This really upsets me. Now with it all spelled out, I wonder how many more horror stories we will hear about people, like the ones in the article, who cut of their brief dealings with their family members all together.
I just saw a documentary on listening, and how important it is. And they had a section on some tribes in africa, that when a member sins, he or she is shunned, and treated as a non-person. They are welcome to hang around, but no one speaks to them or provides from them. In most cases these people slowly lose their minds, travel off into the wilderness and kill themsleves, or simply cease to live. They also talked about how in Victorian times if children were acting up, instead of punishing them they were shunned by their family members for a period of time. Many of these kids wrote later that they much rather would have been beaten instead of being treated like this. Watching it really hit home for me. You can't tell me the Borg doesn't know exactly what they are doing by inflicting something like this on people.
The suicides speak for themselves.
You also can't tell me that spelling it out this clearly wasn't planned out by the Borg. The reasons for the questions? To really drill it home. They know they are losing more and more people. Fewer might leave if the threat of family and friend loss is placed before them. It makes me sick! This is clearly an attempt to scare ones who are thinking about leaving into sticking around and playing the game.