Dark Side of Action
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Roberts, Anwen
Urbach, Stephan
Geuter, Jürgen
2011 was a year full of political upheaval and protest. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movements, thousands of people took to the streets demanding (and enforcing!) change. Focusing on collective action, however, we tend to neglect what can happen to individual participants who find themselves under enormous pressure to succeed, to perform, and generally save the world... In this session, we want to broach the taboo of depression and failure in a (hack)tivist context, taking a step back from the challenges at hand to look at the effects on people getting involved - as well as those who can't get involved.. It's not as scary as it sounds! Suitable for all and trigger-happy in a positive way, Anwen will be presenting an assortment of ideas and iconic images from science and art history, following the trace of depression and melancholy from ancient hermits and Noonday Demons to the digital natives of today. We will explore the "dark side" of action - compassion fatigue, depression, shellshock, burnout, suicides -, and talk about how the (social) Net can become more of a safety net for its inhabitants. Stephan will be sharing some examples from his personal experience as a Telecomix agent: Hackers, especially those who work with activists on the ground, see the consequences of their actions and inactions every day, putting themselves and others under immense pressure and "burning the candle from both ends". But we also want to talk about the different patterns of behaviour and interaction that let such situations develop and about the measures that networks and jellyfish clusters can implement to not only solve these problems, but to also ensure a healthier way of interacting and behaving in future.
 Okay. All right. Well, this is a very personal topic and I think we all don't have any other chance except talking about it personally. So I'm going to start by telling my own story how I came to this project at all. Well, for me it started with this boy I actually never met. His Twitter name was 1UP. He was an Austrian activist founder of Austrian Pirate Party, founder of Soup, which a lot of you might know we'll use, and was a game designer and generally a very active person. And he committed suicide in 2009. And I came across his story or rather sort of non-story in a way and was immediately intrigued by this sort of what him reaction like Meredith said. I mean, even if you don't know this individual story, I think that's my first point. Instead of a trigger warning, it's become sort of customary to include a sort of warning if you're talking about sensitive topics, but I think this is such a universal problem in a way that almost everyone is in a way triggerable. And we're trying to keep this, the triggers in a positive way and talk about a sort of general phenomenon. But I think what's really intrigued me here is how people can just disappear. I mean, and how people leave their remains on the web. I mean, welcome to Quake3Eirena's pretty haunting last tweet. And if you, I was looking at this sort of dead Twitter wall in a way and was thinking about the way sort of you tell your own life story and little bits and blobs. I mean, Twitter is to be really credited for the phrase momentary hiccup, which is like if you have a problem, then we're experiencing momentary hiccup. But I think in a way, Twitter is this big ocean of momentary hiccups because you're telling your own lifeline in these little discrete moments and in a way it's sort of like Berksons Durer or a sort of quality time. It's a very ancient sort of phenomenon that you try and explore your own life through the stories you're telling bit by bit by bit. And I think Twitter is a technology that supports that. And I was reminded of a sort of soundtrack. He had a lot of songs on his timeline. And it reminded me sort of floating in empty space. I was thinking of The Voyager Golden Record. I don't know if you've ever seen the cover of it. It's an amazing thing. It was sent out to space in the 70s and included all sorts of songs and sounds from outer space. If you're trying to do an infographic for it that aliens will at some point be able to read, I think it's a pretty challenging task. And trying to imagine what a sort of alien would look like. The thing you don't actually understand at once is the point at the bottom, which actually gives you the minute time frame or reference. And it's actually the hydrogen atom, the change of spin in the hydrogen atom. And so this little, these two little circles, the distance tells you actually the scale to decipher the entire whole cover diagrams and the binary code because this is the smallest possible time element, the smallest transformation. And thinking about sort of soundtracks in space and golden records, I was reminded of this from Gür Ersabar. Douglas Hofstadter wrote an amazing book in the 70s. And he thinks a lot about isomorphism, which is basically an analogy, two sets that can be mapped to one another. So this is the diagram which shows Hofstadter calls isomorphism a transformation that preserves information. So we have a time, little time switch, but in the way the information stays the same. And Hofstadter has really, I think it's been such an influential book because he really places the analogy at the heart of everything, of language, of thinking, of rational reasoning, and cognition itself. He wrote a book a few years later, which is called I am a Strange Loop where he actually argues that consciousness itself works like one of these analogy systems where something has just gone wrong, where the representation doesn't work out exactly. And thinking of one-ups, Twitter ball and thinking of this name, I mean one-up is from gaming, that you're constantly sort of striving for the next level. So it's like a gratification if you do well, then you're going to make it up to the next level. And this whole idea of sort of meta levels, of sort of meta is better, sort of jumping thought, I think is illustrated very well in this idea of Hofstadter that you're constantly doing this sort of querying, what sort of your mind versus the outside world, you're constantly doing these comparisons. I think it's a very fixed thing in our minds that we actually, we think we're these amazingly digital people, but in fact we work so much, we rely on this analogy so much, so in a way we're in a constant sort of querying mode of is this, the map is not the territory, our friends are not our real friends, our Facebook friends are not our proper friends and especially with the digital world and other sort of layer which seems even more surreal somehow. I think we're constantly doing this sort of questioning and that determines our research questions, examining these matters in a way because we try and see the differences between let's say answers and search results and this is constantly something we're checking, but this is the analog way of thinking and I think this is very well represented in, well, this is the GIF Reaper which sort of surfaces in somewhere in Fazel Zuppe, I think. It's a mode of representation and we're doing sort of comparisons mentally and this has been in art history or in the history of thinking for a long, long time and Derrida, he relates sort of difference and change to the idea of the trace or what he calls a ghost and I think there's this quote by Aiba Schweitzer, I think he says something like the only important thing in life is the traces we leave behind when we go and I mean that's pretty cheesy as epitaphs go but I think in the sort of web context the trace is a really important idea because like I said the Twitter wall, we don't really have a culture of dealing of how do we want to remain on the web once we've actually literally physically dropped out of it so I think these traces are really in a way very inspiring and Derrida relates this very closely to the ghost so like when I was looking at this Twitter wall it is spooky in a way and I don't know if you've seen the Apple landing page when Steve Jobs died, we don't really have the perfect way of commemorating or finding a digital heritage but I think of course we don't because we don't have the experience yet, it's just well simply put although there are hundreds and thousands of people already dead on Facebook and maybe you have a few handful of dead Facebook friends as well but in fact we don't actually have the experience of dealing with that yet how we want to process our digital remains or what we want our sort of lifelines or timelines to be as soon as we've dropped out of the web so what I think how this relates the sort of depression to what I was mentioning about isomorphism about comparing and trying to sort of state a reality by constantly comparing two sets against another I mean Gürl, I don't know if you know the book Gürl Eshabach but he was the first grade troll basically so he totally owned modern mathematics and destroyed century projects of at least three people including Russell and Whitehead and their big mission to show that everything is consistent and complete and he just went and traumatized the entire science saying no in fact it isn't and these loops and the strange patterns where analogy doesn't work out are right at the heart of logic and mathematics and all thinking itself so we can't actually escape those we're always looking for the completeness and consistent systems but in fact the strange loop is actually a trait of the system itself and I think this incompleteness and inconsistency and constant reflecting back upon yourself is in a way I've been treating depression and melancholy as a sort of special case of this strange loop Hofstadter argues it's like as soon as you ask questions to yourself instead towards the outside world and for me that's also the connection to net activism or activism in general because I think if you're constantly reflecting your own self and your own mental state which is in a way a very strong feature of depression it's very hard to actually direct those questions to the outside world and to make that loop and not just constantly fall back onto yourself and I think this strange loop phenomenon is which is often described in research also in different terms a lot of people say well you know in fact depression is a totally selfish thing I wouldn't really call it selfish but I think that's exactly the problem we're talking about the sort of self reflectiveness and depression does have a long tradition also a long tradition of being described as an illness as a mental illness but also as a sin and if you look at the characteristics of let's say the today the symptoms that are on the DSM IV list there hardly any of those are biographical or psychological data in factors in that sense but they relate very much about how we relate to the physical world and how we relate to the social world which I think is in a way best represented here this is an ancient or rather old Renaissance picture from Descartes book and he was doing studies of consciousness and perception and for me this is still one of the most well elegant pictures because it actually shows the way we try and reflect the outside and there were several of these I think this is also an instant of this analogy of finding isomorphism between what's reflected in my head or the picture I make of the world and the sort of outside world this has been great topic in