A teenager has committed suicide live on the internet after being egged on by others.
About 1,500 people watched as 19-year-old Abraham K Biggs from Florida overdosed on pills on Justin.tv, a live video streaming websitI've had enough interaction with others online to know that this kid probably had a lot of problems. and I'm sure this incident followed several cries for attention that more than likely bothered the hell out of this community of people. What led him to try to resolve them in an anonymous, online setting is beyond me, but it seems like this is a serious trend that unfortunately shows no sign of abating.
Conversely, I also know that there were probably several dozen people trying to outdo each other with the most caustic, devastating comments that they could think of encouraging to do it. It bothers me that there are people -no- kids, really, that take pride in how utterly despicable they can act towards someone who clearly is crying out for help. I think that the internet, where you can safely say things that society should rightly slap the face off of you for saying, is conducive to behavior like this and it truly frightens me what the social implications might be.
I think we've all experienced the scadenfreude of seeing someone slip on ice, or get hit in the face with something, or whatever. Of course, if you have a soul, you follow this up by running over and making sure they're not hurt. On the internet you can spend whole days finding examples of this, and never even have to think about the consequences. They can't see you, or hear you. Besides, it already happened. You can watch for weeks on end people slipping, falling, cringing, etc... (youtube search for "hit in the nuts": 25,600) and quite possibly laugh yourself to death. It's an easy laugh, sure, but it can be funny as hell. But this is different. When it's taking place in real time, and there is a living, breathing person on the recieving end of the taunts, it's no longer guilty pleasure, it's just torture. These sadistic fucks taunted this kid into killing himself.
This reminds me of those really dark experiments that they perform (I can't remember the name of the one in particular I'm reminded of, but the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments will do in a pinch) that reveal all of these terrifying undertones in human nature and the outright cruelty that's always lurking right beneath it. It's frightening that these experiments are taking place all the time in the living rooms and bedrooms of our homes every day.
I don't know, it's no really the kind of thing I want to write about at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, an I'm positive it's not the sort of thing you want to read. It's just something that caught my eye and really made me sick to my stomach and I had to mention it. I'll try to scrounge up that picture of the baby hippo to help make up for it.
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