So We Will Be Watching Suicides Online Constantly Now? Who’s Fault Is That?
January 28, 2009 |
Of course the web is a great invention as it empowers us to do so many great things. But unfortunately same as any tool it can be used both for good and for bad things and it looks like we have a new horrible trend in the online world – and the recently invented name for it is “deathcasting”. By deathcasting we mean the process of a person broadcasting his own suicide using a web camera with some people watching the entire process online using any of the lifecasting services available.
Back in November both the blogosphere and the traditional media outlets were all engaged in an animated discussion about deathcasting of Abraham Biggs in New York: the boy took some pills and passed away while his web camera was broadcasting everything to a crowd of teenagers on Justin.tv.
Today we get the news of a very similar event taking place thousands of miles away from New York – in Zagorz, a small town in Poland – where a young man hung himself while his parents were sleeping in another room of the same apartment and some people witnessed everything online. The local police got a call from one of the video chat participants and arrived only to find the young man dead already. A few hours earlier he celebrated his 27th birthday with his friends but mentioned some surprise he had for his birthday – looking strangely depressed at the same time.
So this obviously looks like a trend already to me and these events seem to be related – though I may be mistaken, of course. The thing is that this birthday surprise could possibly be prepared with the young man aware of the previous event with Abraham Biggs back in November in the US after reading it somewhere as it was discussed for weeks. And this time I am not sure if we are to blame the society or the internet that makes learning of new outrageous ways to commit suicides so very much easier.
What’s more, I actually feel that it is partly my fault. I took part in coverage of Abraham Biggs suicide as well: in my own much-discussed post I tried to prove that we should not blame the internet for this terrible event as it is nothing but a medium and the society itself should be blamed for the fact that such things happen at all – online or offline.
The problem is at the time when we discussed the horrible fact of deathcasting of Abraham Biggs many of us claimed that those who watched and commented on the boy’s actions were guilty of his death because they never even tried to stop him and even encouraged him to continue with the suicide – all the time thinking it was nothing but a joke.
At the time I thought we should blame the society for the overall cruelty and lack of attention to problems of the people around us instead of thinking such outrageous things happen only because internet makes them possible. And I still think internet is nothing but a tool but the question now is this: when we cover such events and discuss them everywhere, do we push other people to the same actions when they are inclined to commit suicides? And is broadcasting your own death online a cry for help or a trendy way to pass away and get noticed by the media at least once in your life?
