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Dear Papa Bear,

As always, the words "thank you" cannot express how grateful myself and many others are to you for reading our letters and giving us some wise advice. :)

I have a shorter but important question today. This came up because relatively recently an online friend of mine has been having a rough time lately. One night, he expressed suicidal thoughts and desires (as I am sure many, if not all of us have felt at one point or another). Unfortunately, he logged off right afterwards, not giving me a chance to talk to him at all. So, naturally I feared the worst. Anyway, he came back online the next day like nothing happened.

It just made me think about a lot of things. In person, you can actually /do things/. You can set a suicide watch, call the police, give hugs, all sorts of things. Perhaps this next part sounds a bit selfish of me, but it wouldn't bother me if I didn't care. The internet allows you to, with relative anonymity, dump all your problems and some vague feeling of responsibility onto a stranger and then vanish. If this friend hadn't come back, in a year I would still be wondering if he was still alive, or if I had made a mistake somewhere. It is just a situation where I feel like I do have some sort of responsibility, but very little actual influence over /anything/.

I guess there wasn't really a question in there, but what can we do if these sorts of things happen? Can we call the police and say "Hello. I am afraid my friend W******0 means to harm himself"?

Braelyn (age 26)

* * *

Dear Braelyn,

This is an important question, and thank you for posing it. The issue here, essentially, is how do you handle a call for help when all you know of the other person is his/her contact name on a social media site or on a chat page. What are your responsibilities in this situation, morally and legally?

Legally, you are under no obligation to report them to police, social services, help lines, or whatever. Morally, one should assume that this person is in trouble, even though it is very true (and I have LOTS of personal experience in this area) that there are a lot of drama queens and trolls out there who really aren’t seriously considering suicide and are just looking for attention or, worse, trying to deliberately upset you.

Let’s assume, though, as we should, that this is a very real cry for help. The police, obviously, do not have time to track down people on social media, find their contact information, and try to rush out an officer or social worker to a place that is, most likely, not even in the same jurisdiction as you are. You could call one of the many suicide help lines out there, but you would run into the same problem as you would with police.

Just for the record and on general principles, here’s a good article to read when you are dealing with a potentially suicidal person: http://psychcentral.com/lib/what-to-do-when-you-think-someone-is-suicidal/0007461.

Back to social media. I have a lot of problems with Facebook, but I do approve of them for having this on their website: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=305410456169423. You can fill in that form, providing the username, and hopefully they can look into it for you.

If it is a Twitter account, go to https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170313-dealing-with-self-harm-and-suicide.

Wordpress? Read this page: http://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/.

Tumblr: Contact the troubled person and send them this link: http://youmatterlifeline.tumblr.com/

FurAffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/controls/troubletickets/. And, same with other furry sites: try to contact admins.

And, in general, you can reply to their IMs and send them this link: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/.

After you have taken the trouble to get them some assistance, if they don’t contact you again, then let it go. There is nothing more you can do. If they do contact you and, as in your experience, act as if nothing happened and everything is hunky dory, I would then gently inquire if they are all right. Chances are they will say something like “I was just having a bad day.” If that’s the case, then know you have a drama queen on your hands and keep that in mind for future correspondence. If they say something snarky like, “LOL, got you all worried, didn’t I?” Then you have a troll on your hands and I would block such a person.

Hope that answers your question, Braelyn!

Papabear

This is a great fursuit music video collaboration between Halla and Kiba Wolf featuring Pepper Coyote.

Damn you guys! These music videos are rather amazing these days!

It’s been a great year for furry success. One of us hung out with President Obama at the White House. Now, the movie Finsterworld has been getting all kinds of praise at international film festivals. My movie review can tell you more about Furries in the movie- I highly recommend it. Here’s what the Zurich […]

Author: Dear Papa Bear, First off, I would like to say I greatly enjoy reading your column. Now onto my problem. A few days ago, one of my friends (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call her “Fox”) messaged me and some other friends via Facebook that she met a guy (I’ll call him “Lion”) and was […]

A DELICATE REQUEST: A stranger approached the Furry community to get this movie review. He was a journalist for a European film festival, seeking our perspective. When he said “fursuit fetish”, he was greeted with dislike for media exploiting our thing. But I found the question respectful, without cherry-picking responders. I sent a response that […]

Does the media hate furries? This week we discover the answer is “not really” and discuss how furries shape how they’re viewed.

 

Metadata and Credits WagzTail Season 3 Episode 31

Runtime: 30m

Cast: JWingy, Near, Levi, Wolfin

Editor: Wolfin

Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2014 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. If distributed with a facility that has an existing agreement in place with a Professional Rights Organisation (PRO), file a cue sheet for 30:00 to Fabien Renoult (BMI) 1.67%, Josquin des Pres (BMI) 1.67%, WagzTail.com 96.67%. Rights have been acquired to all content for national and international broadcast and web release with no royalties due.

Podcast image belongs to carterse, used with permission. Furry in the Media - Does the media hate furries? This week we discover the answer is "not really" and discuss how furries shape how they're viewed.

Does the media hate furries? This week we discover the answer is “not really” and discuss how furries shape how they’re viewed.

 

Metadata and Credits WagzTail Season 3 Episode 31

Runtime: 30m

Cast: JWingy, Near, Levi, Wolfin

Editor: Wolfin

Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2014 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. If distributed with a facility that has an existing agreement in place with a Professional Rights Organisation (PRO), file a cue sheet for 30:00 to Fabien Renoult (BMI) 1.67%, Josquin des Pres (BMI) 1.67%, WagzTail.com 96.67%. Rights have been acquired to all content for national and international broadcast and web release with no royalties due.

Podcast image belongs to carterse, used with permission. Furry in the Media - Does the media hate furries? This week we discover the answer is "not really" and discuss how furries shape how they're viewed.

Hey, just an average 18 Male Wolf looking for something to do If you wanna RP I have kik so you can message me there. Kik: AleksGuy

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We couldn’t do any better than the actual title here. “Did you enjoy stepping on bugs as a child? Have you ever lit one on fire with a magnifying glass? What if all those bugs could come back from the dead? Don’t Let the Dead Bugs Bite! is the tale of a community struggling to rid itself of troublesome bugs that have come back to haunt their once peaceful town. This exciting story will capture children’s imaginations and may make them think twice before stepping on that next bug.” This new full-color book was written and illustrated by Stephen Zmina. As you can see from the official web site, there’s quite a roster of well-known celebrities who’ve read and endorsed the book! Be sure to check out the horror-movie-style book trailer too.

image c. 2014 by Stephen Zmina

Hi folks!

So my attempt to make a duct tape dummy by myself (as documented in another thread of mine yesterday) was more or less a disaster. I was able to salvage my legs, but all of my torso and upper body came out as a waste of a shirt and tape. So, I'm looking for someone in my area (I live just outside Madison) who would be willing to help me out by duct-taping me from the waist up! Any legendary takers?

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Author: studio@xanacreations.com (..::XANA::.. Creations) http://furcast.fm/logos/furcast-2013.png Hipster File System (HFS) is a proprietary file system developed by FurCast Inc. for use in computer systems running FurOS. Originally designed for use on crappy laptop HDDs and floppy disks, it can also be found on read-only media such as CD-ROMs. Download MP3 (Right-click, Save) [Video coming soon...] News: ‘Freedom Planet’: A furry […] FC-172 Hipster File System

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