A 19 year old college student committed suicide via live video-streaming a couple days ago. This student notified people through a body building website then provided a link to a video streaming website so people could watch. While he was streaming, some members of the audience egged him on, some tried to talk him out of it, and some debated whether or not the dosage was high enough to kill someone.
The body was found several hours later when someone watching notified the body building website who then traced the IP address and notified the police. The camera was still rolling as the teen lay dead on his fathers bed.
A professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio said "Bigg's very public suicide was not shocking; given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook or Myspace."
That attitude towards our generation is ridiculous, of course the way he did it was shocking, why would you broadcast an attempt to kill yourself? I think this adult does not understand our generation, while we may constantly update people on our lives, it is not a logical next step that if you want to kill yourself, you put it in live feed.
The way the Millennials are using the web is increasingly changing, but I hope it never escalates to a place where this kind of thing is common.
4 comments:
This is not he first time, and it will not be the last time, that social networking will allow teen suicide to become a spectacle. In New Zealand, where suicide kills more teens than car crashes, facebook and myspace pages often become shrines where friends post their favorite memories of the deceased. There is noticeable public sentiment that the pages of teens who commit suicide should be taken down by network administrators so that the deceased proprietor of the page cannot become immortalized and posthumously encourage people to follow their example. Its a tragic tale of the magic of social networking. It has always been the case the a vocal minority can appear to be a majority, but on the web where a minority can find each other more easily, and yell louder in the visible echo-chamber of social net working it is even easer for small groups to be even louder. The mortifying misfortune is that in this case the people that are finding each other are teens considering, or that have already committed, suicide
I can not believe someone will actually try to do something like this. However, our generation is not always showing our life in the interent. We have made a difference in the world by our generation voting for Obama. The fact that people can not find anything better to do with there time and brodcast their life, well I feel bad for them if they need that attetion.
My friend watched this video, and he said he couldn't watch the the whole thing because it was too 'creepy'. I agree with Alysi, it's sad that our generation is in desperation for such attention that they take advantage of our advanced technologies to do such things. Really, it seems like our generation tries to make celebrities out of themselves by using the Internet to gain such attention. Our lives revolve around facebook and myspace that our daily lives are becoming incorporated into the Internet. Everything can be found on the Internet, and now, even suicide can be found there too.
This is an extremely sad story. I agree with the professor at Bowling Green State University who said that we (teenagers) allow and let everyone know everything about our lives on the internet. This is unfortunately true. We do give a lot of details, maybe too much about us on the internet. This problem is widespread, but hopefully can be solved. It is sad to involve the idea of suicide with the internet. When we think of Facebook, we think of friends, family, stalkers and suicide. What factors have lead our generation, to believe that there is a possibility that social networking sites that are meant to get people together can also be a way for other to end their lives?
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