all of science and philosophy ever since really and actually this Descartes image is itself a bit of a meme which is even older because here you can see this on the left or the one on the left is another of Descartes illustrations and to show how you know you use your muscles and what happens in your brain etc. so it's about tool use but the one on the right that actually predates Descartes by about 130 years and that's the very famous picture by Dura Melancholia I can maybe give a larger one here it's an amazing picture because it has this figure on the right described as an angel so I was doing a bit of research into this picture obviously it's this icon of art history and you know everything is overlaid so much with so many interpretations you can hardly read it or look at it simply but I think it's a really good picture because the figure on the right is well sort of an angel and this little art historical discourse is really being very concerned about what kind of figure this is is this an angel is it male or female and I was getting into all these debates and then I did what I usually do when I'm stumped and looked it up on Wolfram Alpha because that's something you know which always just relies on the facts and Wolfram Alpha obviously included all the inner angles of this strange shape here the melancholy cube which is a strange figure and the angel is obviously not quite looking at the figure but it has all the tools for it ready to you know analyze but the transition doesn't quite take place so somehow the information isn't going where it should and so it's a case of you know not quite proper representation and it's just looking off track and in fact Wolfram Alpha has it but the figure on the right is not a transsexual angel as this physicist called Neutrino is the ghost particle that just goes through everything and it reminded me of that thinking of these angel sex discussion but Stephen Wolfram just says it's a frustrated intellectual and with that explanation suddenly I could in fact do something after all and I think the frustration actually comes through this strange loop phenomenon that you would actually like to look at the world do something I mean he's holding the tools ready in his hands and has all the scientific equipment at the ready so it's not a matter of not having the proper materials but just sort of missing the point or something doesn't quite overlap and this is very sort of old motive and this this picture is obviously determines very much how we talk about this today this is the 2011 screenshot from last year's Melancholia film and I think you can see a lot of these the motives that are in the in the Durand picture but you can also see the great big planet in the in the background and that's something that's very much related to the whole tradition of this depression you have sort of a displacement that grief and or sorrow or depression take you somehow detach you from physical space but also it's framed very much as sort of gravitational force it's been related to or connected to the planet Saturn since antiquity and of course the sort of melancholy goes right back to the Greek melancholia the humours and such and that's a very bodily thing also and so is the Latin word depression which literally means you're sort of rooted to the spot and maybe you'd like to go out and do something but you can't actually and the whole idea of this is basically comes from the hermit this is the well the example or the motif that's been the most influential I think because it has to do with sort of being well frustrated at the world being sort of having high ideals maybe but not quite being able to work them out and well eventually just sort of giving up or turning your back on society or finding your own cocoon in a spatial or in a mental context and I think we have a lot of so weak our society the way it works today we don't have to go to a cave to do this hermit thing it can be another procedure altogether and it's been a very influential sort of in pop culture I mean this this really lives on till today and it's closely related to the ancient sin of Asidia which was like part of the biblical sins for a while it's it's the Greek Kyria actually meant sort of caring or being maintaining paying attention to the dead especially so kind of mourning and Asidia was was like the lack of this sort of carelessness especially in relation to the time that has passed the heritage and so you're not treating your ancestors with respect you're sort of just letting it go that was Asidia and this was very much framed as the as the monks disease so that this was an infliction of the desert fathers who who went into the desert and lived there as hermits this is the first description of the depression as a sort of clinical in a clinical sense although it dived under and became a part of the sort of Catholic sin canon until it was merged with sloth which is like just laziness so at some point there were eight or nine sins even but Asidia disappeared into that and has been sort of sleeper sin in a way ever since and I think that's really remarkable and tells us a lot about how we deal with with with depression today because it's such a specific trauma and to see these these connections to the net for me it was the question of how can a hermit still be connected can a hermit be connected at all or does that mean you you you pull yourself out of out of society altogether and I've been thinking about these actor network relations a lot so what does it mean to actually be in a in a in a network and I think that net has a very specific way of dealing with with sort of negative emotions I mean we have infographics like this one and we have emphasizing thoughts that just appear somewhere we have you know own means that are related to negative feelings and somehow tell you oh I'm not the only one experiencing these sort of bad thoughts or something we have recommendations Dr. Freud and of course the most important clear cash I think that's pretty good recommendation because that's just exactly telling you to get rid of these constant positive feedback which is a sort of exponential motion so I've been trying to place this somewhere else place this out of the sort of analog analog into a more digital or network context and we do know a lot about the net in terms of that it works exactly like real life but a few things that work differently than in real life and one thing that's constantly forgotten or I think it's just not maybe ignored sadly is Metcalfe's law which actually just tells you that in a telecommunication network the value of the entire network increases almost exponentially with the number of participants so you can see how many more connections are established in that sense so this is a technical description obviously but I think this sort of idea finds its nicest or most inspiring sort of echo in philosophy in what's called actor network theory by Bruno Latour who's a French anthropologist I suppose and he's basically transformed the whole concept of just you know I'm just a happy node in a network and can input whatever is possible from my side to make this a sort of setup where you can't fail where it's just either you input something into the system and give in more information or you transmit something else he describes different roles sort of intermediaries or mediators but this just removes this whole thing from a sort of failure this sort of failure context because in the net you can't actually in this sort of network setup using sort of actor network or using Metcalfe there's no sort of failure of an individual node as such and I think that's just a very intriguing or well nice figure of thought this is classic horse stutter to see what a strange loop is or what a positive illustration of a strange loop is this is the lap loop and this is the last thing I want to give sort of for also the group question how can small groups react and this is something the paradox that actually it can't work everyone's sitting on everyone else's lap and everyone's being supportive and very sort of unsupportive at the same time but in a way it still it still works and so what I'd just like to pass over to you in the sort of network context and small group context make your own routines focus on sort of process on time and change small changes in time whitehead got over his sort of good a trauma and went on to just develop process philosophy which has been extremely influential and I think it's a way of getting rid of this sort of trauma of an allergy of isomorphic sets that have to be exactly well have to represent each other and he just finds a nice way out focus on the sort of process and change the time and make sure you get your own routines straight because they're sort of self reflection or self analyzing doesn't have always have to be a bad thing I believe because nerds like Stephen Wolfram he just published all these data on well self quantification so that's the sort of nerdy most extreme way of self analysis but I think you can see nice things here because you actually see the sort of what he calls family dinner stripe the gaps of the the chopper always where he for years and years and years and years he's just been saying that's in my that's important to me that's the time we have family dinner or whatever and no one's going to take that away from me and that's his routine which is very very visible in his self analysis so I think make your own routines and this whole idea of connectivity these are the two things I would like to give on to you and I hope that we can get talking about sort of group context as well so connect while Stefan is changing the picture to something more comfortable after these very theoretical remarks by anwin we want to talk about a case that some of you might know the case of Stefan who who's willing to talk about it here in the open which we are very thankful for because we think it's really important one thing one remark I'm not a native speaker Stefan is not a native speaker so our English might not be as brilliant as anwin's was so we give our best and we hope to get the point across okay Stefan thank you for being here yeah you are known as as an activist of telecomics and in the hacker and activist community you've become very famous with a blog post you wrote last year it was titled that I decided to kill myself no the day I wanted to die the day I wanted to die that one spawned quite a few waves all over the globe basically because nobody had talked about that issue before it also posed with the 50,000 hits impressive and what we try to do now is to to find out how we came to that point and to start with I mean you haven't always been an activist obviously I mean nobody's born an activist you had a normal life so to speak working at AOL if I'm not mistaken yeah I had been at AOL as a customer support guy which can lead to depression too but in another way so you had a very you had a day job you had hobbies you did many different things like all we other guys did as well yeah I bet friends went to the cinema role playing games all the normal merry stuff so I mean how does an average dude like that get into activism how do you what was your first contact for example with telecomics my first contact with telecomics was politics it was all about actor and doing politics on an European level and yeah I stayed at this group because they were cool guys we had quite much fun and yeah then I was with them nearly every day when I was online we