A little over a week ago a teenage college student, Abraham Biggs, living in Miami, Florida killed himself live in front of an audience via his webcam using a site called Justin Tv. Abraham committed suicide by overdosing on drugs in front of a live audience in which some tried to talk him out of doing it while others encouraged him to go through with killing himself, possibly thinking that he was joking. When I heard about this story I was in complete shock. How sad is it to think that someone used the technologies we have today to broadcast his death in front of tons of people. And what upsets me even more is that people laughed at him, mocked him, and egged him on to go through with his suicide. Thankfully some users thought to contact the web masters and tell them to alert the police which the website did do but by the time they got to Biggs’ home it was too late.
According to the article I read from The Huffington Post, Biggs isn’t the first person to commit suicide live over the Internet. A few others have also done this. It’s very frightening to think of how many people let this go on without contacting someone for help because Abraham’s life could have been saved if someone could have gotten to him in time. This article made me think of the website I had to research for class and explain, UStream, which is a website where people can post live videos. That site would be a prime outlet for people to express themselves like Biggs. I would hope that sites like UStream have certain settings, which restrict its users from posting certain videos. But then again how would they really have control over something that is live.
An assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Montana Miller, made an important observation about this situation, she 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?'" That is something that I’ve never thought about when thinking about social networking sites. These sites can and are used as a way for people to chronicle every single thing that happens to them in their lives. They want to do something shocking, post about it, and see what other people think of what they did. The Internet can be a very scary place. It’s important to always act with caution when using this piece of technology.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/21/florida-teen-live-streams_n_145499.html
2 comments:
I find the entire situation shocking also Nora. I can't believe that people would sit and egg this poor kid on, when all he might have wanted was somebody to tell him not to do it you know? And I am not sure that I agree with the Miller quote, sure we do put a lot of information on Facebook, but there are still quite a few parts of my life that is NOT recorded or documented through Facebook or Myspace for that matter. If somebody is committing suicide on the internet because What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'" then to me all that person cares about is the attention they are getting through this suicidal act.
I find the entire situation sick and disgusting on both parts, and I don't think its Justin TV's fault for this. It's not like they said "Hey lets make a web site so if people want to commit suicide, they have a place where they can stream the video." you know? And if they didn't know what was going on, then how could they stop it? And at that point maybe it was better to have him on the website, so that they could try to talk him out of it.
The whole situation just makes me sad.
I just can't understand how someone would want to do something like committing suicide on the internet for anyone to watch. It seems like an act for attention. I wonder if the people that were wathcing had decidied not to say anything and leave the site if he still would have gone through with it? Things like this need to be tracked on the different networking sites and managed because this is not appropriate and disturbing.
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