The End of Ragequitting
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Perhaps he means it sincerely, but my experience with someone close to me committing suicide and the research I have done since then--including research prompted by feedback from HN to posts I have written--is that it can be dangerous to try to "reason" with a suicidal person.
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" is something I often say about bigots, sexists, and so on, but it applies to depressed people as well. You don't come back from the brink because of life lessons, or essays on the internet, or the love of a small child. Or this comment.
I won't even try to explain how being so depressed that you kill yourself is nothing like deciding that you don't want to "play the Internets" any more.
The metaphor I use is that suicide is the end-game of a crippling disease that attacks the brains ability to manage stress. I liken depression to AIDS of the emotional immune system.
When we're healthy, we have ways of handling stress. We have good days and bad days, but they fall within a certain manageable range because our body musters compensation for our emotions. The depressed person can be triggered by something bad and spiral into an extreme mood.
If we use my metaphor to explain why someone facing a lot of jail time would commit suicide, the jail time is like pneumonia: Something serious but beatable by a person with a healthy immune system and social support. But not beatable by someone with a compromised immune system, and deadly to someone whose immune system actually attacks himself in response to certain kinds of stress.
Long ramble here, but we can't talk people out of AIDS or Cancer or even the Common Cold. Good spirits and support have been proven to be very helpful, but not as a substitute for proper treatment or for understanding that if you are contemplating ending your own life, you are sick but what you have can be treated PROVIDED YOU AND YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK TREAT DEPRESSION AS A SERIOUS ILLNESS THAT CAN BE TREATED.
I am not telling Mr. Atwood to retract his remarks. But I am saying that I do not support trying to talk someone out of suicide by comparing it to rage quitting a game or walking away from the Internet.
I do support everything he is saying about the ridiculous injustice in the plea bargain system.
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Here it is, for those interested:
One thing people don't realise is that depression screws with your perception of the value of things, maybe a little, maybe a lot. Trying to logically balance things like a mathematical equation is not a useful way of looking at things when discussing depression.
I first bought a David Foster Wallace book last spring, I was on a lunch break, had entered a book-store, when I read on one of his books' back-covers that it had been written by a brilliant guy who had committed suicide. I wasn't thinking about suicide back then, I think I never did, I was just going through depression and I wanted to genuinely see what made people more depressed than me go the whole way. Suffice is to say that I was feeling like I knew the guy when reading his words, especially when he wrote about depression, like I seem to know and be familiar with all the people who describe what depression feels like.
And to go back to Jeff Atwood's piece, until you haven't experienced depression you cannot really understand what goes through a person's mind in moments like those, and even less so are you entitled to "accuse" the said person for "calling it quits" or whatever. Like I said, I never thought about suicide, but even in my mild depression I sort of could see the black light at the end of the tunnel and people who used to be like me not that long ago just giving it up and deciding to let go.
It's harsh but over the last decade or so every, single damn time I read Atwood's blog I walk away shaking my head. The popular posts usually end up with him writing some sort of apology or retraction. Fortunately usually this is about something not nearly as serious an issue as suicide. (Though his posts on computer security are also notorious for causing proliferation of views that may actually cause real damage.)
When he posts stuff I don't think he intends these things but often I sadly see knowledgable people have to scramble and waste their time "cleaning up" after him by posting responses and getting those responses through the filter.
You wrote "the metaphor I use is that suicide is the end-game of a crippling disease that attacks the brains ability to manage stress."
As far as I can tell, this isn't a metaphor. I think is a pretty good description of what happens.
For those of you lucky enough to have gotten through your life so far without wanting to end it, it's probably hard to understand what suicidal ideation is like. Jesse Bering, a very well spoken evolutionary psychologist, wrote an article about what it feels like to want to kill yourself. This is far and away the best description of being suicidal I have ever read. As someone who's been on and off with suicidal ideation for the last decade, the words Atwood uses don't really resonate with me. This article really, really does.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2010/10/2...
Lastly, to anyone who deals with this: if at all possible, don't let the death urge win. Your depression lies to you. Don't trust it to have your best interests in mind.
