Utah Pirate Radio

With the topic of pre-mature deaths, depression, and Utah teen suicide my heart is heavy for the ones that I’ve loved and lost.

I can count 14 people who were close friends of mine in Utah who have passed away in the last 10 years.
These are people whom I have stayed the night at their house, went to school with, and partied with as teenagers.   But this is just a drop in the bucket!  Utah has an epidemic with depression and teen suicide!

When I think about my death.  The after-life.  The legacy that I leave behind.  I hope very deeply that my family won’t be the family that tries to cover up the facts of my life, or the facts of my death.

Recently my friend Katie passed away, and her parents wrote a lovely obituary that also revealed the details of Katie’s struggle with drug abuse, which is what eventually was the cause of her death.

Out of all 14 of those people that I can recount that have died a premature death, this obituary is the only obituary that was honest, and that respected the wishes of the deceased.

Instead of some cryptic wording like “Katie left this life early to be with her heavenly father,” or something that is vague, and untrue to the person’s wishes who just died, these parents stated clearly that “this is what Katie would have wanted” and they went into the details of Katie’s life and death.

That is what I want.  I don’t want my life to be in vain.  I don’t want to lose my voice after I pass away.
On my drivers license it says that I am an organ donor.  I deliberately elected that choice, so that my life is useful to someone else someday.

I have started many websites.  Mostly because when I have tried to talk about Utah’s issue with depression, I get censored.  So I preserve my thoughts and my experiences by posting written posts on these message boards, and videos on YouTube and on other social networking sites.

In the early days I joined a few msn groups, because I was working for MSN, and being in their social networking sites was allowed during break and such.  So I started asking questions about Jesus, as I had just found a personal relationship with him, and I was curious about the faith of my fathers.

After a few years, my brother passed away and I returned to a topic that I had wrote about many times before.  “Depression in Utah”..  After posting much information on the subject, and calling attention to the problems in Utah.  I got banned, time and time again.  And not just banned, but my posts all got deleted about this subject over and over.

So now MSN groups is going away.  MSN is closing down that business…  But my sites are still going strong.

See them here:

www.behindzioncurtain.com
www.utahpirateradio.com
www.youtube.com/utahpirateradio
www.youtube.com/slu2com

And I have a handful of other miscellaneous blogs and websites.  These are just the main sites.

I have also made plans for these sites to remain active and open long after I pass away.

Thanks for listening/reading/watching

Sincerely,

Ryan

My attempt to un-censor this conversation.

So I have been talking about this topic which is very dear to me on some LDS and Utah based message boards.

One of these message boards that I have been posting on has a group of people that I have been chatting with off and on since 2001.

When my brother died in 2002 I started BehindZionCurtain.com and that was a place that I used to talk about “spiritual depression” and Utah’s enormous issue with teen suicide, and overly depressed culture.

For 2 years before this, I was on the original message board that we called the “Believe” board.  I didn’t have any problems with anyone banning me.  There was a bit of censorship when things about Joseph Smith were revealed, such as his many sexual partners and wives.  But other than a little censorship, the conversations were often productive and civil.

But after the topic of suicide and depression in Utah came up, the conversations got more and more hostile.  Eventually in 2002, 2003, and 2004 I was banned and heavily censored.  So were several others on this message board for varies reasons.

Well, after a couple of uncomfortable personal meetings with some of these folks, and also after several wonderful personal encounters…  I was invited to be a assistant manager on this “Believe board” but the current manager of the message board which happens to be an LDS man.

I refused the offer in protest of the unfair rules, and direct slant against non-LDS groups.  The reason for my protest is originally when a guy named Glenn (The Sheriff) managed the message board, he was a man who also was a former-Mormon.  And though it would seem as though the bias leaned toward non-LDS ideals, that was not the case.  This man kept the balance very fair, and even chastised me and others for being a bit too passionate about some topics.   But when Glenn got tired of all of the complaining on the message board, he handed the board over to a new guy Mike (Megus) who is a very dedicated Mormon.

This is where censorship towards non-Mormons got out of control, and their restrictions and stated rules got stricter.  Free speech became a memory on that board.  I got banned only 3 weeks after turning down the the assistant management role there.

I would have taken it if I thought that I would not be expected to censor others for what I think was perfectly productive conversation.  I didn’t want to be in a role that I couldn’t serve properly.  And I didn’t want to manage something that I didn’t believe in.

When the assistant management role was given to me by the previous manager, for the purpose of working on technical aspects of the site.  I accepted, and I returned the role when I was done improving the site.
I had no interest in micro-managing people anyway..

So for years I would come back, and get banned if they found out it was me.  I would join and get kicked..  The cycle continued until I got hooked up on YouTube, and other social networking sites.

Then I found a message board called “Mormon Chat”.  Which had some of the same people that I used to know from the other place on there.  So I joined it, and for a few month I just watched email come into my box, and I didn’t participate much.

But recently I found out that the groups.msn.com is closing in February.  So I made a finally plea about bringing awareness to suicide in Utah.

I had made comments in other areas, and none of those areas brought any critisism.

But when the suicide and depression topic was brought in, it was only a few days until I was banned and about 20 of my posts censored.

The funny part about it, was that the guy responsible or at least partially responsible.  Made a comment after I had a bunch of my posts censored “Ryan has left the building.  Like a rat he scurried away”.  Or something like that.  You’ll see it in the video.

Funny thing about this, is that I did not scurry anywhere and I had two Windows open to show the posts that I made AFTER he said that I “scurried away”..  And to show them after they were deleted.  Which shows not only was a censored.  But also that this guy totally lied about what happened.

Here is that video:

And this is something that I made for him four years ago.  It was a little cartoon that illustrated how this guy critises everyone and everything that doesn’t agree with his particular theology.  Including Mormons.

I reposted this for him, when he was taking shots at me this week.  And I think that’s why he was so excited to make decietful and snyde statements about me AFTER I was banned and couldn’t respond.

This is a good laugh if nothing else.

http://behindzioncurtain.com/modules/mylinks/singlelink.php?cid=4&lid=42

Nothing personal, just an observation.  But this guy doesn’t like how he was portrayed in my cartoon.  It’s a real sore spot for him.  =)

References that I used in this video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/03/eveningnews/main510918.shtml

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id=4403731&page=1

(more videos on “Utah’s Spiritual Depression” to come)