Look. Look. I'm gonna do it

After moseying around this wonderful blogosphere a bit, I located an  interesting and hilarious post  from JesterTunes.  Not unlike the Balloon Boy incident,  here is just another report of a person trying desperately to get attention by any means possible.  This time apparently it is Nick from Florida, now living in San Francisco who threatened to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge using Twitter.  He tells his followers:

Taking the 22 bus to the Golden aGate bridge. Too kill myself. Life isn’t worht living. Fuxk u all. Cya 10:45 PM Dec 15th from HootSupe

Alright I’m here…fuck u all…esp the one who knows it th emost. At the bridge..try and stop me now you asshole. Fuck u all for not caring 11:25 PM Dec 15th from HootSupe

Jester, the blogger, was less than impressed by both Nick's plausible suicide plan and his faulty spelling. He replied:

is it @nickstapp-suicide-from-golden-gate-bridge o’clock again already? 11:39 PM Dec 15th from Twestie

Naturally (and fairly) this remark caused howls from all of Nick's followers and charges of insensitivity. Jester, being better informed, was nonplussed by the reaction. Having been taken in in the past, Jester was  rather bored with Nick's shenanigans.

...anyone who has followed Nick for more than, say a month, know that makes these statements on a regular basis. Like, really regular. As in “I’ve lost count how many times this has happened.

To take just one example of the game, Nick's homelessness is not what it appears to be.

Nick has voluntarily chosen to live on the streets in an effort to save money for elective cosmetic surgery. He hasn’t lost his job (surprisingly). He’s not like millions of Americans who are unemployed, or living below the poverty level. He’s not a discarded disable veteran. He’s not a victim of foreclosure. He’s not suffered some horrible string of events that has left him with no place to live. No, Nick has lost around 100 pounds and instead of being happy about his positive and healthy changes in his weight, he’s fixated on the extra skin that has been left behind. In other words, he wants a tummy tuck so badly that he has chosen to sleep in parks and on sidewalks, and begging for on-line donations.

Jester states that this cheap kind of positive attention is not the kind of help that Nick needs.

I understand that he is mentally ill, there really is no question about it. Anyone who voluntarily lives on the street and threatens suicide with every third cosmopolitan clearly has issues.

But I am also certain that he habitually and routinely abuses his facebook and twitter followers by manipulating them into providing him with some sick positive attention.

All this reminds of my nephew when he was three. His mother, my sister, was quite keen of her ability to "multi-task." It created a kind of acquired  Attention Deficient Disorder. Her mind became like some huge disembodied eyeball that would wander from item of momentary interest, zoom in, and discard.

One time, I watched as she tried to read her son a bedtime story while watching the local news on TV. He suddenly prodded her with his elbow and shouted,"Well.. go on!"

In response to this behavior, he developed a strategy. As the adults would sit on the enclosed deck in the summer evening, Carter would edge over to the slicing and dicing blades of an electric fan with his finger stuck out and say, "Look. Look. I'm gonna do it." In the beginning, being that type of person, I would inevitably overreact and say something like, "Get away from there!!" The next time, "What do you think you are DOING?!"

But after the fifth or sixth time, my attitude became more relaxed. I would just look up and say, "That's nice, dear." After all, he DID have nine more chances to learn a valuable lesson for life. For pity's sake, it was only an index finger. Let's get some perspective. He has another one on his left hand.

Besides, losing his right index finger raises the chance that his sister wouldn't lose one of her eyes by a whopping 50%. After awhile, he got bored with taunting us this way.

Anyway, for an amusing look at what people, presumably adults, will do to get attention in the age of Twitter, 24 news and all the social networking sites, check out the blog post at http://www.jestertunes.com/2009/12/17/for-crying-out-loud/