I decided that I'm simply too curious about what happens next to ever do it. Has helped ever since and eventually the thoughts faded away ... now suicide is merely a passing curiousity that momentarily pops into mind as a "Y'know, I wonder what it'd be like to just swerve into that truck coming down the opposite lane right now. There isn't actually anything stopping me from doing it ..."
Reason, it's a powerful tool.
For example, if we are cranky, we sometimes mistakenly explain our mood by saying that people around us are rude, or that drivers in traffic are selfishly blocking us. It is sometimes difficult to think that we're cranky "just because."
Some people have a biochemical explanation for their depression and their biochemistry changes over time. It could be that their brains fix themselves, and as they get better, their reason improves. But if you ask them, "what happened?" They say it was their reason.
In my own case, I have often claimed that I can improve my mood with endorphins through exercise and adrenaline sports like rock climbing. But others around me say that I have cause and effect backwards, that when I'm depressed I avoid exercise and when I get better, I start exercising again!
Depression is a tricky thing. The most valuable skill I ever learned is being able to mentally catch it early and reverse the thought processes before they become a problem.
All the little things help, from teaching yourself to intervene when a mood starts to swing negative, to challenging negative explanations and beliefs, to working on core beliefs, to drugs, endorphins, everything.
As of now, the most effective preventative measure for me has been focus. If I apply myself to thinking about something else, the problem goes away.
"What this cognitive shift to concrete thinking reflects, suggests Baumeister, is the brain’s attempt to slip into idle mental labor, thereby avoiding the suffocating feelings that we’ve been describing. Many suicidal college students, for example, exhibit a behavioral pattern of burying themselves in dull, routine academic busywork in the weeks beforehand, presumably to enter a sort of 'emotional deadness' which is 'an end in itself.' When I was a suicidal adolescent, I remember reading voraciously during this time; it didn’t matter what it was that I read—mostly junk novels, in fact—since it was only to replace my own thoughts with those of the writer’s. For the suicidal, other people’s words can be pulled over one’s exhausting ruminations like a seamless glove being stretched over a distractingly scarred hand."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2010/10/2...
As someone who has dealt with (and eventually overcame) clinical depression in the past, this is the metaphor that I use as well. Willpower a necessary tool any time you're trying to make a change to yourself; depression is an affliction of the will.
The metaphor I use is that suicide is the end-game of a crippling disease that attacks the brains ability to manage stress. I liken depression to AIDS of the emotional immune system.
This is a very profound way of thinking about depression, and I thank you for sharing it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%... Seppuku Many cultures have promoted it for one reason or another http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku http://rt.com/news/india-ritual-suicide-sati/ Some native american cultures had the idea of the elderly walking into the snow when they became burdensome.
(Emphasis Jeff's).
It depends on the person, and their depression. The last item on your list did it for me.
It's ridiculous to toss guesses out into the Internet like talking heads on Fox News, but for the purposes of educating people who may find themselves in a similar situation, someone can easily become suicidal through post-partum depression, and it can affect both men and women. There are various risk factors, one of which is sleep.
> For a long time we didn't talk about the case very much. He wanted to protect me and he wanted to cordon it off from the rest of his life. He was worried that I would be subpoenaed, or that his other friends would be subpoenaed, and so he kept it all to himself. He kept all of the stress and the anger and the fear to himself.
> In December there was a hearing that I went to with him -- the trial was delayed because another hearing at this hearing -- the decision was made to delay the trial until April. And afterwards I -- we came out of the courtroom and I tried to give him a hug, and he pushed me away. And he said, "Not in front of Steve Heymann. I don't want to show Steve Heymann that."
The obvious, reflexive assessment of Aaron's situation is that he faced (or believed he was facing) an unsurmountable sentence and challenge, and that that fear was enough to cause him to commit suicide. But there's likely more to it than that...it wasn't just the fear or the hopelessness, but the isolation and other inconveniences that was a part of the struggle. Maybe Aaron felt ready to face the consequences, as they existed on paper (the charges, trial, and possible jail sentence) but the unexpected load of paranoia and loneliness, as Taren describes it, was something that ended up being insurmountable.
