Internet Suicide

[3113]

MIAMI – The family of a college student who killed himself live on the Internet say they're horrified his life ended before a virtual audience, and infuriated that viewers of the live webcam or operators of the Web site that hosted it didn't act sooner to save him. Only after police arrived to find Abraham Biggs dead in his father's bed did the Web feed stop Wednesday — 12 hours after the 19-year-old Broward College student first declared on a Web site that he hated himself and planned to die.

"It didn't have to be," said the victim's sister, Rosalind Bigg. "They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours." Biggs announced his plans to kill himself over a Web site for bodybuilders, authorities said. He posted a link from there to Justin.tv, a site that allows users to broadcast live videos from their webcams.

A computer user who claimed to have watched said that after swallowing some pills, Biggs went to sleep and appeared to be breathing for a few hours while others cracked jokes. Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner's office. Some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.

Eventually, someone notified the moderator of the bodybuilding site, who traced Biggs' location and called police, Crane said. The drama unfolded live on Justin.tv, which allows viewers to post comments alongside the video images. As police entered the room, the audience's reaction was filled with Internet shorthand: "OMFG," one wrote, meaning "Oh, my God." Others, either not knowing what they were seeing, or not caring, wrote "lol," which means "laughing out loud," and "hahahah."... An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

...Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people's penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet. Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Biggs' very public suicide was not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace. "If it's not recorded or documented then it doesn't even seem worthwhile," she said. "For today's generation it might seem, `What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'" She likened Biggs' death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge. Crane said she knows of a case in which a Florida man shot himself in the head in front of an online audience, though she didn't know how much viewers saw. In Britain last year, a man hanged himself while chatting online.

Complete story here.

Thoughts? Not on the tragic suicide, but on the idea of teens doing it over the internet, etc.?

 

[Liar]

The idea of people wanting to watch. That's creepy on a level of it's own.

 

[oggbashan]

Some suicides, especially teenage suicides, are a desperate cry for help. By doing it on the internet with people watching, he might have thought that someone would care enough to intervene.

But - people divorce themselves from reality on the internet. They don't think that what they see is real.

I think most viewers' reaction would have been that the "suicide" was a staged stunt.

Some teenagers don't always think things through. It's part of their emotional development as they move from childhood to adulthood.

Did he intend to die? Probably not - he left an avenue open for someone to react. But inertia, and a refusal to accept that someone would actually commit suicide on live webcam, meant that no one did act.

The same scenario can be seen in a crowd watching someone else drowning in a pond or lake. Each individual thinks "someone else must do something" or "someone must have already contacted the rescue services". It takes individuality to be the one person who actually reacts.

Og

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

3113

Most states had to outlaw public executions because of the crowds that came to watch. People relish suicides almost as much. Or snakes swallowing rabbits.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

OGG

Yes. Nine people out of 10 are cowards when push comes to shove.

 

[3113]

Some suicides, especially teenage suicides, are a desperate cry for help. By doing it on the internet with people watching, he might have thought that someone would care enough to intervene.

But - people divorce themselves from reality on the internet. They don't think that what they see is real.

Good points, Og. I think you're spot on.