Stop me if you've heard this one before...

A double-suicide of 2 teenage girls who lived in a Parisian suburb appears to have caught much of Europe by surprise, probably because of the spectacular nature of their deaths: they jumped from the 17^th floor of an apartment complex, their hands tied together in a final embrace. In asking the inevitable 'why?', somehow I'm not surprised that this element of the story is getting some traction in the international press - they killed themselves because of their musical preferences: death by gothic rock. In reading these two sterling pieces of tabloid-esque trash reporting, it becomes clear that the writer for the Scottish Sunday Herald wouldn't know gothic rock if it marched through his bedroom at 2AM at the head of a marching band, singing "I am gothic rock" at the top of its lungs whilst dressed in bondage gear and playing Sisters of Mercy tunes on a kazoo with its arse. And while the tagline on the Guardian's piece reads "Goth music link in latest of series of death pacts", can you guess the number of 'related' events in this 'series'? The author writes:

The suicide bears strong similarities with that of two adolescent girls who jumped to their deaths from the cliffs of Cap Blanc Nez last January.

So, um... that's one. Out of an official 800 teen suicides per year in France, as per stats cited in the next paragraph. Hey folks, teen suicide has no easy solutions - scapegoating a musical genre (or a religion, or a game) isn't going to make it go away. It may provide solace for people who don't care to look at any of the underlying issues, but it won't bring back the dead, nor will it prevent any future deaths. I'm waiting for the first 'blogs drove my teen to suicide' story, myself. Hell, it's probably out there already and I just missed it...