Of course, from the outside, it's easy to say, "Well, he should've realized he really wasn't alone. And that others were willing to fight along with him." But it's always easier to make that rational assessment from the outside.
I'm similar really. It's a holdover from my annoyance at people in school that used to say "me and my boyfriend blah blah blah", "my girlfriend told me blah blah blah", etc.
So now I use my partner's name whenever possible, otherwise introducing her as my partner in conversation. Not saying that's what the reason is here, but that's my personal reasoning.
* solidarity with homosexual couples
* no plans for getting married, but plan to be together for years
* not monogamous
* 'girlfriend' sounds very high school
At some point in the next 50 years, society is going to learn that suicide deaths are morally comparable to deaths from leukemia or heart disease.
We're going to be embarrassed by things we wrote in 2013 that look at suicide from the vantage point of a "strategies" or personal choices.
It seems likely that things happened to Swartz that provoked his death. That's in the nature of the illness he suffered: a vulnerability to provocations to suicide. But those provocations are just as coercive as the genetic abnormalities that allow environments to coerce living cells into cancer. Swartz's death was nobody's choice; "nobody" includes Aaron Swartz.
Yes, death is final. I still feel it's my choice, other's disagree. What makes their view more valid than mine?
(I don't necessarily believe in a free will, but if it exists it's hard to tell who has with concern to what decisions.)
I'm not against curing depression and investing more resources into getting better at it. My worry is that people with depression are portrayed as slaves to disease, as opposed to healthy people who are free to make decisions based on their interests.
That encourages limiting the choice ill people can make. Aaron is no longer suffering from a mental illness. For him, ignoring others, it was a rational decision that he benefitted from.
I'm not sure: http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=644
>We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right.
What should give one pause is the experience of many people who were suicidal at one point, who later can hardly believe / articulate what they were thinking. I.e. it seemed to make perfect crystal-clear sense at the time, but now the reasoning sounds absolutely stupid.
I believe there's a parallel to over-constrained problems in engineering. One common pattern of depression and suicidal thinking is the feeling that there are no other options. People become trapped in seemingly unsatisfiable constraints, and the only option that appears to remain is to cease to live.
Remove one or two of those apparent constraints, and all of a sudden the problem becomes satisfiable, and life can continue.
Just like when you have cancer and willingly choose not to undergo treatment.
There's the choice. of course it's not an easy choice, treatments are still lousy enough in both cases to be worth thinking about whether or not to take them.
Unfortunately, our ignorance of mental illness allows us to chalk deaths from suicide up to "personal choice", when a more complete understanding would allow people who suffer from depression to work with doctors to craft mitigations to the stimuli and circumstances that create suicidal impulses.
Instead, we're like "well, you can spend the week in an in-patient facility, or here are some pills and go try to figure it out on your own."
Just saying "it wasn't his fault, he had nothing to do with it" is probably not the best message to send, even if it's actually true when the victim is actually pulling the trigger or jumping off the bridge.
Complementing it with something like "I wish he had had the opportunity to get better" is probably more humane.
If it's not too much to ask, how did you do it?
It took years to come to that point when I recognized that I needed treatment and it came one evening during a period that I had been doing much better, but I had an "episode" one evening when something inconsequential had made me incredibly upset, and I was in this deep spiral of being upset, then being angry at myself for being upset (since I recongized it was inconsequential), and then being angry at myself for being angry and so on. And I was walking home from school (I was in grad school at the time) and bawling my eyes out and hyperventilating and scratching at my arms to the point that they were bleeding rather distinctly and I was crossing the street, and I saw headlights coming towards me, and I had this very distinct thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to just get hit and die? Then I wouldn't have to feel anymore". And this scared the crap out of me, because I was just healthy enough to recognize that this wasn't normal, and I was finally at the point when I couldn't really deny it anymore.
I ended calling the schools mental health services the next day and I got into therapy (which was one of the more difficult things I've ever had to do and I hated every minute of it, but I credit it with probably saving my life), and got on some drugs for a while. And I'm not really "better" in that its gone, its still something I deal with all the time, and there are still plenty of times I struggle with that internal voice but therapy taught me to be able to identify it and separate it from myself.
