Why I don't like Insanejournal.

[icarus]

Why I don't like Insanejournal.

It's nothing personal, nor do I care about political correctness. I thought the name was funny (and suitable for fandom)... until I actually checked it out.

Don't take this as a plea not to use Insanejournal. I'm cross-posting to it for my HP friends. I think Squeaky has said all the right things and should be rewarded for being nicer to fandom than Livejournal. But whenever I go to Insanejournal, I twitch. It makes me uncomfortable. I edge away.

Why?

In 1988, my brother was a sharp musician, had good scores on his SATs, played basketball even though he was only 5' 9", and was starting to get noticed by the girls for his scruffy-version-of-Ferris-Bueller looks -- complete with the puppy eyes that could talk me out of my milkshake. He was my little brother, but the age difference between us was so slim we learned how to drive at the same time, bought a car together, then fought over it for work. I didn't have to buy tapes because his collection was better than mine, and we gossiped about the same people because we were in many of the same classes. He was friendlier than me, I was tougher than him, and we got along great despite the fact he called me his "bossy big sister" and compared me to Lucy in Charlie Brown. The silent communication between the Winchesters reminds me of us (he's Sam in that equation).

By 1989 the construction job he was working for the summer started to go a little wonky. His foreman, a family friend, said my brother's work was "for shit. He's spacing out." We got him a shrink who didn't understand my brother's tendency for understatement, how he slid out of unpleasant chores by not volunteering key info like "we're out of laundry detergent." In other words, the shrink sucked. Finally, my stepdad (well used to my brother's habits) heard something in my brother's phrasing that gave it away.

"Are you hearing voices?" he asked my brother, point-blank.

My brother never lies. Hedges, but he'll never lie.

The State of Maryland was far more effective in diagnosing my brother. He had paranoid schizophrenia, they said, and it was severe.

Insanejournal has cute little "asylums" instead of "communities." Instead of an info page you're given a "diagnosis." After my brother's diagnosis I learned what asylums are like. The locked ward in Sikesville, Maryland (I'm not kidding about the name) looks like a rather run-down college campus. There are fruit trees and curving lanes. My brother was considered to be a danger to himself when he kept breaking into churches to pray. The voices told him WWIII was imminent and only he could save the world, though they never quite said what he was supposed to do. The T.V. talked to him, and it never said anything nice. He would walk so far that he wore his shoes flat. Before he was locked up, my parents would call me at 10pm and ask me to help find him. I was a Buddhist nun at the time, and through a quirk in his illness that made me qualified on the subject of "saving the world."

My brother told me once that, "You don't understand how humiliating it was. I thought God talked to me, and I was given a wish, anything I wanted. I wished for world peace, the end of war. Later I learned that not only was I not going to get my wishes -- I was making a fool of myself the whole time."

At the ward, they buzzed me in. The halls look like a school, too, only with less windows and no decoration. The door was about four inches thick and made a loud noise when it closed behind you, like it was never going to open again. People scuffed around in a daze and the whole place had a strange smell of fear that made my skin crawl. They had him drugged so far to the hilt that he rocked. He mumbled and stared at the floor, and looked at me with desperate hope when he talked about getting out.

The "asylum" names at Insanejournal give me the creeps. I remember tree-lined lanes and state nurses the size of trucks that my brother was afraid of. I don't like checking my info page -- and finding I get to receive my "diagnosis." It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

He was a model patient and was first-run draft choice to be transferred to a halfway house. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got to visit him in a normal neighborhood. The institution made me feel like I wanted a shower immediately afterward.

So if I don't reply to your comments or join your IJ community, it's nothing personal. I just opened IJ and cringed, that's all. I don't want to go back to an asylum.

Comments

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of my grandmother, who's also a paranoid schizophrenic. She'll get the notion that the people in her small town are always talking trash about her, and is absolutely terrified if someone was in her house but not in her presence. The last time I visited her in 2003, my mother, sister, and I hid in her basement along with my uncle while my father indulged her off-medication loopiness. Sometimes, I think he's going down the same road.

That, and with my own checkered past when it comes to mental illness, I'm not going over to IJ. Insanity strikes too close to home.

[rabidfan.livejournal.com]

My warmest wishes to you and your dear brother. My mother raised her neice along with us, and we didn't realize she was bi-polar until she had left home and tried to kill a cop because he was controlling the minds of all the people on the street. When she stayed on her meds, she did really well, and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

Sadly, a few months later she decided she didn't need medication any more as she was doing so well. Just a few days later, she called mom, telling her the cat next door was evil and wanted to eat her brain. We called her doctor, and the police in the community she was living in to intercede until we could get there (about two hours away) but it seems that as soon as she had hung up the phone with mom she cut her own throat...to keep the cat away.

