The issue of Teenage Suicide in New Zealand is frightening.

While suicide undoubtedly stems from the insidious scourge that is Depression, the bigger issue, I think, is: why is Mental Illness so widespread among New Zealand’s youth population?

The answer, I believe, is largely the answer to another question: what is currently the biggest, most influential entity on the planet?

Ponder that query while reading the following.

Today’s youth face countless battles but, while the youth of twenty years ago also faced challenges, as I have seen it, the battles/struggles/challenges of today’s youth are dissimilar to those of two decades ago, incidentally, when I was a teenager.

First Scenario, 1999: twenty years ago, as a sixteen-year-old rapscallion who had begun his drinking and smoking careers at age fourteen and who would begin his vocational career before age seventeen, my biggest concern was neither how I acted nor how I was perceived by others.

Admittedly, the perspective of a rural schoolboy is going to be somewhat removed from that of most urban teens yet assuredly, this is still very much a relevant comparison; besides, Teenage Suicide is a prevalent issue in the countryside, too.

Second Scenario, 2019: today, such is the weight of anxiety coupled with compounding pressure from peers to own the latest devices, to look a certain way and to dress in a style that, while it may be agreeable to others it probably won’t leave her feeling so good about herself, a sixteen-year-old student struggles to pull herself out of bed in the morning.

“It’s just hard cos you gotta be like what everyone wants you to be, like, and if you just wanna be yourself and look how you wanna look, you know, everyone gives you shit for it – specially the boys.”

Twenty years ago, I went to school, I played sport, I went out with my buddies and honestly, I didn’t feel as though there was room amid my busy 16-year-old existence for a girlfriend; as long as my guy-friends were cool with me, I wasn’t too fussed.

Being a teenager in the ‘90s was a more straightforward existence than today’s world, for today’s youth; less social pressure meant that the only real concern was performing as a student, and that was only as difficult as one made it on oneself.

Today, while the bulk of New Zealand’s youth populous seem to feel, also act, as though they already are grownups, it appears they are not embarking on sexual activities any/much earlier than teenagers were  a couple of decades ago; fair to say though (presumably as a result of the last twenty years’ normalisation of Internet Pornography), it is the nature of these activities, along with pressure to engage in said activities – lest an unwilling participant earn themselves a scurrilous reputation which may irreparably ruin their social status thus render their life ‘not worth living’ – which will potentially contribute to teenage anxiety.

“I just wish boys would realise that just because a girl’s dressed like a hot bitch, like, cos that’s how everyone expects you to look, it doesn’t mean she wants to fuck everyone – you know, like, just cos they want to fuck you, it doesn’t mean you wanna fuck them.”

Twenty years ago, sixteen-year-old me acquired a cell phone. I could put twenty dollars’ credit on that thickset old Nokia and, at twenty cents a text, that was like, a hundred texts; just as long as no one rang and left a message because then I’d have to pay a dollar-twenty a minute to listen to it.

Teens must have more to say to each other today than they did twenty years ago though because, as a sixteen-year-old living in the late ‘90s, one hundred text messages a month was quite ample.

Today, almost every sixteen-year-old will own a Smartphone and through this device, along with the complimentary allocation of data/texts/minutes likely included in the phone’s plan, the aforementioned teen can ensure they are never without someone or something to keep their mind, and  importantly their life, occupied.

“Yeah, I’m always texting, like, from soon as I wake up to when I go to sleep … S’pose it’d be like, I dunno, couple a hundred texts a day – cos Facebook’s free, so, you know, it doesn’t matter.”

Back in ’99, every spare moment I had it seemed, sixteen-year-old me was put to work; it’d been that way all my teenage life, if I wasn’t out helping with jobs around the farm, I’d probably be indoors peeling spuds and preparing other vegetables for tea that night – as I recall it, there wasn’t a great deal of time for anything else.

Basic Internet was introduced to the world in the early ‘90s, with this original ‘Dial-up’ platform soon evolving into ‘Broadband’ which, to this day, seems continually trying to outdo itself.

The Dial-up Internet of the ‘90s produced the first efficient Electronic Mail system (with basic email systems having been around since the late ‘60s) then early 2000s the game was figuratively blown apart by Broadband Internet. Skype came along in 2003, bringing the mind-blowing ability to make video-calls; then 2004 saw a veritable revolution in online communication.

“What did people do before Facebook? It must’ve so boring, like, I dunno, how did you even do anything? … Facebook can be pretty bad though, you know, like, cos stuff you post, like, even when you realise straight away it was a bad idea to put it up and take it down straight away, if someone shares it before you take it down, you know, it can be there forever.”

In the old days most things somebody did, or said, only lasted for as long as people’s memories; or if an action was caught on camera, then one, two, or maybe three people could have that memory for life.