we we chatted all the day had fun with cat pictures you name it telecomics is really well known not just in Germany but not just in Europe basically all over the planet because of the ops that that you were part of one of those was obviously Egypt the the Arab Spring where you were active they started where yes and later Syria which is currently still running it's still going on yeah how did your day working in these operations look like well you see started with Egypt when we organized the modern pools for for dial up for the Egyptian people and I had my normal day job still working eight hours a day and then I came home I just moved to Berlin at this time and I lived at a friend's apartment and then I started looking in my terminal at my chat client and working and doing phone calls to different companies to get their modern pools organizing people checking out configuration everything in this pill three in the morning so basically your sleep schedule was host I had no sleep schedule it was just oh I'm tired from lying on the couch so no no no normal dinner times nothing of that sort no my yeah my good friend brought me food to the computer so and if you wouldn't have forced me I would have forgotten to eat so I was totally in the in the workload and yeah I just forgot to eat sometimes so he punched me to eat well I mean in a certain way success proved you're right I mean you had impact you had success all over the media not just in Germany we were anywhere we were in the New York Times we were in the Washington Post we were in some Italian magazines in Korea we had pressing fears from all over the world after the Egyptian operation but only one from Germany by the way so what was your personal reaction to that sort of of exposure that you got as a person and as a group I mean people called you a hero and they still do and the the reaction was her heroes not us so we tried to to call ourselves less we are less than we were and it was like oh my god oh my god press again should we talk to them or not and and one point we decided that we just dropped 10% randomly but the rest we were doing and because it was important that the story is going outside so the the press had played an important part because they they really pushed you guys for more information but only the press people I met when I was outside asked what are you doing my father called and asked for example yeah other groups asked how can we join how can we help so you had to bring out time to to to integrate them while you were doing the other stuff so you had two jobs instantly at that point did you still have your day job well my company where I was working closed down so I was sitting on the couch all the day eating chips and typing but I did not found the energy to apply for a new job so it was all this activity work doing all the time and yeah so basically the last thing that gave your your day some structure basically melted away for some reason and your life was basically just the activism job at that point and it was we were in a loop we were working and working and talking about and working and then talking and yeah so let's come to to the point that brought us all here the point where you decided that maybe it couldn't go on like that anymore what would you say was the final straw what what made you decide to end it and to end your life it was I was sitting in preparation of the case communication I was writing the the presentation for for my talk at the camp and I was well I while I was writing as I was like fuck where is my life gone and will I ever get it back and then I thought about it there was no chance to get it back I didn't saw any chance to get back in my normal life and so I was writing everything down doing the presentation getting prepared packed my stuff for the tent and decided to say goodbye so why did nobody realize that you were at that point well I had the bad position and at this point I was working all the time people who knew me knew I was working for the greater good and it was normal that I don't have time because I saw that my work I did was important it was important that I do this work that people in Syria get help and well the telecomics guy they do it it's okay they just doing it so so I mean the telecomics guy you said you were in contact the whole day with the other telecomics agents why did nobody of them realize that how far you'd gone well some of our telecomics guys had a normal family life and they had their normal structure and didn't saw any sign because we were not talking about that we were feeling empty we did this after the camp not before that so and some who had the same problem thought they were the only one that and it's not okay to talk about it so there was a loop again yeah so I mean luckily you didn't go through with it luckily you found a way out I think that that calls for a round of applause thanks for being here and we're all glad that you're here you did find a way out what changed your mind I mean you were you had decided to end it yeah why didn't you and at the case communication camp and in our telecom extent we had a memorial for Lance S. Mann who killed himself after suffering for 15 years on of depression and we had this memorial and they were all the hackers who called me some hours before a hero to and I got aware at this point that depression is something to talk about and that I'm not alone the feeling of being alone was a way so suddenly I knew there are others suffering from it and people know it they reached out and it's okay to reach out and after I knew this and I got well all the people there they were going coming to us and said hey great-great you're doing great-great you're a hero so it's okay so and I was like okay it's it's okay to be a hero just accept it and go move on and and I didn't want that these people who are very great are staying somewhere some and do the same memorial as we did for land so so meeting the other guys in person at that at the camp was basically safety of life basically meeting my personal heroes who said it's okay save my life yes and of course the other guys because we were the first time talking this openly we never did that before okay so at the camp you shut down telecomics you said okay we're done that's it yeah how did that did that help you guys it helped us that suddenly there was no pressure on us because formally we were gone so I remember during the camp when Prime Minister Cameron from from England thought about shutting down the net in London because of the riots they came in the tweets telecomics get prepared and I was like what the fuck you all know how to do it but people were expecting that we do it and when we shut down this suddenly was gone there was no need to have any new duty and yet it really frees of course we did not shut down everything we left one IRC server to stay connected and talk after the camp so so you said you you continue to talk what steps the telecomics take to to fix the issue and maybe to to make sure that it wouldn't happen again well we at the moment we did not take enough steps but we we we started we are working on it we're still working on it as it's not easy to rebuild in a complete system so we now force people to go offline we force people to go to bed we force people to go to a party we force people to have a romantic date something like this and if someone has a bad mood we listen to each other more than before we started to listen and this is very important we are now talking more and more about personal stuff which is saving people because we are friends we are a huge bunch of friends and now we're real friends once one thing I want to hit on is the the whole going out into the public thing that you did that not enough people did before obviously I mean you caused quite a riot just because you did it and everybody was was kind of scared kind of kind of freaked out because somebody put that that that bomb into the open why did you decide to go out into the open like that I mean you could have just decided say okay I'm fine now let's let's move on okay on the one thread I talked about it with Mitchell Oakman from from noise bridge who is talking about his depression in public and open and made only good experience with it and on the other side I did it because people can understand me now they understand why I have such yeah such mood changes every now and then they understand now why I see things from from another view and then I send now that I sometimes just want to be leave the alone it's now easier for people to handle me and and it's very important for other people that they know that they are not alone I'm in a position where I can say I'm suffering from depression it's okay others are not in this position because of maybe job or family relationship or whatever but then they know there is or there are other ones suffering from depression and it's very important to reach out so what were your experience with going out putting yourself out there in the open I for myself had only good experience with it yeah I got emails of people telling me I'm suffering from the same I'm telling you the first time that I'm having this and thanks for that so that was very nice of them to tell me on the other hand I'm I'm a little bit freer now I don't have to hide it anymore I'm not hiding myself before any other now and the way I am free now awesome apart from looking at Stefan's case here we extracted a few things that we want to go through now maybe you can change the sliding we have from Stefan's case from other cases come up with a few things that we think we might give you as maybe advice things that might become a problem later and maybe strategies how to fix it so that's our summary to give a positive spin to this rather obviously pressing topic there are a few as I said catalysts that we identified that we think people need to be aware of when interacting and that we have a few strategies how to counter them those catalysts are not checklists not if you have all these catalysts identified that doesn't mean that you have a depression you can have a depression without having one of those in your life it's it's not that simple but those are things that we want to to put out into the open so you can see them in your in your environment in your projects in in your friends maybe and we separated those there are things that relate more to the individual and things that relate more to the groups I'm gonna look at the individual parts and I'm gonna look at the group parts so let's look at the individual and there are certain personality traits that might become a problem and that might lead to a depression or help develop a certain sense of depression there's something we call drivenness the need to always have something new people ask you okay what are you working on and you have to present something new and next year there's the next conference and people are gonna ask you again you always have to provide new things and that leads to to many many new projects never going anywhere you all have 10 projects 20 projects 30 projects and they never get finished they never get done anywhere and that can become a problem because all those projects are in your life you all want you want to do all of them you want to to finish all of them and you never can so you start to put pressure on yourself and those demands are also from the group from the outside world from the community and the self perception is that you just have to do more because all the other guys and girls