The Dark Net (23 page)

I <3 her body, so want.

Similarly, on self-injury sites – which frequently link directly to pro-ana sites – users will often post extremely graphic photographs of their self-injury with accompanying short poems, lyrics and other images. Although many social networking sites have strict guidelines prohibiting posts and links that explicitly glamorise and promote self-harm and eating disorders, the glamorisation is often indirect, built up subtly through layer upon layer of content and direct comparison.

Suicide forums tend to be slightly different, with fewer images and more discussion. But here, many users present suicide as an honourable, meaningful solution to life’s problems. In a.s.h., one anonymous contributor advised another visitor who was contemplating suicide to try to enjoy the day:

Firstly, it will be a special event regardless. Why not enjoy it as best you can. Definitely drive some place far away 40,60,100 miles or more if you can and enjoy a nice chilled-out ride on the highway or however long you enjoy driving to a nice hotel. Check in for several days just take as many long strolls as you can. You are in new energy, new people around you, that is the best thing for stimulating a new or lifesaving idea. Make a party out of it . . . If you want to chat, leave an email here or some other way to contact you. Good luck.

The great danger is that such behaviour comes to be seen as normal, healthy and appealing. Amelia would look at the thinspo pictures, comparing herself unfavourably to the glamorous photos.
Being surrounded by photos and images of exceptionally skinny people led her to develop body dysmorphic disorder. Like many visitors to pro-ana sites, Amelia started to become obsessed with emaciated bodies, and with very specific signs of extreme skinniness: ‘thigh gaps’ (a gap between the thighs when standing with the knees touching), pronounced collar bones and jutting knee and elbow joints. According to Dr Bond, anorexics pride themselves on achieving the remarkable mental toughness that is required to deprive yourself of food. ‘Many of them come to equate the feeling of hunger with happiness,’ Dr Bond tells me. ‘I did not see anything at all wrong with a thigh gap,’ Amelia recalls. ‘It was just the thing that we all wanted. We would obsess over it.’ I found the following anonymous post on a pro-ana site:

I DO NOT FUCKING NOT BELIEVE THIS. It was LITERALLY Thursday that I was looking at my thigh gap. Then WHAM. It’s gone. OVERNIGHT. ACTUALLY FUCKING OVERNIGHT. It’s gone. I’m totally choked. I’m so angry at myself. How did I allow this to happen? How did I let myself go so much?

Whether it’s sharing experiences, uploading photographs or describing techniques and methods, the volume of data on the websites I visited is remarkable – a shared repository of knowledge on how to self-harm. That repository included a lot of very detailed advice. Amelia started to read up on weight-loss techniques, commonly known in the community as the ‘Ana tips’ – a set of rules that, if followed, will result in drastic weight loss:

Rule 1:
Rules Rules Rules. This is important. You need to set rules for yourself, and if you are truly ana, you will have no problem sticking to them because you are STRONG! Rules are everything. Make your own and keep adding to them.

Rule 11:
Drink up to a shot of apple cider vinegar before eating, it’s supposed to minimise fat absorption. Drinking more than a shot causes a vague nausea which helps supress appetite.

Rule 21:
Write everything you eat and its calories. This will make you think before eating and also make you more aware of how much food and calories you are actually consuming.

Rule 27:
Press on your stomach when it grumbles. TUMS also stop stomach growling (5 calories a piece so be careful!).

Rule 34:
Never eat out of a box or jar. Always eat from a plate or bowl. This will help you in several ways: you will see how much you are really eating; you can determine in advance how much you will eat and not go back for seconds; using a small plate or bowl will make you eat even less.

On several pro-cutting forums I found advice on how to cut yourself while avoiding detection from parents or teachers. ‘What can I use now my family has stopped me buying razors?’ asks one user. ‘Thin wire, staples, safety pins, a small, sharp pointed rock, a bit of glass like from a smashed light bulb, even sharp broken plastic can be used,’ came the helpful response. I observe the same phenomenon in action in a number of suicide forums. It is illegal in the UK to encourage or aid suicide, even if you do not know the person and
do not have material involvement in the act. All that is required is the clear intention of encouraging a person to commit suicide. But providing information or discussing suicide on the internet or anywhere else is legal; providing there is no intent to encourage someone to act on it. As a result, forums like a.s.h. include a lot of information about specific ways of killing yourself. Advice on methods ranges from the very general (‘I’m not looking to try any method where I could possibly scar someone like with a train . . . can you advise?’) to the impossibly detailed (‘I have 4 litres of High Concentrated Lime Sulfur Spray which I bought last year before it was banned. However, my car is a little bit bigger and spacier than a normal sedan and I don’t want to waste my valuable supply on a failed attempt so I wanted to ask some questions . . .’).