Your podcasts (among others) got me through a lonely phase of my life (migrating to a new country.. having few friends.. and still learning the language). For that I'm grateful. I'm sure that you've had a similar positive effect on far more strangers.
It's funny, but you tend to see these thoughts in the empathic, idealistic types. I'm one of them. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with being idealistic. It's a strength. It's positive. It's energetic. It inspires people. Accept it. Embrace it. Know your weakness, and you can defend against those who'll try and abuse it. And you will win.
Mandela didn't quit. Ghandi didn't quit. MLK didn't quit. More close to reality: Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij haven't given up. Manning hasn't given up.
If Aaron's case has taught us anything, it's that we need to stand behind these people. If we believe that what they're doing is "right", then we need to support them. Publicly. Privately. They need to know that they're not standing alone. To quote Liverpool FC's theme song: "You'll Never Walk Alone" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youll_Never_Walk_Alone.
Quitting, in general, is a healthy and normal action. It's why we all ended up doing what we're doing today (we had to quit something to stop being the proverbial male ballerina). Jeff himself leads the article with what he quit a year ago, and I interpret his view of that decision positively.
It seems like Jeff believes that there are 'ok' ways to quit and 'not ok' ways. Great. But, who is he to decide what is ok and not ok for others? I'm certainly not equipped to say so, and I don't believe Jeff is either. He is judging Aaron. When I was brought up, I was told that telling others what to do in absolute terms was also a form of immaturity. It's all a matter of perspective.
Aaron's death is a tragedy for many reasons and due to causes and circumstances I will never understand. I can't pretend to proscribe any decisions Aaron made. I appreciate Jeff using his articulate and otherwise entertaining writing to help express what he is feeling.
It's open writing like this that helps our community grieve; I just don't agree with Jeff.
I was taken aback at Jeff for being angry that Aaron's death has become an effective martyrdom. Quite frankly, if anything can be salvaged from this man's death, salvage it. If he is making the argument others will commit suicide to become martyrs like Aaron, then I would consider his argument. Any positive effect of Aarons suicide don't make his actions right, but I welcome them just the same.
But also, I must admit that I am a little disappointed in Aaron. I understand that depression is a serious disease that can fell any person, however strong. But he chose the path of the activist long ago. And the path of the activist is to fight, for as long and as hard as it takes, to effect change.
I never knew Aaron, but I know that while one can choose to be an activist, one can't choose whether they have clinical depression. It is a serious illness that is hard to fight. And by all accounts I've read, Aaron put up quite a fight trying to deal with the extreme pressure he was put under. In that light, I think Jeff's comment is harsh.
I enjoyed this article, the romanticized idea of martyrdom and ragequitting in terms of 'infocide' like the cases mentioned seem to fit well, but Aaron's case was not a 'ragequit'. It was a response to a serious mental condition.
"But do not, under any circumstances, give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you ragequit. They don't deserve it. Play other, better moves – and consider your long game."
Depression and suicide is about hopelessness and constant pain. It isn't about sticking it to anyone and depression by its very nature makes 'considering the long game' impossible. For people plagued by it, there is no future, only the black dog looking back at you.
There are many conversations coming out of Aaron's death, copyright, information freedom, the overreach of the law, predator prosecutions but an important one that is being overlooked, in my opinion, is mental health. Programmers, activists, and in Aaron's case a person of extremely high intelligence, all seem to be more susceptible to mental illness.
Maybe, even if nothing else comes out of Aaron's death. No changes to copyright, no prosecutor's getting fired, no open data. Maybe at least we can all take the feeling's of the people around us a little more seriously. Look a little harder for the people that are hurting. And try to help them.
I disagree. Whenever I have suicidal fantasies, the sense of hopelessness is always accompanied by some twisted form of "that'll show them". "Them" is usually either my employer or a girl I adore. I'm deeply ashamed that that's the case, but it's the truth.