are doing so many cool and awesome things and why are you not doing so many cool and awesome things another part is responsibility as we saw in Stefan's case the task at hand was really important there were people dying there were people suffering and they really had this important job to do and who's gonna do it if not telecom except that point the perception is that the task is so important so much more important than the individual and that can lead to a to a great problem because you start ignoring your your needs as an individual and you are a person that has needs you cannot negate those another problem that we also saw in Stefan's life is that you start building a life around your project your activity you start to drop the things that structure the average day you start to lose your job maybe you stop having regular meals maybe you stop having regular regular sleep schedule you start establishing mitigation strategies to deal with the pressure and stress that you put on yourself in Germany we have this flausch movement where people throw this word at each other that that it actually doesn't even mean anything anymore just trying to cover up the problem and that is a big problem you cannot just dive into my little pony and hope that everything is gonna be alright my little pony can be a great distraction to to release some stress and it's awesome for that but you just cannot fall back on that all the time it can become really dangerous just like a drug habit can become dangerous and some people use extreme sports for the same thing to just get their kick and just go back to working again that's sort of structuring a life around the project is not a good thing and there's also this whole self perception thing that we see in the hacker scene that we see in the activists scene hackers are just getting shit done they see themselves as a function as people that just fix things they see the world as a technological problem that just needs a few tweaks here some code there and everything is gonna be fine and at that point you start ignoring that you as a person have feelings that you as a person have needs and that can lead down a very dangerous path and now and when it's gonna talk about a few of the things in the group. Yeah. What I think we've seen that sort of pressure is a very dynamic dynamic element of this because we do have the sort of feedback effects and like I said I mean positive feedback in physics is something just exponential growth I mean feedback shares that with other nice things like nuclear chain reactions and you know spread of viruses and it's just a very powerful phenomenon I think and like these expectations from outside that constantly come back to the comics should be doing this and this it's always a matter of that sort of your self reflection and all these expectations they do sort of interact in a in a way and I think yeah we've seen what the reward is for doing good work is get more responsibility get more work and start new projects etc. I think yeah this is this is what we've also been thinking about in the sort of actor network how what does the individual in a little cluster have have in comparison to the group I think the perception is often that actions come from within a group that it's seen as a sort of monolithic construction and sort of individual ups and downs don't really don't really feature or don't shouldn't shouldn't register that sort of expectations and so individual problems do in a way have to get get marginalized because it's also the whole is more than the sum of its parts etc. So it's sort of cybernetic pretty strong strong movement that just all these little statistical bleeps are somehow mended out of it and I think yeah what what you have here that don't talk about personal issues it's exactly that like stay with the topic get get your shit done and don't talk about this whole meta stuff because that's just you know just a story just disturbing exactly. Next. Okay so after we've we've shown you some things that we have seen as in Stefan's story and another story as problems we want to give you a few strategies that might help you might help your project to mitigate this these these trades basically again I'm looking at the individual on when it's gonna look at the group and as an individual there are strategies that you can use to to help you fix that issue one is and force a daily routine we've seen that an ambulance part of the presentation with with Mr. Wolfram who just has this slot in his day that is family time and there's nothing that's gonna stop him from having family time that is a good thing have be aware of your basic needs you have you need sleep you need food and you need breaks and some leisure time plan that put it in your calendar if you can't get it otherwise and block those parts you there is your your your sleep schedule and if somebody wants to do an interview and you know you have to sleep there you say okay we can't do the interview now we do that when I'm awake don't let the project dominate your day you decide what happens with your day and you enforce that that happens and put it in your calendar make sure that it happens those routines are really really important and they can't help you mitigate those problems another thing that's really important is become detachable if people talk about problems they have online and that's sort of this way many people say yeah you know just go offline and that doesn't work because for for people like like me for example who lives online if I go offline my support network is away then my friends are away I can't reach the people important to me that can help me that can support me so just going offline is not a solution to many of us I think so a strategy could be to separate your personal and your project communication channels have an email address for your project and one for your private email so you can still communicate via email without having to read all the project email that piles up don't synchronize it at at a certain point okay at 8 p.m. I stopped reading project email I just stopped because I can't do it all day make yourself detachable have different accounts to be able to do that and without having to lose your support network you don't have to be available all the time you have the right and the duty to be for yourself to have time for you enforce that nobody's allowed to tell you otherwise another thing is friends don't let all their friends join their project it's cool to work with your friends because you like them they are smart they are funny they're brilliant but if you have all your friends this project that means that the project also dominates your social circle have people outside get their feedback have them tell you okay maybe you're investing too much in that project maybe you're you're focusing too much on it that's something that people from the outside can give you so it's not a smart thing to pull all your friends into the the project even if you'd like to have them there because you lose a feedback loop that can help you make better decisions basically and another thing and I love putting quotes on on slides don't take your project too seriously and Bertrand Russell is a really brilliant man and who's basically quotable on in any case in your life whenever you need a quote Bertrand Russell has one one of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important and yes there are important projects we've we've talked about a few really important projects but you are important as well because if you're gone who's gonna do the work you have to take care of yourself and then you can take care of the issues and it's just not healthy to focus just on the project because you're not a project solving machine you're a person so don't don't ignore your feelings for help and asking for help is yes yes I asked and nobody replied don't just ask the net usually doesn't work ask a person ask some guy you're just talking to do it have you do you have a minute can we talk and if that person has no time maybe that happens ask the next person it's okay to just ask more people ask them directly do you have five minutes so may do you have half an hour can we go get a coffee ask a person to get help and get help and finally there is no shame and weakness and weaknesses quoted here it we're all human beings we all have days where we just feel everything sucks where we feel we suck where we feel unloved and where we are just sad don't be embarrassed we all feel that way and again a quote from just weed and firefly when you can't walk anymore you crawl and when you can't do that you find someone to carry you find people to carry you and to help you well I think sort of culture of failure and performance is really important in this context and especially I mean fail has become a hashtag and I think we have to keep the meaning of it and or really ask what what does failure actually mean so there is a sort of culture of measuring performance by what you can see people are doing and you know don't don't put yourself on your own mental health stuff too why is that relevant I mean there's a sort of attitude of saying we don't want to want to hear about it and it's very hard to implement into a group of sort of culture but I think from experiences like the boy I mentioned at the beginning Florian the MetaLab the Austrian hackers base in Vienna has learned a lot through this experience and they've implemented a more sort of sensitive approach to this and I think also what Stefan was telling about telecomics you can adapt and especially in a small group you can you can adapt and change these sort of attitudes and change these cultures and not reward people by giving them more responsibility more more stuff to do and at least in the net we tend to reward people with more responsibility this is something we need to break down but it is very much also not only a matter of distribution of load really technically but it's I think this culture aspect and how do we behave as a group is very relevant and well for me it's this sort of fail fail attitude that we should just be a bit more careful with this this label maybe well guilt guilt is the strange loop sort of phenomenon in itself because it just totally reflects resenting what you've done before or maybe what you haven't done or the expectations from the outside world so guilt is this totally strange loop phenomenon and I think a lot of people who really suffer from major depression are ever so troubled by this whole load it just gets worse and worse and worse and things just load up and I think the routine and focusing on small changes and focusing on process instead of status and analogy is maybe a way out in the network context because yeah we've been talking about some small implementations and Tanta suggested this sort of Tuesday you know if you're trying to find a day in the week where everyone can meet up it's always Tuesday you know so Tanta was like well why not do a sort of take care Tuesday or something just institutionalize little little motions make small teams build like in diving I go diving and then there's always this body system you're always a bit coordinating with your partner and there are small measures you can you can actually implement rather quickly I think that can might have a big big effect connect well that was my point and get professional help that was your point which doesn't mean get to a doctor find out what you need do you need a secretary do you need a psychotherapist do you just need a friend make your own routines and find your own way of professional help which doesn't mean a doctor necessarily it's not a shame to reach out and get help yeah that's it yeah yeah as we have no time left and maybe some people will have questions and we don't want to have them on the stage as it's too big and not a safe space for talking about this topic on your own we are going upstairs to and take a little part of the open space in about ten minutes so if you want to join us get a cigarette and then get something to drink and join us in the open space to talk about this topic if you like thanks thank you