Digital cameras, and the ability to download shots to a computer, revolutionised photography and the way memories could be saved; although these technological wonders were about throughout the ‘90s, it really wasn’t until the advent of Smartphone cameras that instant photography became readily available to everyone.

Twenty years on, nowadays, given the prevalence of cellular technology, every notable happening can be snapped, posted, then shared, in a matter of seconds; today’s camera operators are merciless, too. It doesn’t seem to matter how unwelcome or undesirable a photo opportunity, when that opportunity presents itself – often younger people committing regrettable or forgettable acts – doing things that will later hurt their social status and subsequently devastate the youth responsible – that moment will likely become forever etched in the 21^st century’s memory.

“Yeah, guys are always trying to get you to do weird stuff just so they can get it on their phone and put it on Facebook, like, stuff you don’t wanna do – specially when you’re drunk, too – and like, it can be real hard to tell them not to, you know.”

Social Media, Facebook, along with its psychotically clever methods of drawing in users, unequivocally, is the cause of much of the world’s Teenage Anxiety.

Whether it be the pressure of quickly responding to a pop-up reminder, a hotly-indicated message, alert or notification, or perhaps it’s the mental discomfort of having to live with the knowledge that one of your most humiliating/degrading/personal moments is perpetually circulating the Facebook feeds of people you’ve never met but who wanted to be your ‘friend’ so you allowed it, in my opinion, Facebook, and all the ‘social benefits’ that Facebook offers young folk, is largely responsible for the Anxiety, the Depression and all to often, the Suicide of our youth.

Perhaps the ugliest thing about this situation though, is that despite precocious teenage maturity and despite their prevailing common-sense, through Facebook’s ability to incite competition between youthful users to look and to appear better than their peers; through its encouragement to post one’s most personal information, and through its inviting blue forum (blue being the colour of calm), these teens are compelled to upload (or to have uploaded) pictures/thoughts/information about themselves that will ultimately be damaging to them – now or in later life.

Facebook is an addiction pervaded and perpetuated by some of the most astute minds of the Tech world with the presumed intention of drawing in and effectively controlling users, forcing them to become obsessed by their own sense of vanity; making their Facebook profile bigger, brighter, better, superior, transcendent to the next one.

Doubtful? Ask yourself, of all the Facebook or other Social Media profile shots of younger people you have seen, how many have been bad? Between the brilliant lighting of Smartphone cameras then Facebook’s (or other Social Media’s) editing and filtering technology, it is always possible to make a Facebook (or other Social Media) photograph brilliant.

Obvious to some yet not so much to others, the only thing that is going to relieve the pressure that Social Media is placing/has placed on teens, is to make them understand that, realistically, it doesn’t matter; the truth is, in New Zealand, anyone can do, think, or say whatever the hell they like and basically, it doesn’t matter a shit.

Furthermore, if an online situation becomes so horrible that it seems inescapable or that it seems it really does matter, here’s what you do: go offline.

Once Facebook’s warm blue undertones have disappeared, one will again find themselves in the Real World.

Awful as that world may seem at times, its real; Facebook/Social Media is not.

Nothing about Facebook is guaranteed real, remember that; not the faces nor any of the people behind the faces need to be real.

Facebook is the world’s biggest farce yet, farcically, this Social Media behemoth has the world’s biggest subscription.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Tina Edge

Photography by Sue E Sade

 

Here’s a phrase I have heard too many times to count – “Yeah but, what is normal?”

That line takes me back to the days when, although I was clearly not ‘normal’ – in appearance, speech, manner and, well, just about every other facet of humanness (and although spellcheck is not, I am definitely questioning the validity of that word) – at those times when a frequently occurring bought of despondency had me low enough that I could be heard slurring utterances regarding my desire to be ‘normal’ again (similarly, I guess, to the way that Pinocchio used to crap on about wanting to be a ‘real boy’, and look how that worked out for him), that, the aforementioned sentence, in between laughter, boozing, shenanigans, and other aspects of youthful frivolity from my peers, is what I would usually hear.

Realistically, ‘normalcy’ is the portrayal of what the majority of folk would consider normal (and although, in my perception, ‘normalcy’ is somewhat nuanced from ‘normality’, in the sense that, where ‘normalcy’ is the basic act of being normal, ‘normality’ relates to an atypical situation having since reverted to normal; yet, no. Apparently, I am wrong. I must have invented that in my sleep or something. Turns out there is no difference – normalcy, normality, tomatoes, tomatoes, you know).

