The main reason I feel uncomfortable with shitting on him too much is Hope, and the really horrific situation he must have went through. Hope was a major negative on Zac's life.
I can't fucking imagine falling in love with a girl, getting her a job where you work, and then watching her troon the fuck out and then ultimately dump you when you can't advance them anymore. I have frequently experienced severe depression and loss, but not anything quite like that. I have no frame of reference here. That's why I can't agree with your "many people do" comment. I don't think many people quite experience the circumstances he did. Or, at least I hope not. This isn't even your "typical" breakup suicide.
Obviously the dude was fighting serious fucking issues after that clusterfuck, and he lost the biggest battle of all. I get no joy from that.
I dunno. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. It's just my nature. People are ultimately responsible for their actions. That much is true. However, I think Zac may have ended up a very different person if he never hooked up with Hope. He had a few positive qualities shine through, despite his overall dickish disposition.
As I said in the Keem/H3H3 thread, I don't blame Internet people for suicide. IRL is a bit different though. It gets way more murky. Hope was undoubtedly a major factor in his decision to end his life. Because this was IRL, I can't say she doesn't have a body count.
Again, fuck Hope. Arguably the biggest cunt at ANN, and that says a lot. I'd trade Hope's life for Zac. No question.
I've gone around and lurked in my fair share of time. Zac was said to have been verbally abused to shit by his dad in his teenage years, and I wouldn't doubt mid-1990s OC California was still a silver spoon shitstain after the Spurs Posse incident as he was technically in high school at that time. What doesn't help was the stories about him in university and SomethingAwful as TheSwami and his overall attitude in life after these things. I also believe that being a film critic as a major lifestyle choice has proven to also be a factor into how Zac turned out after 2000, but not entirely its own fault. A job like that requires you to be critical at at times scathing to tell people and communicate how and why something is bad, but as I've stated, there's a difference between analysis, criticism, scrutiny, and being outright an asshole. Being an asshole is not being a critic, which I am very sure Zac got his impressions going into that career path hoping to do, and as we can tell, it didn't go over so well. It also doesn't help that if your background includes getting yelled at for a majority of your youth, that's probably going to thin your boundaries of saying the right things when you need to be critical and rational at the same time without resorting to insults and passionate basis, and that you're going to need professional help to overcome that.
It's one thing to be a victim. It's another to think to use your victim complex as means to be a total shithead and excuse yourself from all of the purposefully wrong and dare I say evil things you could commit to. When you become the abuser and the bully, that's where you've fucked up in life. I think that's where my criterion for judgement is aimed at, to be honest. I too would hope he would get help after hearing this, but after all of the shit he's pulled and done, it's very hard to respect, let alone forgive him for this. He had choices. He made them. He had to live with them. Now, he has to be buried with them. I didn't ask for this. But, this is life. It's probably just me too, but this was his fault, and I could tell that he knew it. And as much as he possibly took his own life, which is awful, and had a lot of good things to share with the world as with all people, he chose to do a lot of bad things, which is, again, how I will remember him by.
I do agree that the whole extreme SJW gay moral agenda and Hope Chapman was the cause for his mental breakdown too. At the same time, it's kinda his own fault for keeping around someone absolutely amoral and atrocious to be around. Outside of my own bias, if a woman breaks away from a healthy relationship by doing something extremely morally wrong if the guy wasn't a complete abuser and sociopath, and you get together with her, you're gonna have a bad time whether you know it or not. I will anticipate her eventual tarring, feathering, and burning at the stake however.