 Okay.  All right.  Well, this is a very personal topic and I think we all don't have any other chance except  talking about it personally.  So I'm going to start by telling my own story how I came to this project at all.  Well, for me it started with this boy I actually never met.  His Twitter name was 1UP.  He was an Austrian activist founder of Austrian Pirate Party, founder of Soup, which a lot  of you might know we'll use, and was a game designer and generally a very active person.  And he committed suicide in 2009.  And I came across his story or rather sort of non-story in a way and was immediately  intrigued by this sort of what him reaction like Meredith said.  I mean, even if you don't know this individual story, I think that's my first point.  Instead of a trigger warning, it's become sort of customary to include a sort of warning  if you're talking about sensitive topics, but I think this is such a universal problem  in a way that almost everyone is in a way triggerable.  And we're trying to keep this, the triggers in a positive way and talk about a sort of  general phenomenon.  But I think what's really intrigued me here is how people can just disappear.  I mean, and how people leave their remains on the web.  I mean, welcome to Quake3Eirena's pretty haunting last tweet.  And if you, I was looking at this sort of dead Twitter wall in a way and was thinking  about the way sort of you tell your own life story and little bits and blobs.  I mean, Twitter is to be really credited for the phrase momentary hiccup, which is like  if you have a problem, then we're experiencing momentary hiccup.  But I think in a way, Twitter is this big ocean of momentary hiccups because you're  telling your own lifeline in these little discrete moments and in a way it's sort of  like Berksons Durer or a sort of quality time.  It's a very ancient sort of phenomenon that you try and explore your own life through  the stories you're telling bit by bit by bit.  And I think Twitter is a technology that supports that.  And I was reminded of a sort of soundtrack.  He had a lot of songs on his timeline.  And it reminded me sort of floating in empty space.  I was thinking of The Voyager Golden Record.  I don't know if you've ever seen the cover of it.  It's an amazing thing.  It was sent out to space in the 70s and included all sorts of songs and sounds from outer space.  If you're trying to do an infographic for it that aliens will at some point be able  to read, I think it's a pretty challenging task.  And trying to imagine what a sort of alien would look like.  The thing you don't actually understand at once is the point at the bottom, which actually  gives you the minute time frame or reference.  And it's actually the hydrogen atom, the change of spin in the hydrogen atom.  And so this little, these two little circles, the distance tells you actually the scale  to decipher the entire whole cover diagrams and the binary code because this is the smallest  possible time element, the smallest transformation.  And thinking about sort of soundtracks in space and golden records, I was reminded of  this from Gür Ersabar.  Douglas Hofstadter wrote an amazing book in the 70s.  And he thinks a lot about isomorphism, which is basically an analogy, two sets that can  be mapped to one another.  So this is the diagram which shows Hofstadter calls isomorphism a transformation that preserves  information.  So we have a time, little time switch, but in the way the information stays the same.  And Hofstadter has really, I think it's been such an influential book because he really  places the analogy at the heart of everything, of language, of thinking, of rational reasoning,  and cognition itself.  He wrote a book a few years later, which is called I am a Strange Loop where he actually  argues that consciousness itself works like one of these analogy systems where something  has just gone wrong, where the representation doesn't work out exactly.  And thinking of one-ups, Twitter ball and thinking of this name, I mean one-up is from  gaming, that you're constantly sort of striving for the next level.  So it's like a gratification if you do well, then you're going to make it up to the next  level.  And this whole idea of sort of meta levels, of sort of meta is better, sort of jumping  thought, I think is illustrated very well in this idea of Hofstadter that you're constantly  doing this sort of querying, what sort of your mind versus the outside world, you're  constantly doing these comparisons.  I think it's a very fixed thing in our minds that we actually, we think  we're these amazingly digital people, but in fact we work so much, we rely on this analogy  so much, so in a way we're in a constant sort of querying mode of is this, the map is not  the territory, our friends are not our real friends, our Facebook friends are not our proper  friends and especially with the digital world and other sort of layer which seems even more  surreal somehow.  I think we're constantly doing this sort of questioning and that determines our research  questions, examining these matters in a way because we try and see the differences between  let's say answers and search results and this is constantly something we're checking, but  this is the analog way of thinking and I think this is very well represented in, well,  this is the GIF Reaper which sort of surfaces in somewhere in Fazel Zuppe, I think.  It's a mode of representation and we're doing sort of comparisons mentally and this has  been in art history or in the history of thinking for a long, long time and Derrida, he relates  sort of difference and change to the idea of the trace or what he calls a ghost and  I think there's this quote by Aiba Schweitzer, I think he says something like the only important  thing in life is the traces we leave behind when we go and I mean that's pretty cheesy  as epitaphs go but I think in the sort of web context the trace is a really important  idea because like I said the Twitter wall, we don't really have a culture of dealing  of how do we want to remain on the web once we've actually literally physically dropped  out of it so I think these traces are really in a way very inspiring and Derrida relates  this very closely to the ghost so like when I was looking at this Twitter wall it is spooky  in a way and I don't know if you've seen the Apple landing page when Steve Jobs died,  we don't really have the perfect way of commemorating or finding a digital heritage but I think  of course we don't because we don't have the experience yet, it's just well simply put  although there are hundreds and thousands of people already dead on Facebook and maybe  you have a few handful of dead Facebook friends as well but in fact we don't actually have  the experience of dealing with that yet how we want to process our digital remains or  what we want our sort of lifelines or timelines to be as soon as we've dropped out of the  web so what I think how this relates the sort of depression to what I was mentioning  about isomorphism about comparing and trying to sort of state a reality by constantly comparing  two sets against another I mean Gürl, I don't know if you know the book Gürl Eshabach  but he was the first grade troll basically so he totally owned modern mathematics and  destroyed century projects of at least three people including Russell and Whitehead and  their big mission to show that everything is consistent and complete and he just went  and traumatized the entire science saying no in fact it isn't and these loops and the  strange patterns where analogy doesn't work out are right at the heart of logic and mathematics  and all thinking itself so we can't actually escape those we're always looking for the  completeness and consistent systems but in fact the strange loop is actually a trait of  the system itself and I think this incompleteness and inconsistency and constant reflecting  back upon yourself is in a way I've been treating depression and melancholy as a sort of special  case of this strange loop Hofstadter argues it's like  as soon as you ask questions to yourself instead towards the outside world and for me that's  also the connection to net activism or activism in general because I think if you're constantly  reflecting your own self and your own mental state which is in a way a very strong feature  of depression it's very hard to actually direct those questions to the outside world and to  make that loop and not just constantly fall back onto yourself and I think this strange  loop phenomenon is which is often described in research also in different terms a lot  of people say well you know in fact depression is a totally selfish thing I wouldn't really  call it selfish but I think that's exactly the problem we're talking about the sort of  self reflectiveness and depression does have a long tradition also a long tradition of  being described as an illness as a mental illness but also as a sin and if you look at  the characteristics of let's say the today the symptoms that are on the DSM IV list there  hardly any of those are biographical or psychological data in factors in that sense but they relate  very much about how we relate to the physical world and how we relate to the social world  which I think is in a way best represented here this is an ancient or rather old Renaissance  picture from Descartes book and he was doing studies of consciousness and perception and  for me this is still one of the most well elegant pictures because it actually shows  the way we try and reflect the outside and there were several of these I think this is  also an instant of this analogy of finding isomorphism between what's reflected in my  head or the picture I make of the world and the sort of outside world this has been great  topic in all of science and philosophy ever since really and actually this Descartes image  is itself a bit of a meme which is even older because here you can see this on the left  or the one on the left is another of Descartes illustrations and to show how you know you  use your muscles and what happens in your brain etc. so it's about tool use but the  one on the right that actually predates Descartes by about 130 years and that's the very famous  picture by Dura Melancholia I can maybe give a larger one here it's an amazing picture  because it has this figure on the right described as an angel so I was doing a bit of research  into this picture obviously it's this icon of art history and you know everything is  overlaid so much with so many interpretations you can hardly read it or look at it simply  but I think it's a really good picture because the figure on the right is well sort of an  angel and this little art historical discourse is really being very concerned about what  kind of figure this is is this an angel is it male or female and I was getting into all  these debates and then I