If you re-visit Aussie50’s 2018 Christmas video (Youtube video ID: Ed6MBevLaf4) he did directly mention Patreon’s intentions of pursuing political correctness. I’m not saying Patreon has taken action yet, but the writing is on the wall. Even the notion of possible oppression by such organisations is enough to send users into desperation. Earlier in the video, he wishes everyone “Happy new years, whatever years come and whatever years don’t,” somewhat implying that at some point things would come to an end.
Just over 4 months later in his “Fun with cars, dogs and machine tools” video (ID: ZyiG6BE8Flg early April 2019) he tells viewers to “cancel your Patreon if you want to”. It sounded like he had already lost motivation and almost given up, despite saying there were plenty of future videos that could be made. His original pride and joy, a Mercedes ML270 bought secondhand in 2015 that took months of TLC to fix up, had developed major faults. He said it is “pretty much a worn out piece of junk” and he intends to do some cheap repairs then run it into the ground, retire it and strip it for parts. It demonstrates the sad state of affairs that he let things degrade into. This is all reading between the lines and making some assumptions. Note he did acquire a near new Hyundai ix35 in 2016, which may explain the loss of love for his ML270, however there has been no mention of the Hyundai in recent videos, so maybe he got rid of it?
The signs of depression were there (albeit extremely subtle), so you had to be looking very intently to even notice. Making good Youtube videos generally requires showmanship. In these instances your persona is on public display and one would be hesitant to talk about depression or internal weaknesses – after all, you are talking to the world, not sitting in a psychologist’s private consulting room.
Whether Aussie50 was able to hide the signs in everyday life as he does in his videos is speculation. In the majority of cases, suicide (or ideation thereof) is considered by the affected individual well in advance, and is not something that is undertaken spontaneously. Possibly being ‘busy’ with a new job meant there was a lack of contact with regular friends and relatives, so the signs went unnoticed by those in his inner circle. Working amongst new colleagues wouldn’t have helped because it takes months to get to know someone well before you are able to notice adverse changes in their behaviour.
In the industry I work in (which is not related to my hobbies), there is a variation of the RUOK campaign specific to my industry and is heavily advocated. Unfortunately much of the world has yet to catch up on making suicide awareness a priority. If your workplace offers suicide awareness / mental first aid training, I would highly recommend you take it up - you never know, one day you might save a life.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
