Plaintext ver.:
You Have Driven Me To The Edge
Matthew Boreder<boredwiththisawfullife@gmail.com>
to me
Your song getting popular has driven me to the point of imminent suicide. I nearly pulled the trigger tonight after someone quoted it at me, and the only thing that kept me from doing it is that I didn’t want to live with the thought that whoever wrote this song had personally destroyed me finally, so I had to reach out just to ask you why. I had to research to find out who you are enough to find this sponsorship email, that I don’t even know if you actually read, and you have been making music for ten years before this that must either be much worse or much better than your breakthrough single, but I can’t imagine creating music for this long and then constructing something so bankrupt of empathy for the listener.
What made you think this was okay? I’m asking this because now that I’ve read articles about the abrupt jump in suicide rates nationwide in the TWO WEEKS since this song premiered on the radio, people have analyzed it enough to conclude that it “could only have been designed to induce these effects.” I had to ask you personally because those reporters seemed really over-the-top to me and most of the lyrics of the song seem like you might sincerely have met someone who dealt with depression and really didn’t want them to kill themselves, but… let me break this down.
The main reason I want to kill myself so badly is that I don’t really feel like anyone understands me or like I can communicate with them directly. I constantly struggle to communicate what I’m feeling, and the depression that this puts me into is even harder for me to communicate, because it’s another layer on which the people around me don’t understand me at all. So when the few people in my life who are at least aware that I might be depressed or potentially suicidal start barking at me “don’t don’t don’t kill yourself!” in a way where the “don’t” is comically gruff and over-the-top and sounds like a meme because you say it three times in a row at one point, and then the emphasis of the full statement seems to fall on “KILL YOURSELF” ...for even these people closest to me to think that it made any kind of sense to say this to me out of the blue in the kitchen while practically laughing is a surefire sign that the time has come.
Did you even try talking to that depressed friend who killed himself? Have you ever considered that your actions might have been responsible? Before I let myself get swallowed in the blastwave of what you’ve attacked our culture with, can you answer me those things?
--Literally at gunpoint,
Matthew Boreder (No it’s not my real name, it’s a burner email, I wouldn’t dox myself I’m not stupid)
…
Andy Woopensen<wooptherealband@gmail.com>
To <boredwiththisawfullife@gmail.com>
Thank you for approaching me directly instead of listening to the magazines and reporters writing about me without even asking for comment. I am sorry that the thoughts you’ve had about my intentions with this song have only prolonged your suffering. You, like the reporters, are only half-right: I have never had a friend with depression who wants to kill themselves--that person I’m writing about is myself. I want to kill myself every day, but I feel like I owe my continued existence to my bandmates and family members who are enjoying their lives, and to the segment of my audience who for some reason feels driven to go on living because of the connection they feel to my music, even though most of it is about how badly I want to kill myself.
Then again, I’d realized that because I’m keeping myself alive for someone, maybe I can’t relate any better to those who actually pull the trigger than I can to those who are inspired to live by connecting to my words. I thought, if I can write a song that might give those people release, then maybe it would prove to me that I really am the most like those people and should go the same way. I thought it might have been true for a little while based on the results, but your email has shown me that once again, I was only halfway towards a true connection. Now that I know that even this song has kept someone alive, I am unsure if I will ever be able to prove to myself that I would be best-served to the world in my death. And yes, my older albums are a lot better.