We all share blame for her stupid, stupid death. We shouldn't have let a two hour distance keep us from keeping better in touch, and it still hurts like hell, twenty years later.

I, too, will probably never use IJ. Insanity isn't so entertaining when you know what it's really like.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah. If you've had any real life experience with insanity, it's not... yeah.

It's not as though the good folks at Insanejournal are terrible bad people offending the sensibilities of the masses for their "asylums" and "diagnosis" ... it's just. Ugh. Not a reminder I want in my play time.

*squirms* *goes someplace else, anywhere else*

[wyomingnot.livejournal.com]

I know my institutionalization wasn't as bad as many. The place was creepy, yeah, but I don't like hospitals anyhow. And the place I was used to be a hospital.

I was committed by the state. Got to stay locked up for a total of six months.

'Asylums' is just a stupid label. Goes right along with the stupid notion of 'de-friending'.

So I don't mind the place. *shrug* I get treated better there than at the real looney bin.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing. I care about the idea of and the sense behind political correctness, so that's part of my feeling of unease with IJ, but the other part is due to what you describe here.

I'm aware of the distinctions between physical and mental problems, but as someone who spent forced time in the hospital system and saw how disregarded and de-humanised patients are, especially without expensive extra insurance and involved relatives and friends (both of which I had) -- yeah, I can't shake my discomfort.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

So far he's lived with schizophrenia for almost 18 years of suffering. One time he stabbed himself in the stomach because the voices had started to tell him to hurt people and he was afraid that he would. He's always been good about taking his meds but periodically his body chemistry will change and what worked before will suddenly not work. He pushed back once to get his medication reduced so he could concentrate well enough for school. He got A's but went into a bad spiral of paranoia so they had to max him back up. My poor brother....

[nqdonne.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I don't have any personal experience with mental health issues or institutions, but the whole asylum setup on IJ really bothers me. It is definitely keeping me from going over there full time, among other things. The whole concept is offensive, though I know the site owner probably didn't think about it when he set it up. But if fandom is going to transfer over there more permanently, I think we should talk to him about making it more user friendly - and changing those labels.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

He went to the George Washington Medical Center first, and that wasn't so bad. They treated him well and he was housed with other teenagers his own age. It felt okay there, and he was pretty happy.

But the insurance ran out, so he committed himself to the state program. I think he regretted it though he didn't have any other option.

It was really different from GW. The nurses there were like Game Wardens. They believed their job was to administer meds and crack down on trouble. You could tell they didn't care. My brother understates everything, it's part of his sense of humor, and his first day there he called me at work and said, "Uh, [Icarus]? This isn't a nice place."

I guess we all expected it to be like GW.

I don't think he'd mind Insanejournal. He'd probably find it amusing. But for me, I tried to hang out there, I really did, and every time I open it, I wince.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Fandom isn't moving there. The Harry Potter fandom might, but most of my flist from other fandoms (Stargate, Supernatural, SG-1) are still on LJ.

I like my Journalfen account, personally.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I can't shake my discomfort.

That's exactly the right phrase.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

P.S. on a totally different note:

Wee chevron socks? I love it!

Icarus

[nicocoer.livejournal.com]

*silent agreement*

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I understand your reservations. They're pretty normal.

I hate the idea of fandom (okay, the HP fandom) scattering in a dozen places. LJ would really have to go on a rampage for me to leave.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

My grandmother died in an asylum, my mother has obvious mental problems. The whole thing hits a little close to home.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

L was reading over my shoulder when I came to your entry. He had to leave the room. A couple months after he turned eighteen his mother and grandmother drove two hours to fetch him from his girlfriend's house, tricked him into going with them, then had him committed. Once in a while he tells me bits about what it was like. And his mother wonders why he really doesn't want anything to do with her.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

Thankyou.

Having had mental health issues and having family members who do... I hear what you're saying and completely agree.

*nods*

And I'm sorry that you and your brother went through that.

[gauriel.livejournal.com]

It's interesting you wrote this, because this was my kneejerk reaction when I took a look at IJ. I read asylum, and diagnoses, and just cringed. No, no, no thanks.

I have an anxiety disorder with a tendency towards OCD and severe clinical depression. I've had two major depressive episodes, one of which landed me in the psychiatric ward (I can't say asylum or mental ward - I just can't) once for 3 weeks when I was 22. I have conflicted memories - psych wards are not fun places to be, but at the time I was so messed up it was the best place for me. Thankfully, I lucked out and got a psychiatrist that was helpful and cared, not the usual dipshit.