Tricks and tips are arguably the most harmful and destructive parts of these subcultures, transforming what might be vague, ill-thought-out plans into a concrete set of instructions. Every year around twenty million people attempt suicide. The majority – at least 90 per cent – fail. In a study conducted by the University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research, of 864 people who had attempted but failed to commit suicide, respondents were asked how intent they were on killing themselves. More than two thirds were moderate or low. Similarly, a 2006 survey of patients with an eating disorder found that around a third had visited a pro-eating-disorder site and 96 per cent of them had learned new weight-loss methods while there. With tricks and tips you learn how to survive on under 1,000 calories a day, and many aim for 500.

Pro-ana sites are often edged with a peer pressure, as a way of encouraging each other to attain the demanding targets they have set themselves. One popular component on most pro-ana sites is ‘food diaries’. Users will post a detailed breakdown of what they eat each day, usually accompanied by a calorie count. Many set themselves extremely punishing schedules. Publishing your plans and updating on progress, explains Amelia, is a way of keeping yourself motivated. You know others are watching and you don’t want to let them down. And if you’re struggling, they will encourage you.

Bony Queen:
This is just going to be a short, pointless post on how i did today. Really not in a good mood. I need rest, motivation and lots and lots of CIGS.

Day three:

Breakfast. Nothing.

Lunch. One chip two small sips of milk

Dinner. About 300 cals

Day four:

Breakfast. Nothing.

Lunch. Two little tomatoes and sip of milk.

Snack. 200 calorie binge on chips with lots of sour cream
.

Dinner. Four fries and a McDonalds wrap. Half of a half of it. 200 calorie (guessing by amount I ate). Total. 400 But I snacked on lots of cereal and a little bread. I’m going to go with 500 maybe more.

Hate this. I don’t know what my total is because I can’t get a grip on my snacking. I need to feel light but I just feel like I’m being pulled down by myself. I must picture tomorrow. That’s the best way to start it
. Hope you guys are all having a better night than me. Thanks for reading.

Bony Queen:
Thank you both so much. You’re right I do feel slightly better. I hope you make it, because you guys deserve it. Thanks again I need some encouragement it seems.:>

Wrapped up in this well-meaning supportive community, in the social interaction and feedback, are extremely destructive and unhealthy ideas and behaviours. In 2013, one popular pro-ana blogger that Amelia followed said she was embarking on a three-day fast, after eating too much over the Christmas holidays, and hoped that others would hold her to it. Within hours Amelia and dozens of others had pledged to fast with her in support.

For three days, Amelia consumed barely anything but water and ice cubes. This sort of drastic calorie reduction is extremely dangerous, and causes immediate psychological distress. In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was carried out just after the Second World War, thirty-six carefully picked men, selected for
their mental and physical toughness, agreed to undergo voluntary starvation. Their intake was reduced to around 1,500 calories per day – roughly half of what is considered healthy, but still far more than many anorexics consume. The men couldn’t concentrate, and reported feeling socially isolated. There was a significant increase in depression, hysteria – even self-mutilation. Amelia said that the fasting was physically and mentally tough, but, at the time, seemed worth it. Not only had she lost weight, but she had visibly demonstrated her commitment to the pro-ana community, and offered support to help another ana girl.

It was a tipping point, Amelia tells me. The helpful and caring community had, imperceptibly, changed into something subtly different and far more dangerous.

After a few weeks in the pro-ana community, explains Amelia, everything feels so
normal
. When I first visited these sites, I was shocked by the emaciated bodies, the blasé discussions about lethal cocktails or people searching for suicide pacts, the graphic photos of mutilation. This wears off very quickly. Emaciated bodies began to appear unsurprising, and ordinary. And because thinspo, tricks and tips, suicide methods and diets are put forward by a seemingly caring community of people, it is easy to forget just how deadly the advice can be. It could be said that almost any action, no matter how misguided, can quickly become acceptable – even admirable – if you believe that others are doing it too.

In 1774 the German novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published his first novel,
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, in which his thoughtful young protagonist takes his life after failing in his endeavours to be with the woman he loved. The book sparked a spate of copycat suicides across Europe by young men who had found themselves in a similar predicament. This strange phenomenon became known as the ‘Werther Effect’. The month after the August 1962 suicide of Marilyn Monroe, 197 suicides, mostly of young blonde women, appeared to have used the star’s death as a model for their own. In the 1980s a number of men in Austria committed suicide by jumping in front of trains; at the turn of the century in Hong Kong there was a spate of suicides by ‘charcoal burning’, and in 2007–8 in south Wales, of teenagers hanging themselves.

Sociologists call this ‘behavioural contagion’. The Werther Effect occurs because we are social creatures. We model our behaviour on others, learning from and imitating those around us. Patterns of behaviour, it turns out, can often spread in much the same way as disease does. The same phenomenon has been observed with drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, self-harm and obesity, but also with happiness and cooperation.

The Werther Effect has been found to take particular hold following cases where the victim is portrayed as romantic and heroic in some way – like Werther himself – and if they receive a lot of attention or sympathy. This is why outbreaks of the Werther Effect nearly always follow large-scale media coverage. As a result, many countries have strict guidelines about how to report suicides. During the time of the south Wales suicides, for instance, the police asked
the national media to stop reporting the stories in a bid to limit the number of copycat cases.