I had never heard this term before. I agree with Jeff in general but there are very legitimate reasons beyond immaturity. One is maturity in the sense of picking your battles in life and knowing when your current activities are incongruent with your principles. There are many situations when the best course of action for everyone involved is to walk away. The result is not always having given up forever, but an opportunity to step back, reflect and reevaluate your approach. It is unfortunate that people do "rage quit" and give up entirely. Resilience is not always a function of maturity.
we should have been outraged. I am gutted that I did not contribute to his defense in any way, either financially or by writing about it here. I blindly assumed he would prevail, as powerful activists on the side of fairness, openness, and freedom are fortunate enough to often do in our country. I was wrong.
I too was wrong about this. While I don't know how much my support would have mattered, I didn't do much to support him. I can and will offer support to others.
The idea that Aaron killing himself was a viable strategy, more than going on to prevail in this matter and so many more in his lifetime, makes me incredibly angry.
My thoughts on this are still developing and I can't articulate anything finer than what Jeff wrote.
I had one startup friend confide that he had sought professional help for the stress he was under, and I thought he was very wise for doing so. Why, when I was heading into a dark depression while building a previous startup did I not seek help?
We need to support each other and destigmatize seeking help.
Atwood's suggestion that anybody who "chooses the path of the activist" should be prepared to face the consequences does not even begin to address the challenges of being so engaged in such a thankless fight for so long, and then having to bear the weight of these insane charges with almost no publicity for your cause or public support.
Not to mention the weight of a wide swath of people not even understanding the problem Aaron was trying to solve in the first place.
Activism, especially on nearly invisible issues like this one, and most especially when you're on the opposite side of entrenched interests with shitloads of cash, is really hard work. It's also hard work for the people on the other side, except in exchange for their hard work they're earning millions of dollars.
It is not quitting, in a rage or not, to take ones own life. It is rational, even if most people on the planet cannot possibly agree or follow the reasoning.
Anyways, I am happy Jeff is not ragequitting. I'm not ragequitting either!
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(Also, sad to see Jeff Atwood was also contemplating suicide at one point. If you factor in "quality of life years", suicide is an even bigger problem than a lot of other health issues, since it disproportionately affects the young, and affects other people.)
That is not entirely true. In the US, every state except Maine and Vermont prohibits felons from voting while in prison. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole. Two states, Kentucky and Virginia, continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record.[1]
However, it is entirely possible that he would never have been able to own a firearm or serve on a jury ever again. Everyone can probably form their own opinions on how much those matter to you.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_rights_due_to_felony_c...
And when your long game appears to be sentenced to prison until you're 60 or being becoming a felon (with the reduced rights that are associated with that label), what then?
When being a felon of computer related crimes would result in limiting your access to your entire livelyhood (and your source of activism as well), what then?
In the best case, you spend 6 months in prison, away from your family and loved ones, are denied access to computers and the internet thereafter, you're financially destroyed, and many employers will not hire you due to your felony record... what would _your_ game plan be?
One way or the other, Aaron's life was destroyed. It sucks that he didn't survive that destruction, but I'm not completely sure I would either.
Whether or not they directly play into the two particular cases mentioned, I think we need to be aware of ourselves and how we can affect/worsen/underline these decisions. Every week there are "Why I quit HN"/"Lessons I learned from HN" and other posts on how someone felt after being thrown under the bus here, particularly if they didn't submit it themselves (and sometimes consciously so).
Despite Jeff's notion that Aaron would have prevailed indefinitely, HN threads on the matter were much more bleak. It is normal to be skeptical of your own success and possibly inundate yourself with thoughts of failure, and it is another to see the community you are a part of dismiss you and your purpose as well. Unfortunately we see that here a lot, especially considering some of these projects are people's honest attempts at making a better person of themselves or trying to find sources of income in a time where so many are still hurting.
I don't know whether or not Aaron's pain would have been quelled in any way had everyone rallied behind him. In my own experiences, the entire universe could be behind you and it probably still wouldn't make much of a difference/you'd still feel like a lone wolf. Still, there are people like Eugene Sprague in the documentary The Bridge who walked the span of the Golden Gate for over 90 minutes waiting for just one person to smile at him. No one did, so he went through with it.