Thanks to a quirk of hormones during my second pregnancy, I've never felt that "pull" to slide down that hill again, but it's always a shadow in the back of my mind that someday, I could end up like that once more. It's a constant worry.

Having had to fight the battle with my family, who used to think all those with mental disorders were just "nuts" in straitjackets, I have no intention of using a site that makes light of those who do. I'm sorry, it just hits too close to home for me too.

I'm so glad your brother got out of that place; so many never do.

[amethyst-lupin.livejournal.com]

This may come off as a bit insensitive, but if wasn't for the fact that your post brought me to tears and the I just got out of a extremely intense situation where I was taking care of my mother to prevent her from having to go to a mental hospital because is suffering from paranoid delusions, I probably wouldn't say anything at all.

The IJ stuff doesn't bother me that much, but I can understand why it would upset you.

I have had a lot of metal illness in my family- I joke about because that is how I deal with it. IJ is just another little joke for me I guess. Many can't understand that, but that is how I cope. Otherwise, it would destroy me- hell it nearly did.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Livejournal's my fun time so I don't want reminders. It's no tragedy, I just *squirm* at the reminders.

Yesterday I was answering comments from IJ and as those windows popped open I winced, cringed, winced again.

I should probably not even crosspost to IJ. I'm thinking about it.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. Those are POWERFUL triggers to have to deal with every time you enter a website.

The theme turned me off for a long time as well (mind you, I don't have the close family ties to someone with mental illness), but once I got settled in I thought it was all right. I'd prefer a different theme, though, really I would.

One of my college roommates, the one I was closest to, was extremely smart, extremely fun, gifted...and stopped taking her meds. I got an intense first look at schizophrenia close up, and it was not a good one.

[amethyst-lupin.livejournal.com]

You have to do what you need to do to take care of yourself, and if it means not posting to IJ then that is what it means. We will not forget you over here!

There are certain things that set me off so I completely understand.

I'm so sorry about your brother. I've been going through one of the darkest times in my life with my Mom. It has not been easy.

[sarcastic-irony.livejournal.com]

My dad's sister had the same thing. Years and years ago. the meds she was on caused rapid weight gain, which her heart couldn't handle. She died five years ago, and we buried her on her father (my grandfather)'s 90th birthday. She was 47, I believe.
I'm glad your brother made it into a regular neighborhood.

[elf]

An asylum is supposed to be a place of safety, hence political asylum, religious asylum. I know "mental asylums" don't work that way. (My husband's first wife managed to kill herself in the asylum she was sent to... for attempted suicide.)

But I like to think of IJ as a refuge from LJ's erratic and discriminatory TOS application. "Asylum" has connotations to me of "a place where you're supposed to be safe, but you'll damn well need to manage your own mental health there... the best thing it does is isolate you from whatever was causing you problems. And sometimes, that's all it does."

I also know that a lot of people don't like the theme (for many reasons), and that pretty much guarantees it's not going to be fandom's new home. Those who feel they need to leave LJ won't stay, no matter how many bells & whistles LJ offers; the whole "suspend without warning" is too psycho to put up with.

JF is not going to work unless they upgrade their code and fix their FAQ... and even then, I have doubts; restricting to 18+ is a bigger filter than some would think. (Plus, some people won't touch fandom_wank with a ten-foot keyboard cord.) Scribblit is likely to have better code, but the same membership issues as JF.

I think it's likely to be a couple of years before fandom resettles. Sigh.

[ansku]

I've never seen an asylum but it still creeps me out. I have hospital-phobia and making it a mental institution makes it even worse. I guess for me it all stems out of being terrified of ending up in one some day :) And that said, I'm heading to my hospital this morning, luckily only for a few hours... *tries to shake discomfort*
Anyway, I can visit IJ ok (I don't necessarily even realize a link leads there, I'm oblivious like that) and I can make myself to do stuff to my profile but those terms make me uncomfortable.

[skuf.livejournal.com]

I'm not fond of the theme there, but neither am I really bothered by it - it being not LJ/6A, and with a more up-to-date code than GJ/JF, makes it my preferred blogging site at this time.

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

just that concept sounds really creepy. this doesn't exist, but for example, piratejournal, if you had 'treasures', and you would 'pillage' or 'plunder' someone's journal, and wanted to check on your 'cabinmates', or whatever. sure, that'd be cute, and themed, and even if people didn't like pirates, s'ok. but insanejournal? with asylums and diagnoses? ew...

