Live from Austin!

I just went through my Google Reader subscriptions, and removed everyone who hasn’t posted anything in over a year. It seems like the majority of the LiveJournal users I was following have jumped ship. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t post anything saying where they jumped ship to. Some of them are on Facebook, but most aren’t, so I suppose my notional social network just shrank.

Shrank, not shrunk. It should have been “Honey, I Shrank The Kids”. I note this because last night, we got into a discussion of span vs spun. It was one of those situations where I was sure of the correct answer right up until I paused to think about it carefully, at which point the word ’span’ suddenly seemed totally made up. The OAD lists it as archaic. I don’t have an OED subscription, but apparently both words are listed as synonyms there. Since I switched to doing my best to write in US English when I emigrated, I guess I’ll have to get used to ’spun’.

The original story in New Scientist:

Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children

About half of teenage goths have deliberately harmed themselves or attempted suicide, a new study suggests. But joining the modern subculture – which grew out of the 1980s gothic rock scene – may actually protect vulnerable children, researchers say.

The respun story on BBC News:

Goths ‘more likely to self-harm’

Teenage Goths are more likely to self-harm than those in other social groups, a study has found.

[...]

The Glasgow study found that belonging to the Goth subculture – as 25 people did – was strongly associated with a lifetime risk of self harm (53%) and attempted suicide (47%).

The Independent then spins further:

Teenage ‘goths’ are four times more likely to self-harm

Teenage goths are more likely to self-harm than any other youth culture group, a study has found.

Rates of self-harm among goths under the age of 19 are almost four times higher than for other young people of the same age.

Not only do they say the same thing three times over to increase the emphasis, they also omit any reference to the possibility that self-harming kids might be more likely to be attracted to goth thus explaining the statistic, or that the community might actually protect them.

That’s probably why MedPage Today is now trying to combat hysteria by starting with two action points:

• Explain to parents that this study did not determine whether Goth culture leads to self-destructive behavior or whether adolescents with those tendencies gravitate to Goth.

• Advise parents that the researchers suggested that rather than posing a risk, Goth culture may offer young people valuable social and emotional support from their peers.

It’ll be interesting—or perhaps horrifying—to see how this plays out once the even-less-reputable news outlets pick it up.