Stop Susan Meachen profiting from fake suicide and harming mental health sufferers.
Stop Susan Meachen profiting from fake suicide and harming mental health sufferers.
The Issue
In September 2020 Susan Meachen, an independent romance author, was announced having committed suicide due to being bullied by the book community. Everyone was encouraged to go buy her final book, while the author continued to collect money for funeral arrangements and write under a different pen name. Two years later, she is laughing about how much money she made, and how she plans to turn this experience into a franchise of books, movies, and anything else she can get someone to support.
Meanwhile, suicide remains the 12th leading cause of death in the United States. In 2020 45,979 people lost their lives. 1.20M attempted to do so. That’s an average of 130 suicides a day. By glorifying Meachen’s behavior for entertainment purposes, you would be silencing people who already struggle with coming forward to get the much needed help they deserve. By promoting that fake suicides sell more books, you are promoting that actual mental crisis and loss of loved ones isn’t “entertaining enough” or a story worthy telling. You will be giving more ammunition to a war we are already losing. If you profit from this story in any way, then like Meachen, you must be able to sleep at night knowing that 45,979 and 1.20M will be the smallest numbers you will ever see documented by the CDC again.
If we don’t stop glorifying people’s assumptions that stunts like this are acceptable marketing to increase sales of our inventory, then we might as well start randomly pulling the trigger on the people around us. 1 in 5 people in the United States suffers from mental illness annually. 1 in 20 people suffering from a severe mental illness annually. Unless you only know four people, including yourself, then you know someone who suffers from mental illness. How many people that you actually care about have to die before you decide this isn’t okay?
Please sign this petition, and help save someone you love feel safe in getting the help they need. The more signatures we collect, the less likely Netflix will pick up this story for “entertainment”.
314
The Issue
In September 2020 Susan Meachen, an independent romance author, was announced having committed suicide due to being bullied by the book community. Everyone was encouraged to go buy her final book, while the author continued to collect money for funeral arrangements and write under a different pen name. Two years later, she is laughing about how much money she made, and how she plans to turn this experience into a franchise of books, movies, and anything else she can get someone to support.
Meanwhile, suicide remains the 12th leading cause of death in the United States. In 2020 45,979 people lost their lives. 1.20M attempted to do so. That’s an average of 130 suicides a day. By glorifying Meachen’s behavior for entertainment purposes, you would be silencing people who already struggle with coming forward to get the much needed help they deserve. By promoting that fake suicides sell more books, you are promoting that actual mental crisis and loss of loved ones isn’t “entertaining enough” or a story worthy telling. You will be giving more ammunition to a war we are already losing. If you profit from this story in any way, then like Meachen, you must be able to sleep at night knowing that 45,979 and 1.20M will be the smallest numbers you will ever see documented by the CDC again.
If we don’t stop glorifying people’s assumptions that stunts like this are acceptable marketing to increase sales of our inventory, then we might as well start randomly pulling the trigger on the people around us. 1 in 5 people in the United States suffers from mental illness annually. 1 in 20 people suffering from a severe mental illness annually. Unless you only know four people, including yourself, then you know someone who suffers from mental illness. How many people that you actually care about have to die before you decide this isn’t okay?
Please sign this petition, and help save someone you love feel safe in getting the help they need. The more signatures we collect, the less likely Netflix will pick up this story for “entertainment”.
314
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Petition created on January 15, 2023