Just something to be cognizant of.
First, a lot of social networking involvement is a waste of time and is emotionally exhausting. A lot of times it can be highly addictive and participation becomes dysfunctional. People quit communities all the time when they recognize that things are just not working out. There is nothing wrong with that and it's a good thing. When other members feel they have to defend the community to the point of attacking others just for leaving, using divisive and derogatory terms such as "ragequitting", then it is no longer a community or social board, but is a cult. Cults defame members who leave simply because they have left, which is perceived as an act of betrayal and heresy. Communities do not.
Second, Aaron didn't quit anything. He picked a meaningful date to end his life. Aaron was highly rational and carefully thought things through, it's clear in his writings. He knew he could have handled six months or 7 years in prison. This was an act of self-immolation, the ultimate protest of injustice. It is a time honored and effective last resort message used only in extreme situations of injustice, which is certainly the case of the judicial system in the US which has in recent years descended into a police state like system interested in power and control but not justice. Self-immolators almost never leave suicide notes. There is no need to since it is obvious to all why they have committed their protest. This is clear here, just looking around people are upset and they know and understand exactly why he did this and it has to do with the Federal Prosecutor, not a chemical imbalance in his brain. No one in Tunisia was talking about chemical imbalances in Mohammed Bouazizi's brain, it was obvious that his act was a protest as well.
Additionally, regarding depression, Aaron wrote he was glad he had insurance to allow him to see someone, and his family has stated Aaron has never been diagnosed with depression and was not depressed. Those claiming his action was because of suicidal depression have only weak circumstantial support for their case based on blog entries, and have to completely ignore all the circumstances of what was going on. Blogging that you sometimes feel depressed is not evidence of mental illness. Seeing a therapist is not evidence of mental illness. Occasional depression itself is not evidence of mental illness. It is a normal part of the human condition. Remote medical diagnosis here by the general public is similar to the remote lawyering in the commonly made but unproven claims that he did anything at all criminal other than misdemeanor trespassing. An indictment is not a conviction. Violations of terms of service do not rise to the level of criminality according to the Drew appeal decision, so the whole basis of the case is very questionable.
One has to choose the battles with care.
UK resident, not my issue, very sad as per Tim Berners-Lee's post. A light lost (or was it a moth?)
In more civilized times it was called "conceding defeat" not "rage quitting."
But it is indeed an intimidation tactic when stackexchange says: "Don't even think about ragequitting, you can't do it, we'll revert your rage changes".
Because real ragequitting ain't about vandalism. Real ragequitting is about spreading the word out, on sites / blogs / forums they don't control about their unacceptable behavior.
I agree. Do not ragequit SO. They're not worth it. Simply ignore them on SO and never ever help them anymore by posting content there.
But do "rage" everywhere else you can: on Twitter, on /., on G+, on blogs. Wherever you can. Certainly do not try to fight your case on meta: meta is the problem, not the solution. Fight your case on another medium, where they cannot silence you (nor reverse your "rage").
There are just too many issues with SO that have been unadressed.
I did "silentquit" a 7.7 K account (probably more now) gained by mostly helping others. And now everywhere the topic comes out I point out that there are seriously bad moderators issue on SO and that meta is mostly pointless.
The one thing that pissed me off were crazy mods that did "team up" on new users and refuse to see their wrongdoings on meta. This made me sick and I quit. "Silentquit" on SO. "Ragequit" on the big bad Internet.
And, no, I won't "post this meta" or "link to the discussion or it didn't happen".
The very reason I'm posting this here is because, you SO mods and (co)-founders have no say in here. Here it's other people who are voting and they're not all pom-pom girls fighting your cause.
I'm not in a hurry. Usenet is still there (slowly dying, but still here). There are others resources like Quora and EE.
And others will listen to all these high-rep users who did ragequit (or silentquit) SO and address their very real concerns and, one day, we'll have something better than SO.
If you're so fed up that you can't stand to use it anymore, why wouldn't you just... Go do something that made you happy? Rage or silent, if you're gonna quit, quit.
Otherwise, you're just making yourself a slave to your own misery. That ain't gonna end well.