Occupy Depression.

It is what it is.

https://www.facebook.com/occupydepression

Having spoken to more and more people on the internet, and offline in the real world, it has become more and more apparent that depression and bipolar disorder, like so many other mental health issues, can be better dealt with when we talk about them and remove the stigma.

Personally, I like to think that these afflictions are akin to the boggart in the Harry Potter stories. A scary, terrible thing for anyone to have to face, but ultimately something that CAN be laughed at and made silly long enough for any individual to face it down and lock it back in a box.

Occupy Depression is an attempt to do just that. It will be full of random bits of fun (movie clips, songs, comedy) and also articles and interviews dealing with depression. There will be conversation amongst people on the page, but we're not going to be the online equivalent of this moment . . . .

As the motto of the page goes: "You don't have to be depressed to post here . . . . . . but it helps."

Please pass the page link along to anyone you know who may enjoy what we're trying to do, and pop in yourself.

Here ends the PSA for today.

And in the news today: me, me, me, ME.

Tragic events unfold.

Again.

The BBC News website, and I'm sure many others, have things on a Live Stream. Videos appeared on YouTube within minutes. The explosions that signaled the end of a fun day for Boston residents were caught live on camera and by the time you read this those images will have been shown again and again and again on 101 different news channels all with hours and hours of scheduling to fill.

But even with that direct connection, and that sense of immediacy, it still seems too distant for some people. They have to put themselves right in the middle of it all. This blog post is probably part of the problem, but I assure you that it's making a point and I will not be sharing it around as I do with my movie reviews.

Years ago I worked with a woman who had a tale that she dined out on for years. She had been to visit the Twin Towers the day before they were brought down. That was it. People were in awe as she told her tale, safely back in Edinburgh and vicariously experiencing a small part of that horrible, awful, strange day.

Today I saw the news of the bombs going off in Boston and I sighed as I started to see things pop up on my computer screen. Hashtags used for any message regarding the situation, hatred and bile spread by the scum of the Westboro Baptist Church and even people changing Facebook page names to capitalise on the traffic spike.

But, strangely enough, it seems to be the people thinking that they're doing good who annoy me the most. The people with good intentions who want to show love and compassion so quickly that they don't check anything. Why "share" and/or "like" a photo encouraging people to pray for the victims when actually praying is key to that act of faith. As an atheist, do I get brownie points for sharing such a photo and not giving it a second thought? No, but the person who started the whole thing off can be happy as the whole thing snowballs.

Similarly, people sharing a photo in memory of the child who died in the explosions. Grrrrrrrrr. Apparently a young boy died. Well, the photo is of a young girl, as is the accompanying information. Not only is it incorrect, but it's so lazy and obviously created simply to get likes and shares (one message read, I kid you not, "1 like = R.I.P") that it's disrespectful both to those who died and also to those living. Think of anyone who knows that child in the photo looking online and getting quite a shock.

I don't know what we can do to make it stop, but I do know that we need to try. Our response to these events runs through a whole range of emotions, of course, and communicating with others and sharing a sense of shock and fear and remorse is understandable. In fact, knowing that you're connected to people that you really ARE connected to is one of the few positives to come out of such a negative. But a photo being shared or liked, or both, isn't going to help any of the victims. It's not going to bring whoever was responsible for this heinous act to justice. It's not going to create money for a charitable effort created to help the victims. It's not going to turn into donated blood. It's not even going to mean a lot at the time to a lot of people who really won't be too bothered just now about keeping up with their social networking.

All it does is get attention for someone who can't get it any other way, despite needing it 24/7 and needing more and more and more.

If this post feels hypocritical and just the same way then so be it. It's not intended that way. I just had to get it out of my system, even if I'm the only person who ever reads this.

xx

Me, Myself & IMDb.

Hmmm, some time has now passed and I have received nothing but an automated response from IMDb after my posts and entire post history were deleted for no good reason last week. Oh no, I'm completely serious. No good reason at all. Hey, I can fess up to the fact that in the past, before learning how to make the best use of forums and my time, I've been a bit of a pain in the ass but this time I am, for a change, quite innocent.

And here is the correspondence thus far:

Hi guys,

I know that this is a long shot but I can genuinely not think of one single
thing I have posted that has violated the IMDb terms and conditions and came
along today to update my ongoing coverage of the Edinburgh International Film
Festival to find everything gone (threads on The Twilight Zone, Disney, etc, etc).

Is there any way this can be investigated further and perhaps reversed?

I hoped that was polite and restrained enough to warrant a decent reply but instead I received the standard auto-response.

Hello,

Posts in our message boards can be deleted/moved for a variety of reasons. First of all, before assuming your post has been deleted, you should check your post history (on your user profile page). Sometimes posts are moved by an administrator to a different board from the one they were posted on (usually because they were off-topic and/or better suited to a different forum).

If you are certain that the post has been deleted and you didn't do it, then there are two possible reasons: the message has been removed by a moderator or it has expired. Our boards are not designed to store messages indefinitely: after a certain amount of time older threads are removed from the board automatically. This process is called "expiry".

The rate of expiry is adjusted dynamically according to the posting traffic for each board. Threads are removed sooner from a board that attracts a lot of posts than they would be from a board with less activity.

Please keep in mind that the boards system is not meant to be an archival medium, and all posts are subject to expiry and disappearance sooner or later. This is intended to allow us to manage the resources consumed by each board effectively, and also to promote the ever-changing flow of discussion.

Posts can also be deleted by an administrator if they have generated complaints from other users (through the Report Abuse feature) and have been deemed inappropriate or in violation of our Terms & Conditions of use (http://www.imdb.com/help/boards/tc)

Please note that when an administrator removes a post that was the head of a thread, every other post in that thread is removed at that same time. Also, if  a thread has degenerated into a string of abusive posts and it appears that further responses are going to continue this trend, the entire thread will also be removed.

