Advertising or News Suicide After Reading a Book

Today on one of the Golden Dawn message boards, I saw some bizzarre postings that were pretty much gibberish---much like the van down the street that says (written in masking tape) "Hope" and "Underwear" and "Wear clean underwear." Except that the van makes more sense than the replies that I was reading which seemed to be merely random words with a few links tossed in for good measure.
And I found myself wondering if anyone ever actually clicks on the links posted that way. (Heavens knows that Google ignores such links.)

This thought in turn made me wonder about a book inquiry I saw a few months ago---one that I suspect was a secret book advertising campaign.

The inquiry was about whether anyone had read a certain occult book. The person claimed that the book really freaked them out after they read it, and that they also heard that someone committed suicide after reading the book.

Given the fact that the inquiry appeared on several Golden Dawn forums at the same time, and was from a person that none of us had ever seen before, I think that most of us raked it up as an advertising campaign.

When someone pointed out that it seemed to be an advertising campaign, the person claimed not to be the writer. Of course, the proof of the pudding may be that none of us have seen this person post anything ever since. And so it goes.

Of course, it is possible that someone may have committed suicide after reading the book. But I would also like to point out that a lot of people who have committed suicide have also read the Bible. We hardly ever blame the Bible for causing suicides...so one has to consider why that is.

Whenever I have actually seen a book blamed for something, it is either a slow news day (complete with a journalist trying to spice up a story), someone trying to smear a group (ex. playing Dungeons and Dragons causes people to commit suicide and worship the Devil), or someone trying to assign blame to (or explain) some really wanked-out events. For instance, look at the number of video games and movies blamed for school shootings.

By the way, a lot of people do not see the approach of suicide (or mass violence) in others. Anyone who finds an occult book in the library of a loved one who committed suicide or did a violent crime will blame the occult. It is easier for the survivors to blame the occult than to admit that they did not see the long term mental problems that led to the suicide or mass violence.

(People also will blame the occult to explain why someone became the victim of violence. My own family has an example of that tendency.)

Anyways, as I already said, I suspect that the inquiry was merely a ruse to heighten the dark allure of an occult book.

And I wonder if it resulted in any book sales at all. Or did people in the community just ignore the book for the simple reason that it was such a clumsy advertising ploy. I ignored it, and I bet that you did too.