[whimseywisp.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's horrible :(.

I'm reading a novel right now called I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb. Have you ever read it? It might hit too close to home, and I couldn't blame you for not wanting to, but I think you might find it interesting.

*hugs and good thoughts your way*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No, never even heard of it. But if it's about schizophrenia... no, thanks. Been there. Bought the t-shirt. I'd rather just spend a weekend with my brother.

[emeraldjay.livejournal.com]

First I want to thank you for having the courage to say that you don't like IJ. Second, I thank you again for stating why.

I like IJ and sort of ignore/enjoy the non-pc aspect of it. But I can see where you are coming from and that is why I won't be some batshit fan jumping all over your case about disliking IJ.

I had to deal with bi-polar disorder since, well, puberty, I guess. I had myself placed in a psychiatric hospital for 6 days when I was 15. I felt like it was the only way to say me from myself at the time. I was diagnosed with acute depression at the time and my poor system was put through hell while on the latest greatest anti-depressant of the time (Prozac). It caused my thoughts to race, the nurses actually locked me out of my room during the day because I would hide in there and just stare at the walls. By my third day there I found out I could refuse my Prozac and did. I was warned that if I got out of control I would end up with a knockdown shot. It was a very scary experience.

Cut to my 20's and a hellacious high phase and a trip to the psych emergency room, wasn't admitted but got connected with the county mental health center and a damn good psychiatrist. We tried several different meds, he actually listened when I said something wasn't working and we settled on Depakote. I took it in an on again off again fashion due to finances and the delusion I was growing out of it. Tried it again when I started college a couple of years ago and even though it worked it was causing me difficulty in swallowing so my new doctor and I have tried two other meds, the first raised havoc with my liver and weight 30 lbs gain in a month and enzymes and cholesterol creeping up to heart attack territory. I went off it against advice and two months later all the weight came off and my liver is back to normal. The second med I'm trying is working when I take it, but my new sleep pattern to accommodate school and work makes it difficult as the med turns me into a zombie for eight hours, among other things.

I hadn't thought of the theme from your perspective until now, and I do understand where you're coming from with your dislike. Sorry my comment got so long, but I just felt I had to share.

[whimseywisp.livejournal.com]

It's a novel about twin brothers, one of which has schizophrenia. But you're right, spending a weekend with your brother would be better.

<3

[greenling.livejournal.com]

The one I saw was neat, you got your own cupboard and desk and you could organize things because it was yours and there were crayons. <_< But then I had to leave and I don't know why.

Yeah. It is kind of creepy.

[indigoarc.livejournal.com]

Grrr... I read this yesterday and really had to go away from any impulse to comment. Even now I'm not sure that it'll be coherent. Firstly, I sympathize with your family and brother and am glad that he's doing ok. It's baffling what the brain can do.

Second, well, WTF -- how did the creator/s of IJ think that this was a good idea? Perhaps I over-react, but would anyone think that it would be appropriate to construct a journal around a model of, say, living in Darfur, a gulag, a war zone, or a trauma ward?

Third, I don't plan on checking out IJ, it's weird enough to think about it without triggering stuff. I have family and friends who have had to deal with manic-depression, mild schizophrenia, and a psychotic break. Myself, I've now spent at least 15 years struggling with a combination of major depression, seizure disorder, PTSD, alcoholism, and panic attacks. I lost my job with a medical discharge from the military (I was a corpsman), and have spent the rest of those years since then on medications and therapy sessions. I f**king *hate* hospitals, but I still feel *sooo* very lucky compared to some folks who really have needed what care they can give.

Asylums aren't fun, diagnoses aren't fun, medications aren't fun, and constructing an "Insane Journal" isn't funny at all.

OK, sorry, my rant and wanking is done now, forgive me. Gonna go frolic in the fields of fanfic.

[wyomingnot.livejournal.com]

Institutions can vary widely. I've been in a couple short-term places and one 'one-step-from-the-big-state-hospital'. The two short term places couldn't have been more different. Unfortunately, due to crappy insurance after the first divorce, I didn't get to go back to the nice place. (not that the nice place was all that nice when I was stuck in the closed unit. having a roommate who was getting ect. yeah. not a lot of fun)

and if IJ makes you uncomfortable, then don't go there. I'll be reading wherever.

[wyomingnot.livejournal.com]

Socks with wee chevrons, yes. They are totally cute. :) I'm so looking forward to this Sweet Charity thing.