In cases of cumulative, serial or blatant abuse of the system, administrators may exercise the option of removing entire post histories from the system. If this has happened to you, it's a definite sign that you are doing something inappropriate that has attracted multiple complaints.

For further details, please refer to http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?boardstopfaq

----
Regards,
Ann
The IMDb Help Desk

Well, Ann seemed nice enough anyway even though "she" was actually saying, essentially, that I'd done something wrong repeatedly without being aware of it. To have my post history removed I must have been "doing something inappropriate that has attracted multiple complaints".

Which was absolutely not the case. And so I countered with, you know, actual evidence of my upstanding board conduct (note, the following links no longer work, of course, as the posts have all been deleted but I believe that IMDb admins have access to deleted threads as long as they receive the URLs).

This was my Twilight Zone thread - [url]http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000024/nest/196668178[/url]

My thread on horror movies on YouTube - [url]http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000024/nest/190241833?d=190241833#190241833[/url]

My thread exploring the movies included in the DVD Delirium - [url]http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000024/nest/190997812?d=190997812#190997812[/url]

My thread journeying through the movies of Walt Disney - [url]http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000007/nest/191503568?d=191503568#191503568[/url]

And my thread exploring my own DVD collection - [url]http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000007/nest/194749826?d=194749826#194749826[/url]

Please look into this rather than giving an automated response, I literally have NO idea what I could have possibly posted that would constitute "doing something inappropriate that has attracted multiple complaints" and I believe that whoever tried to report my posts/threads has themselves been abusing the complaints procedure and may need investigated further.

I understand that the stock reply will be for me to not use the boards if I am unhappy with the resolution and I will go my merry way, as a last resort, but I would much prefer to give you as much information as possible to try and actually redress the balance when it comes to the misuse of the post reporting facility.

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Matthews.

The reply? Zero. Zip. Nothing. Despite the fact that I have almost 950 reviews on their site and probably about the same number of external links, despite the fact that I try to contribute data whenever possible and despite the fact that I've actually not done anything worthy of negative action, this won't be fixed and they are quite happy to simply encourage users to "like it or lump it". It's been that way for years and won't change, I and many other users are well aware of this and grit our teeth on a daily basis.

I have a LOT of friends on IMDb and have had a lot of great conversations. But most of them are also on Facebook. Or have their own blogs. Heck, I'd LIKE to cajole a few of them into chatting away on the Flickfeast forums.

I'm not going to disappear from IMDb and I'm certainly not going to stop adding my external links and user reviews. But I am going to be there a LOT less than I was before and not invest any time or energy into the kind of threads I previously enjoyed maintaining.

Of course, I MIGHT still get an answer to my mail and a solution to this problem but I seriously doubt it. So be warned where you put in any effort, it only takes a majority of one (apparently) to see it all undone.

The Social Network (2010).

Before The Social Network was released it was one of the few movies in 2010 that I knew I just didn’t want to miss seeing at the cinema. Everything just seemed to be in place for the making of a modern classic. A cracking script by Aaron Sorkin based on a book by Ben Mezrich. David Fincher directing – the guy has done no wrong thus far in his career, in my view. Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella and Armie Hammer in the main roles – all may not be household names but I’m a huge fan of Eisenberg and the cast list signalled something aimed directly at those who had been making the most of Facebook since it’s creation.

 

I went to the cinema and something amazing happened, something that has been happening less and less frequently in the past few years. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I was absolutely blown away by the whole thing and engrossed from beginning to end.

 

There’s no doubt that certain liberties have been taken with the truth here and there (indeed, Mark Zuckerberg would try to convinve everyone that almost the entire movie is a complete fiction) but this is a barnstorming interpretation of the events that saw Zuckerberg (played, brilliantly, by Jesse Eisenberg) create Facebook and upset a number of people in the process, including the Winklevoss brothers (both played by Armie Hammer, with help from Josh Pence) and Zuckerberg’s best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).

 

Structurally, the movie starts with the evening that saw the genesis of what would eventually lead to the creation of Facebook and then moves on to show the two major depositions that Zuckerberg is involved in some time later before hopping back and forth between the most important moments in Zuckerberg’s professional life, including his involvement with Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake as the man who created Napster).

 

What ends up surprising most people when they view The Social Network is just how enjoyable and interesting it all is, quite an achievement considering it’s really the ultimate “nerd made good” tale interspersed by some legal wranglings in a boardroom. Computer programming and depositions do not make for exciting cinema but Fincher spins gold here thanks to the performances, the script so sharp it could be used to provide a clean close shave and his mastery of the camerawork mixing with an unusual, and highly impressive, soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

 

Eisenberg, it must be said, is playing someone who comes across as quite unlikeable but he does it brilliantly, portraying a man as bored and frustrated as he is intelligent. Garfield is more than his equal and when the two are working with, and sometimes against, each other it’s just a double helping of superb acting. Hammer and Minghella are both excellent but it’s worth, perhaps, specifically mentioning how good Justin Timberlake is for those doubtful of the singer’s talent. His portrayal of Sean Parker has the cockiness and showbiz-grin that you’d expect but also changes as we start to see the paranoid, sneaky little man behind the dotcom assurety. Rooney Mara plays Erica Albright, a girl who makes a massive impact on Zuckerberg’s life, and she does very well with her limited screentime. There are plenty of other people in the cast and my not mentioning them is in no way a slight on their performances, it’s simply that this film is full of the right people in the right roles doing the right stuff.

I could go on and on but I fear I’ve already spent too much time rambling like a rabid David Fincher fanboy (which, I suppose, I am). This is another cinematic masterpiece from one of my favourite directors.  

10/10

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