did what I usually do when I'm stumped and looked it up on Wolfram  Alpha because that's something you know which always just relies on the facts and Wolfram  Alpha obviously included all the inner angles of this strange shape here the melancholy  cube which is a strange figure and the angel is obviously not quite looking at the figure  but it has all the tools for it ready to you know analyze but the transition doesn't quite  take place so somehow the information isn't going where it should and so it's a case of  you know not quite proper representation and it's just looking off track and in fact Wolfram  Alpha has it but the figure on the right is not a transsexual angel as this physicist  called Neutrino is the ghost particle that just goes through everything and it reminded  me of that thinking of these angel sex discussion but Stephen Wolfram just says it's a frustrated  intellectual and with that explanation suddenly I could in fact do something after all and  I think the frustration actually comes through this strange loop phenomenon that you would  actually like to look at the world do something I mean he's holding the tools ready in his  hands and has all the scientific equipment at the ready so it's not a matter of not  having the proper materials but just sort of missing the point or something doesn't  quite overlap and this is very sort of old motive and this this picture is obviously  determines very much how we talk about this today this is the 2011 screenshot from last  year's Melancholia film and I think you can see a lot of these the motives that are in  the in the Durand picture but you can also see the great big planet in the in the background  and that's something that's very much related to the whole tradition of this depression  you have sort of a displacement that grief and or sorrow or depression take you somehow  detach you from physical space but also it's framed very much as sort of gravitational  force it's been related to or connected to the planet Saturn since antiquity and of  course the sort of melancholy goes right back to the Greek melancholia the humours and  such and that's a very bodily thing also and so is the Latin word depression which  literally means you're sort of rooted to the spot and maybe you'd like to go out and  do something but you can't actually and the whole idea of this is basically comes from  the hermit this is the well the example or the motif that's been the most influential  I think because it has to do with sort of being well frustrated at the world being  sort of having high ideals maybe but not quite being able to work them out and well eventually  just sort of giving up or turning your back on society or finding your own cocoon in a  spatial or in a mental context and I think we have a lot of so weak our society the way  it works today we don't have to go to a cave to do this hermit thing it can be another  procedure altogether and it's been a very influential sort of in pop culture I mean  this this really lives on till today and it's closely related to the ancient sin of Asidia  which was like part of the biblical sins for a while it's it's the Greek Kyria actually  meant sort of caring or being maintaining paying attention to the dead especially so  kind of mourning and Asidia was was like the lack of this sort of carelessness especially  in relation to the time that has passed the heritage and so you're not treating your ancestors  with respect you're sort of just letting it go that was Asidia and this was very much  framed as the as the monks disease so that this was an infliction of the desert fathers  who who went into the desert and lived there as hermits this is the first description of  the depression as a sort of clinical in a clinical sense although it dived under and  became a part of the sort of Catholic sin canon until it was merged with sloth which  is like just laziness so at some point there were eight or nine sins even but Asidia disappeared  into that and has been sort of sleeper sin in a way ever since and I think that's really  remarkable and tells us a lot about how we deal with with with depression today because  it's such a specific trauma and to see these these connections to the net for me it was  the question of how can a hermit still be connected can a hermit be connected at all  or does that mean you you you pull yourself out of out of society altogether and I've  been thinking about these actor network relations a lot so what does it mean to actually be  in a in a in a network and I think that net has a very specific way of dealing with with  sort of negative emotions I mean we have infographics like this one and we have emphasizing thoughts  that just appear somewhere we have you know own means that are related to negative feelings  and somehow tell you oh I'm not the only one experiencing these sort of bad thoughts or  something we have recommendations Dr. Freud and of course the most important clear cash  I think that's pretty good recommendation because that's just exactly telling you to  get rid of these constant positive feedback which is a sort of exponential motion so I've  been trying to place this somewhere else place this out of the sort of analog analog into  a more digital or network context and we do know a lot about the net in terms of that  it works exactly like real life but a few things that work differently than in real life  and one thing that's constantly forgotten or I think it's just not maybe ignored sadly  is Metcalfe's law which actually just tells you that in a telecommunication network the  value of the entire network increases almost exponentially with the number of participants  so you can see how many more connections are established in that sense so this is a technical  description obviously but I think this sort of idea finds its nicest or most inspiring  sort of echo in philosophy in what's called actor network theory by Bruno Latour who's  a French anthropologist I suppose and he's basically transformed the whole concept of  just you know I'm just a happy node in a network and can input whatever is possible from my  side to make this a sort of setup where you can't fail where it's just either you input  something into the system and give in more information or you transmit something else  he describes different roles sort of intermediaries or mediators but this just removes this whole  thing from a sort of failure this sort of failure context because in the net you can't  actually in this sort of network setup using sort of actor network or using Metcalfe there's  no sort of failure of an individual node as such and I think that's just a very intriguing  or well nice figure of thought this is classic horse stutter to see what a strange loop is  or what a positive illustration of a strange loop is this is the lap loop and this is the  last thing I want to give sort of for also the group question how can small groups react  and this is something the paradox that actually it can't work everyone's sitting on everyone  else's lap and everyone's being supportive and very sort of unsupportive at the same time  but in a way it still it still works and so what I'd just like to pass over to you in  the sort of network context and small group context make your own routines focus on sort  of process on time and change small changes in time whitehead got over his sort of good  a trauma and went on to just develop process philosophy which has been extremely influential  and I think it's a way of getting rid of this sort of trauma of an allergy of isomorphic  sets that have to be exactly well have to represent each other and he just finds a nice  way out focus on the sort of process and change the time and make sure you get your own routines  straight because they're sort of self reflection or self analyzing doesn't have always have  to be a bad thing I believe because nerds like Stephen Wolfram he just published all  these data on well self quantification so that's the sort of nerdy most extreme way  of self analysis but I think you can see nice things here because you actually see the sort  of what he calls family dinner stripe the gaps of the the chopper always where he for years  and years and years and years he's just been saying that's in my that's important to me  that's the time we have family dinner or whatever and no one's going to take that away from  me and that's his routine which is very very visible in his self analysis so I think make  your own routines and this whole idea of connectivity these are the two things I would like to give  on to you and I hope that we can get talking about sort of group context as well so connect  while Stefan is changing the picture to something more comfortable  after these very theoretical remarks by anwin we want to talk about a case that some of  you might know the case of Stefan who who's willing to talk about it here in the open  which we are very thankful for because we think it's really important one thing one  remark I'm not a native speaker Stefan is not a native speaker so our English might not  be as brilliant as anwin's was so we give our best and we hope to get the point across  okay Stefan thank you for being here yeah you are known as as an activist of telecomics  and in the hacker and activist community you've become very famous with a blog post you wrote  last year it was titled that I decided to kill myself no the day I wanted to die the day I  wanted to die that one spawned quite a few waves all over the globe basically because  nobody had talked about that issue before it also posed with the 50,000 hits impressive  and what we try to do now is to to find out how we came to that point and to start with  I mean you haven't always been an activist obviously I mean nobody's born an activist  you had a normal life so to speak working at AOL if I'm not mistaken yeah I had been  at AOL as a customer support guy which can lead to depression too but in another way  so you had a very you had a day job you had hobbies you did many different things like  all we other guys did as well yeah I bet friends went to the cinema role playing games all  the normal merry stuff so I mean how does an average dude like that get into activism  how do you what was your first contact for example with telecomics my first contact with  telecomics was politics it was all about actor and doing politics on an European level and  yeah I stayed at this group because they were cool guys we had quite much fun and yeah then  I was with them nearly every day when I was online we we we chatted all the day had fun  with cat pictures you name it telecomics is really well known not just in Germany but  not just in Europe basically all over the planet because of the ops that that you were part  of one of those was obviously Egypt the the Arab Spring where you were active they started  where yes and later Syria which is currently still running it's still going on yeah how  did your day working in these operations look like well you see started with Egypt when  we organized the modern pools for for dial up for the Egyptian people and I had my normal  day job still working eight hours a day and then I came home I just moved to Berlin at  this time and I lived at a friend's apartment and then I started looking in my terminal  at my chat client and working and doing phone calls to different companies to get their  modern pools organizing people checking out configuration everything in this pill three  in the morning so basically your sleep