Trouble is, that line, that grotesque cliché languishing right there at the top of the page mocking me with its hackney, is nothing but a pseudo-profound piece of shit recited by the kinds of people who, although they could appreciate that the subject’s (my) actions may have been far from conventional – so much so, in fact, that those actions were leaning more towards the realm of ‘inappropriate’ than not – the subject is/was/probably will again one-day-be-but-maybe-not, very dear to the speaker (them) thus the speaker is wary of hurting the subject’s feelings because so much has passed between the subject and the speaker so when that day comes where the subject is genuinely normal again (probably will again one-day-be-but-maybe-not), the speaker wants to be there to welcome the subject back into the real world with open arms and other clichés (also perhaps apologise for the years’ of bullshit sycophantism that they fed the subject on the basis that, presumably, he was too frail to cope with the reality of life; that is, despite being forced to endure that exact debacle every Goddamned day of his life).

Normalcy, normality. Huh, so, turns out they’ve identical meanings. What a bust; really thought I was onto something there. See, I was going to write this extensive article about how ‘living amid a life of normalcy isn’t always conducive to an existence of normality’, or how ‘quantity in life will not always supersede quality of life’ and other pseudo-profound, preachy crap like that. It was going to be awesome; was really going to exemplify my own humanness, you know?

Ah screw it.

Ultimately, ‘normalcy’ is being real, being true, being good and, in my opinion, being honest. ‘Normalcy’ is not striving to be the same as everyone else, because that shit’s lame; it smacks of weakness of character and anyway, why would anybody want to do that – want to be that way – be the same?

To perceive someone struggling away, trying but failing to portray their intended quota of ‘normalcy/ity’, then trying to convince/reassure them anyway that they are normal (or worse, asking them something vacuous like ‘What is normal, anyway?’), well, that shit’s tired, overdone, and equally as lame as the above; most likely these struggling folk are quite aware they are not normal and probably, they are just quietly trying to reach their norm, in their own time, and on their own terms.

Or not. Who am I to say? I’m not normal and likely never will be; shit, I embrace the weirdo lifestyle.

Honestly, I gave up caring how I was perceived a long time ago.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Wie B Striven-Four

Photography by Norm Al Cee

Is it me or has our Government introduced yet another massive double standard to New Zealand society?

Alcohol poses a greater financial burden to the New Zealand Government than any other recreational pastime yet, while something such as cigarettes are constantly vilified by almost everyone in our great nation, alcohol is still celebrated as a glorious tool, a wonderful form of catharsis at the end of a hard week/day…

Which it very much is; please, don’t misunderstand me, alcohol is great – it is among the world’s finest consumable manmade poisons.

…It just upsets me when our Government bitches and moans about the apparent ills of one thing while overlooking the obvious detriment of something else.

For example, I was recently, albeit inadvertently, accosted and potentially injured, by a, I assume, Christchurch local and his, so-called, marvellous innovation.

Indeed, the advent of Lime Scooters/e-scooters in New Zealand cities, while providing a marvellous transportation solution to the people, appears to have slipped under the typically rigorous, often counterproductive, yet senselessly stringent, New Zealand Government sanctioning body.

How is it that motorists are required by law to wear seatbelts and adhere to speed regulations, cyclists are required to wear helmets and are also bound by regulations, skateboarders are required to restrict their pastime to authorised places with more regulations; riding shotgun across a carpark in a shopping trolley borrowed from Pac’n’Sav is not even allowed anymore, yet these scooters, infernal contraptions they are, often pulling in excess of 40kph, have no regulations and may be used basically wherever they can travel? …

Incidentally, as one might recall, years back the New Zealand Government legalised Herbal Highs, jumping onboard the Kiwi hedonist’s desire to branch out and try something new (while also no doubt sensing another abundant taxation avenue), until a short time later, as predicted, after the aforementioned Kiwi delinquents have (as is human nature thus was always going to happen) found ways to abuse and misuse this bewildering liberty – in the process killing several participants – expectedly, Herbal Highs were outlawed; yet to this day variations of these insidious manufactured drugs are a scourge on Kiwi youth/people in general.

…Because of the supposed benefits to the ongoing issue of public transportation in New Zealand cities, our Government has allowed these electric toys to effectively go loose on our streets; since their introduction, however, because latently most Kiwis are irresponsible idiots, the cost to ACC has been astronomical and, with no required skill level or safety gear to ride these unwieldy scooters, that cost is not forecast to reduce anytime soon.

A lot like Uber and its grotesque lack of regulations, it seems if there is a way for our Government to utilise some technological advancement under the guise of benefitting the nation – while looking like the cool uncle in the meantime – however much they might be forced to implement their Parliamentary blindfolds regarding all things logic, however much they might have to ignore blatant contradictions, hazards and flaws unearthed by their plan; however outrageously impetuous their plan might be, it seems, they’ll embrace it.

For the time it takes, for the number of people it takes to pass a law – or in fact just to make a decision – in the New Zealand Government, it should be reasonable to expect that, at the end of said process, they will be certain to have made the right ones; that is, rather than having to later retract/amend that decision which, regarding e-scooters, they likely will.

Just saying.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Scooter Hazzard

Photography by Cal Amity