US teen tops himself live online A US teenager has used a video sharing website to broadcast his suicide live across the internet. youtube_abraham_suicide Justin.TV has already removed a copy of Biggs' suicide video It’s thought that up to 1500 people watched 19-year-old Abraham K Biggs, of Broward County, Florida, take an overdose on website Justin.tv, …
Is this true? Is it a stunt? If true, did anybody really believe it, that is, can we believe any video we see these days online? Could people really have sat and watched a young man apparently sleeping for several hours, in the belief they were watching him dying? Even if he were dying, isn't this, to be brutal, a boring way of spending several hours, when you could get media attention by reporting it, perhaps to a news room if not the police?
"Anxious viewers called local police after Biggs’ body lay lifeless on a bed for several hours."
Unless euthanasia has suddenly become legal in Florida, how many of them will be charged with manslaughter? After all, he'd posted a suicide note, and they waited several hours before informing the authorities.
Sounds like it was a cry for help ... and none of the people who heard it answered. Lousy bunch.
The police were only called in after several hours of this guy lying on his bed after having openly saying he was going to commit suicide and then swallowing pills? Seriously, if this is true then this world is indeed going to pot. We just don't seem to care two hoots about one another any more.
Wait a second. Yes, we've all heard, ad nauseum, that we're supposed to take it seriously each and every time someone talks about suicide, just like every time there's a short in the fire alarm system. Or the intruder alarm, if you're in the employ of someone who has read the evil overlord list. And we should, in theory. But that only gets you so far in the real world, where your actual ability to take each and every alarm seriously just plain wears out after a while.
See, this is the internet - where threatening suicide is just one more way for lonely, pathetic individuals to bleat LOOOK AT MEEEEEEE into the ether. If you hang out on the 'tubes long enough, you go numb to it. Or start to conclude that it's statistically far more likely to be an annoying plea for empty affirmation than anything else. And it's not like people haven't faked their deaths on live webcams before, either (were you there when Jay Stile did it?).
So I'm sure there were some sickos chortling as this guy died, but on the other hand, I suspect a lot of the viewers honestly and reasonably thought it was a put-on.
Also, were 1500 people watching the whole event start-to-end? Or is that just the number of traceable IP addresses that viewed the stream for any measurable length of time at some point during the event? This guy looks like he has a webcam pointed at his bed - if so, how many people tuned in, saw some guy apparently asleep, and tuned back out without ever thinking anything further about it?
There was a movement that was created after a man rescued another from suiciding.
The man who was about to suicide didn't care of people laming about the value of life or stuff like that. The first man asked him if he could help him help the poor. He succeeded.
Don't remember the name of this man or the movement, though...
In the same situation, I would wonder if I would know how to go about contacting the medics. I couldn't just dial 911 and say "CandyJunky needs an ambulance, I think maybe he lives in Florida."
If there wasn't any contact information, or anything close to it, for his account, how would you do it? Contact the site and have them figure out a general location from his ip or have them get in touch with his ISP? This would probably all have to happen well within an hour. I'm sure there were many people frantically trying to figure this out the moment they saw the video.
It would have been better if someone could have contacted his family at the first sign of any suicidal intentions so that he could get help to be sure. If he has any family.
I think a lot of people thought it was a hoax. He'd had his justintv account pulled for empty suicide threats in the past, according to an LA Times writeup.
How can you tell the difference between someone who's actually downed a handful of pills and someone who's crashed for the night after saying something stupid online?
It's not helping justintv that one of their moderators explained the lack of interest by tagging the kid as an attention whore.
I would imagine that those who were concerned would have to first find out what city he lived in, then contact the police there, then the cops would have to contact the admins for the web site, then the admins would have to surrender the IP address to them, then the police would have to contact the local ISP, and the ISP would have to surrender the customers address to the police.
Somehow I find it difficult to believe that all that can be done in hours. How long does it take to get an affidavit signed by a judge to force the ISP to reveal the customers name and address?
It can take days (not very likely), weeks, months and possibly even years to track down a spambot.
i just heard on the news that some argentinian general who was being questioned live on national TV about his part in the disappearances and tortures of the 'junta' days shot himself dead in the middle of the interview.
online suicide is just so parochial, daahling!
Its a bit morbid to watch, granted, but I don't see a damn thing wrong with that, either. Everyone's life is their own to enjoy, end, or whatever. Likewise everyone's bandwidth is there own, so let them watch if they want. Who is anyone to tell anyone else they can't kill themselves? Seems just like religious zealots who always want to tell other people how to live. The poor dumb kid didn't hurt anyone, so let him be. Nor did the people who watched.
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