schedule was host I had no sleep schedule it was just  oh I'm tired from lying on the couch so no no no normal dinner times nothing of that  sort no my yeah my good friend brought me food to the computer so and if you wouldn't  have forced me I would have forgotten to eat so I was totally in the in the workload and  yeah I just forgot to eat sometimes so he punched me to eat well I mean in a certain  way success proved you're right I mean you had impact you had success all over the media  not just in Germany we were anywhere we were in the New York Times we were in the Washington  Post we were in some Italian magazines in Korea we had pressing fears from all over the world  after the Egyptian operation but only one from Germany by the way so what was your personal  reaction to that sort of of exposure that you got as a person and as a group I mean people  called you a hero and they still do and the the reaction was her heroes not us so we tried  to to call ourselves less we are less than we were and it was like oh my god oh my god  press again should we talk to them or not and and one point we decided that we just  dropped 10% randomly but the rest we were doing and because it was important that the story  is going outside so the the press had played an important part because they they really  pushed you guys for more information but only the press people I met when I was outside  asked what are you doing my father called and asked for example yeah other groups asked  how can we join how can we help so you had to bring out time to to to integrate them  while you were doing the other stuff so you had two jobs instantly at that point did you  still have your day job well my company where I was working closed down so I was sitting  on the couch all the day eating chips and typing but I did not found the energy to apply  for a new job so it was all this activity work doing all the time and yeah so basically  the last thing that gave your your day some structure basically melted away for some reason  and your life was basically just the activism job at that point and it was we were in a  loop we were working and working and talking about and working and then talking and yeah  so let's come to to the point that brought us all here the point where you decided that  maybe it couldn't go on like that anymore what would you say was the final straw what  what made you decide to end it and to end your life it was I was sitting in preparation  of the case communication I was writing the the presentation for for my talk at the camp  and I was well I while I was writing as I was like fuck where is my life gone and will  I ever get it back and then I thought about it there was no chance to get it back I didn't  saw any chance to get back in my normal life and so I was writing everything down doing  the presentation getting prepared packed my stuff for the tent and decided to say goodbye  so why did nobody realize that you were at that point well I had the bad position and  at this point I was working all the time people who knew me knew I was working for the greater  good and it was normal that I don't have time because I saw that my work I did was important  it was important that I do this work that people in Syria get help and well the telecomics  guy they do it it's okay they just doing it so so I mean the telecomics guy you said you  were in contact the whole day with the other telecomics agents why did nobody of them realize  that how far you'd gone well some of our telecomics guys had a normal family life and they had  their normal structure and didn't saw any sign because we were not talking about that  we were feeling empty we did this after the camp not before that so and some who had the  same problem thought they were the only one that and it's not okay to talk about it so  there was a loop again yeah so I mean luckily you didn't go through with it luckily you  found a way out I think that that calls for a round of applause thanks for being here  and we're all glad that you're here you did find a way out what changed your mind I mean  you were you had decided to end it yeah why didn't you and at the case communication  camp and in our telecom extent we had a memorial for Lance S. Mann who killed himself after  suffering for 15 years on of depression and we had this memorial and they were all the  hackers who called me some hours before a hero to and I got aware at this point that  depression is something to talk about and that I'm not alone the feeling of being alone  was a way so suddenly I knew there are others suffering from it and people know it they  reached out and it's okay to reach out and after I knew this and I got well all the people  there they were going coming to us and said hey great-great you're doing great-great  you're a hero so it's okay so and I was like okay it's it's okay to be a hero just accept  it and go move on and and I didn't want that these people who are very great are staying  somewhere some and do the same memorial as we did for land so so meeting the other guys  in person at that at the camp was basically safety of life basically meeting my personal  heroes who said it's okay save my life yes and of course the other guys because we were  the first time talking this openly we never did that before okay so at the camp you shut  down telecomics you said okay we're done that's it yeah how did that did that help you guys  it helped us that suddenly there was no pressure on us because formally we were gone so I remember  during the camp when Prime Minister Cameron from from England thought about shutting  down the net in London because of the riots they came in the tweets telecomics get prepared  and I was like what the fuck you all know how to do it but people were expecting that  we do it and when we shut down this suddenly was gone there was no need to have any new  duty and yet it really frees of course we did not shut down everything we left one  IRC server to stay connected and talk after the camp so so you said you you continue to  talk what steps the telecomics take to to fix the issue and maybe to to make sure that  it wouldn't happen again well we at the moment we did not take enough steps but we we we  started we are working on it we're still working on it as it's not easy to rebuild in a complete  system so we now force people to go offline we force people to go to bed we force people  to go to a party we force people to have a romantic date something like this and if  someone has a bad mood we listen to each other more than before we started to listen and  this is very important we are now talking more and more about personal stuff which is  saving people because we are friends we are a huge bunch of friends and now we're real  friends once one thing I want to hit on is the the whole going out into the public thing  that you did that not enough people did before obviously I mean you caused quite a riot just  because you did it and everybody was was kind of scared kind of kind of freaked out because  somebody put that that that bomb into the open why did you decide to go out into the  open like that I mean you could have just decided say okay I'm fine now let's let's move on  okay on the one thread I talked about it with Mitchell Oakman from from noise bridge who  is talking about his depression in public and open and made only good experience with  it and on the other side I did it because people can understand me now they understand why I  have such yeah such mood changes every now and then they understand now why I see things  from from another view and then I send now that I sometimes just want to be leave the  alone it's now easier for people to handle me and and it's very important for other people  that they know that they are not alone I'm in a position where I can say I'm suffering  from depression it's okay others are not in this position because of maybe job or family  relationship or whatever but then they know there is or there are other ones suffering  from depression and it's very important to reach out so what were your experience with  going out putting yourself out there in the open I for myself had only good experience  with it yeah I got emails of people telling me I'm suffering from the same I'm telling  you the first time that I'm having this and thanks for that so that was very nice of them  to tell me on the other hand I'm I'm a little bit freer now I don't have to hide it anymore  I'm not hiding myself before any other now and the way I am free now awesome apart from  looking at Stefan's case here we extracted a few things that we want to go through now  maybe you can change the sliding we have from Stefan's case from other cases come up with  a few things that we think we might give you as maybe advice things that might become a  problem later and maybe strategies how to fix it so that's our summary to give a positive  spin to this rather obviously pressing topic there are a few as I said catalysts that we  identified that we think people need to be aware of when interacting and that we have  a few strategies how to counter them those catalysts are not checklists not if you have  all these catalysts identified that doesn't mean that you have a depression you can have  a depression without having one of those in your life it's it's not that simple but those  are things that we want to to put out into the open so you can see them in your in your  environment in your projects in in your friends maybe and we separated those there are things  that relate more to the individual and things that relate more to the groups I'm gonna look  at the individual parts and I'm gonna look at the group parts so let's look at the individual  and there are certain personality traits that might become a problem and that might lead  to a depression or help develop a certain sense of depression there's something we call  drivenness the need to always have something new people ask you okay what are you working  on and you have to present something new and next year there's the next conference and  people are gonna ask you again you always have to provide new things and that leads  to to many many new projects never going anywhere you all have 10 projects 20 projects 30 projects  and they never get finished they never get done anywhere and that can become a problem  because all those projects are in your life you all want you want to do all of them you  want to to finish all of them and you never can so you start to put pressure on yourself  and those demands are also from the group from the outside world from the community and the  self perception is that you just have to do more because all the other guys and girls  are doing so many cool and awesome things and why are you not doing so many cool and  awesome things another part is responsibility as we saw in Stefan's case the task at hand  was really important there were people dying there were people suffering and they really  had this important job to do and who's gonna do it if not telecom except that point the  perception is that the task is so important so much more important than the individual  and that can lead to a to a great problem because you start ignoring your your needs  as an individual and you are a person that has needs you cannot negate those another  problem that we also saw in Stefan's life is that you start building a life around your  project your activity you start to drop the things that structure the average day you  start to lose your job maybe you stop having regular meals maybe you stop having regular  regular sleep schedule you start establishing mitigation strategies to deal with the pressure  and stress that you put on yourself in Germany we have this flausch movement where people  throw this word at each other that that it actually doesn't even mean anything anymore  just trying to cover up the problem and that is a big problem you cannot just dive into  my little pony and hope that everything is gonna be alright my little pony can be a  great distraction to to release some stress and it's awesome for that but you just cannot  fall back on that all the time it can become really dangerous just like a drug habit can  become dangerous and some people use extreme sports for the same thing to just get their  kick and just go back to working again that's sort of structuring a life around the project  is not a good thing and there's also this whole self perception thing that we see in  the hacker scene that we see in the activists scene hackers are just getting shit done  they see themselves as a function as people that just fix things they see the world as  a technological problem that just needs a few tweaks here some code there and everything  is gonna be fine and at that point you start ignoring that you as a person have feelings  that you as a person have needs and that can lead down a very dangerous path and now and  when it's gonna talk about a few of the things in the group.  