even though she brought a touching performance of Hair, JUST TO PAY RESPECT TO A DEAD 14 YEAR OLD who took his own sad life. You got to go ahead and try to mar the tribute that attempted to recognize the issues behind the kid’s death.
The whole concept of the LGBT community doing something about the teen bullying and suicide is bringing the issue to public attention(and really hopefully to the kids who are thinking of suicide RIGHT NOW). We’ve got to tell them, we love them, and it gets better. Lady Gaga just reached to millions of her teen fans across the nation and told them, “it’s not right and we’ve got to fight for it.”
Also I don’t want to hear another word about whether or not Gaga is a true ally to LGBT causes. She’s one of the only people who are standing up. Our own presidential candidates, who hope to get elected are literally “pledging” to stop marriage equality, remove LGBT history from school, and kick honorable queer soldiers from serving. Some folks are literally out to destroy us and you want to rebuke Lady Gaga for this? Rather I think she deserves a freaking medal for the funds she raised, and awareness she generated.
Opheliac
This is just pure bullshit. Suicide isn’t contagious, no teen is going to commit suicide to get a tribute song from Lady Gaga. Like, I’m a fan of Emilie Autumn, and I don’t suddenly start to dream about being a manic depressive, being raped and locked up in a horribly-maintained psych ward. -_-
Michael
@Velocifero:
What a horrid comment to make.You can dislike LG all you want to thats fine thats your right to .
But for you to claim she only did that to inflate her ego as if she did not even give a damn about Jamey is preposterous.
Watch the video again she didnt call Jamey her fan she called him by his name the name his now grieving mother called him which was Jamey.She treated him like a human being and acknowledged him as one as well.She then went to talk to Obama to see if she could try her best to prevent another senseless heartbreaking tragedy like this one from happening again.
LG’s heart has always been in the right place and for you to even have the audacity to make such a claim is utterly ridiculous.
LG and Cyndi Lauper are 2 of our biggest supporters in this community especially Lauper that classy dame is a doll in more ways then one.
As the old saying goes don’t bite the hand that feeds you turning on those who genuinely love and care about us as well as our rights as human beings does not do the LGBT community any good whatsoever.
Daniel Villarreal
@RT: I like Lady Gaga, actually. “Telephone” is a kickin’ song. Trying to determine my musical tastes and socio-political positions from these articles is a futile quest, I assure you.
Adrew Harper
What the hell? This is sick… that title and this whole article is just not right…
RT
@Daniel Villarreal:
So, let’s hear more about your completely unfounded and irrational socio-political positions. What political statement are you making by writing this article? That the fans will start committing suicides just to get tributes from a pop singer? Lady Gaga is a threat to American teens’ mental health? That is your real concern that you needed to share with us, the readers at Queerty?
Michael
@Adrew Harper:
Your title was sick it takes a person with low character to write something like that and try to pass it off as some sick joke.
Did you ever think for one minute what Jameys loved ones would think of this title? Disgusting.
Michael
@Daniel Villarreal:
Your title was sick it takes a person with low character to write something like that and try to pass it off as some sick joke.
Did you ever think for one minute what Jameys loved ones would think of this title? Disgusting.
Sorry Adrew my bad .
MKe
I’m not sure if getting a song dedicated to you means all that much. I don’t think that’s enough push someone to actually end their human life. No one alive knows what this must be like, except that it would take, A LOT and be very difficult and painful and scary… It takes something dramatically awful to push someone to this point. Like repeated mental abuse and degradation by probably students and teachers at school… Gaga should go ahead and sing, it takes more than that to kill a person.
Scott Bonzitski
I can’t believe the people who “piggyback” on the wonderful people doing the best they can for LGBT people! LG is doing fine defending OUR rights, you’re NOT. Stay away from the ones who are trying to release the imprisonment that the so called “str8/ignorant” people are in dire need of being educated about. Some of the “people” [and I use that term loosely] on here don’t really give a damn about us LGBT’s. They seem to be implanted here just to cause a ruse amongst us and it’s NOT GOING TO WORK. Ignore them and maybe, just maybe they will go away and take their hate elsewhere. We have been infiltrated by the bottom feeders. You think REAL LGBT’s would write this $hit about themselves? We KNOW better. Let them not drag us down to their level. It is only dark and murky there and that is what they want to accomplish. It must be lonely when you have to write about others when YOU are the bully. S-O-O-O S-A-A-D-D-D…SB
Michael
@Scott Bonzitski:
claps as Paris Hilton would say loves it.
Vania
This must be the worst article that I have ever encountered!! I am disgusted how u try to flip the switch and try to put blame on GaGa in some way rather than focus on the real issue which is bullying!! WOW!! did not even put the focus on those kids that had tormented the crap out of Jamey!! I am so discusted and ashamed of even reading this article!! How do u sleep at night?? How can someone write something negitive about someone who tried to make a positive impact on a negative situation!! How can anyone who had an influence on someone committing suicide sleep at night??? Honestly people these days just have no morals, no heart or shame!! Words can not even describe how terrible it is to make a person fall to the edge and still be proud of it!! And yet this article is meant to jump down the person’s throat (GaGa) who was trying to make a positive difference on the matter! This bullying issue is just getting out of hand! Need to educate the ignorant people who will not let go of their selfish ways and just accept the fact that we are all equal and everyone deserves a equal opprotunity!! Maybe those ignorant people need a taste of their one medicine and get ridiculed and judged by their way of life to see if they like it!! Cause I’m sure as hell they are not perfect at all!!
trevor bartlet
A low-talent hack…proving how awful the American music industry has become. She hasn’t an original idea in her schtick.
Vania
Also I am a big fan of Gaga! You may not bea fan that is fine but don’t be writing nonsense like this! I am not about to go and commit suicide just to have a song dedicated to me I am sure it takes a whole lot more to end your own life that u will never get back for just a mention and a song dedicated to u! Jamey was tormented to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore and just because he was a fan of GaGa does not mean that he was thinking before he died that he was going to be be mentioned by Gaga and a song would be dedicated to him! I am sure he was thinking about other things than that! This is a real serious issue and this article somewhat disrespects the memory of Jamey cause u make it seem that he killed himself just to be mentioned by Gaga! that is just wrong in soooo many ways!! WoW!! And I am sure other teens will not go kill themselves just to have a few minutes of being mentioned by their idol Gaga! By u writing this crap puts ideas in teens heads for them to do so! So in a way u are making it worse rather than making it better! Think about it for just a second!
fredo777
@Dave: Are you seriously using this moment to throw shade on Gaga’s song as opposed to focusing on what’s actually important about this story? Yikes.
CBRad
@Daniel Villarreal: Again, I’ll say I have some due respect for Daniel V. for actually answering Queerty’s posters and for taking the heat. (We’d never have seen that integrity from the sneaky Andrew Belonsky or David Hauslaib).
Daniel Villarreal
@RT: No. My purpose of running this article is to highlight the issue of suicide contagion and to get readers to discuss whether Mr. Burroway’s fears are well-founded or overblown. Could the highlighting of a fan’s suicide get others to do the same? Maybe, maybe not. The headline provides an absurd and accurate summation of Burroway’s argument as callous as it may seem.
CBRad
@Daniel Villarreal: I’m no expert on teen suicide, but I know the “suicide contagion” factor is something often worried about by the experts, even with the non-gay teen suicide cases.
Joe
@Daniel Villarreal: The objection is not the use of an overly absurd title, or an inaccurate one. Its the use of a callous title. I have no objection to a morbid sense of humor, but morbidity and absurdity do not necessitate such callousness. He was fourteen and even if his suicide was entirely “contagion” based and done solely for fame, then it is still tragic and this is still a story about a dead fourteen year old.
Red Meat
Yet another article by a Madonna/Britney vagina worshiper.
Yet another discussion ending on Lady gaga’s Music.
Lady Gaga’s Record Label – “Mission Accomplished”
Eljas
@Daniel Villarreal
I am not a mind-reader and I cannot know whether your aspiration is truly genuine. But I can comment on your method in putting this article together, and it is certainly callous, naive and comes across as written in bad faith, as oppose to something that would communicate a desire towards a level-headed discussion on gay teen suidice. Frankly, the impression it leaves is that of a sickeningly self-serving snipe at a genuine human tragedy.
brandon williams - Detroit
Queety, this is disgusting that you would stoop so low to call this 14 year old teen’s suicide a cry for attention. And to even suggest that other’s will do the same for a Lady Gaga dedication/memorial.
Jayme was bullied and tormented at school on a daily basis, pushed to the brink. People all over the world are heartbroken for his pain, and this loss.
This article should be removed.
Katt
Yeah this was pretty disgusting! Queerty… SHAME. ON. YOU.
Dave
@fredo777: Yup, pretty much.
Look, I love her, but that song is quite possibly the worst song ever written in the English language. I kind of refuse to believe it isn’t a parody, but the fact that ahe thinks it’s appropriate as a tribute forces me to accept that it isn’t.
The article was about the tribute. My comment was about the tribute. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about the underlying issue—all it mens is that I can actually stay on topic.
Dave
@fredo777: Yup, pretty much.
Look, I love her, but that song is quite possibly the worst song ever written in the English language. I kind of refuse to believe it isn’t a parody, but the fact that ahe thinks it’s appropriate as a tribute forces me to accept that it isn’t.
The article was about the tribute. My comment was about the tribute. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about the underlying issue—all it means is that I can actually stay on topic.
Gone
Fuck you Daniel Villarreal. FUCK YOU. For writing a title like this about a topic that is sensitive and emotional. You always write titles that are borderline-offensive, but this is completely over the top. I’m through with you and with Queerty. Go fuck yourself.
sekretnoi
Queerty does not care about barsexual pop stars
Deluno
Hello everyone, this is my 1st post on this site. I joined to do so after reading this article–provocation worked. It’s said in very poor taste, with a terrible lack of sensitivity on something which has deeply impacted on many of us in the LGBTI community. So many of us strongly relate personally to Jamey’s story, that he has come to represent more than just one person. In doing so, as we often do for those we care about who have died, we don’t like to speak ill or disrespectfully, but may also idealise him. If we really care about prevention of similar suicides, we should seek to better understand. This may involve uncomfortable questions and discussion. I do think this article raises issues which need to be considered, but it’s a shame it was done so clumsily that rather than serious consideration, it understandably causes anger, disgust, and outrage.