Yeah.  What I think we've seen that sort of pressure is a very dynamic dynamic element of this  because we do have the sort of feedback effects and like I said I mean positive feedback in  physics is something just exponential growth I mean feedback shares that with other nice  things like nuclear chain reactions and you know spread of viruses and it's just a very  powerful phenomenon I think and like these expectations from outside that constantly  come back to the comics should be doing this and this it's always a matter of that sort  of your self reflection and all these expectations they do sort of interact in a in a way and  I think yeah we've seen what the reward is for doing good work is get more responsibility  get more work and start new projects etc.  I think yeah this is this is what we've also been thinking about in the sort of actor network  how what does the individual in a little cluster have have in comparison to the group I think  the perception is often that actions come from within a group that it's seen as a sort  of monolithic construction and sort of individual ups and downs don't really don't really feature  or don't shouldn't shouldn't register that sort of expectations and so individual problems  do in a way have to get get marginalized because it's also the whole is more than the sum of  its parts etc.  So it's sort of cybernetic pretty strong strong movement that just all these little statistical  bleeps are somehow mended out of it and I think yeah what what you have here that don't talk  about personal issues it's exactly that like stay with the topic get get your shit done  and don't talk about this whole meta stuff because that's just you know just a story  just disturbing exactly.  Next.  Okay so after we've we've shown you some things that we have seen as in Stefan's story and  another story as problems we want to give you a few strategies that might help you might  help your project to mitigate this these these trades basically again I'm looking at the  individual on when it's gonna look at the group and as an individual there are strategies  that you can use to to help you fix that issue one is and force a daily routine we've seen  that an ambulance part of the presentation with with Mr. Wolfram who just has this slot  in his day that is family time and there's nothing that's gonna stop him from having  family time that is a good thing have be aware of your basic needs you have you need sleep  you need food and you need breaks and some leisure time plan that put it in your calendar  if you can't get it otherwise and block those parts you there is your your your sleep schedule  and if somebody wants to do an interview and you know you have to sleep there you say okay  we can't do the interview now we do that when I'm awake don't let the project dominate  your day you decide what happens with your day and you enforce that that happens and  put it in your calendar make sure that it happens those routines are really really important  and they can't help you mitigate those problems another thing that's really important is become  detachable if people talk about problems they have online and that's sort of this way many  people say yeah you know just go offline and that doesn't work because for for people like  like me for example who lives online if I go offline my support network is away then my  friends are away I can't reach the people important to me that can help me that can support  me so just going offline is not a solution to many of us I think so a strategy could  be to separate your personal and your project communication channels have an email address  for your project and one for your private email so you can still communicate via email without  having to read all the project email that piles up don't synchronize it at at a certain  point okay at 8 p.m. I stopped reading project email I just stopped because I can't do it  all day make yourself detachable have different accounts to be able to do that and without  having to lose your support network you don't have to be available all the time you have  the right and the duty to be for yourself to have time for you enforce that nobody's  allowed to tell you otherwise another thing is friends don't let all their friends join  their project it's cool to work with your friends because you like them they are smart  they are funny they're brilliant but if you have all your friends this project that means  that the project also dominates your social circle have people outside get their feedback  have them tell you okay maybe you're investing too much in that project maybe you're you're  focusing too much on it that's something that people from the outside can give you so it's  not a smart thing to pull all your friends into the the project even if you'd like to  have them there because you lose a feedback loop that can help you make better decisions  basically and another thing and I love putting quotes on on slides don't take your project  too seriously and Bertrand Russell is a really brilliant man and who's basically quotable  on in any case in your life whenever you need a quote Bertrand Russell has one one of the  symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly  important and yes there are important projects we've we've talked about a few really important  projects but you are important as well because if you're gone who's gonna do the work you  have to take care of yourself and then you can take care of the issues and it's just  not healthy to focus just on the project because you're not a project solving machine you're  a person so don't don't ignore your feelings for help and asking for help is yes yes I  asked and nobody replied don't just ask the net usually doesn't work ask a person ask  some guy you're just talking to do it have you do you have a minute can we talk and if  that person has no time maybe that happens ask the next person it's okay to just ask  more people ask them directly do you have five minutes so may do you have half an hour  can we go get a coffee ask a person to get help and get help and finally there is no  shame and weakness and weaknesses quoted here it we're all human beings we all have days  where we just feel everything sucks where we feel we suck where we feel unloved and  where we are just sad don't be embarrassed we all feel that way and again a quote from  just weed and firefly when you can't walk anymore you crawl and when you can't do that  you find someone to carry you find people to carry you and to help you well I think sort  of culture of failure and performance is really important in this context and especially I  mean fail has become a hashtag and I think we have to keep the meaning of it and or really  ask what what does failure actually mean so there is a sort of culture of measuring  performance by what you can see people are doing and you know don't don't put yourself  on your own mental health stuff too why is that relevant I mean there's a sort of attitude  of saying we don't want to want to hear about it and it's very hard to implement into a  group of sort of culture but I think from experiences like the boy I mentioned at the  beginning Florian the MetaLab the Austrian hackers base in Vienna has learned a lot  through this experience and they've implemented a more sort of sensitive approach to this  and I think also what Stefan was telling about telecomics you can adapt and especially in  a small group you can you can adapt and change these sort of attitudes and change these cultures  and not reward people by giving them more responsibility more more stuff to do and at  least in the net we tend to reward people with more responsibility this is something  we need to break down but it is very much also not only a matter of distribution of  load really technically but it's I think this culture aspect and how do we behave as a group  is very relevant and well for me it's this sort of fail fail attitude that we should  just be a bit more careful with this this label maybe well guilt guilt is the strange  loop sort of phenomenon in itself because it just totally reflects resenting what you've  done before or maybe what you haven't done or the expectations from the outside world  so guilt is this totally strange loop phenomenon and I think a lot of people who really suffer  from major depression are ever so troubled by this whole load it just gets worse and  worse and worse and things just load up and I think the routine and focusing on small  changes and focusing on process instead of status and analogy is maybe a way out in the  network context because yeah we've been talking about some small implementations and Tanta  suggested this sort of Tuesday you know if you're trying to find a day in the week where  everyone can meet up it's always Tuesday you know so Tanta was like well why not do a sort  of take care Tuesday or something just institutionalize little little motions make small teams build  like in diving I go diving and then there's always this body system you're always a  bit coordinating with your partner and there are small measures you can you can actually  implement rather quickly I think that can might have a big big effect connect well that  was my point and get professional help that was your point which doesn't mean get to a  doctor find out what you need do you need a secretary do you need a psychotherapist do  you just need a friend make your own routines and find your own way of professional help  which doesn't mean a doctor necessarily it's not a shame to reach out and get help yeah  that's it yeah yeah as we have no time left and maybe some people will have questions and  we don't want to have them on the stage as it's too big and not a safe space for talking  about this topic on your own we are going upstairs to and take a little part of the  open space in about ten minutes so if you want to join us get a cigarette and then get  something to drink and join us in the open space to talk about this topic if you like  thanks thank you
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