Fla. Teen Commits Suicide With Live Web Audience - A new low for the internet

This is definitly disturbing.I thought we were above
the mentality that existed in the days of medieval
public stonings.
The thing is,people admire the internet because it's so
'open'.This is the inevitable downside of that though.
Depressing but true.

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I find this very annoying. I hate the people that were egging him on, watching as this poor kid suicides. Suicides could be the most saddest things possible, even when people are watching you, or knowing that you're going to. I feel sorry for his family, friends, neighbors, and teachers that loved him so very much.


As for the people that just sat back, did nothing, and cheered him on, I suggest to you: get a life. It might be a joke, yes, but what if it's not? Lets say someone has a gun and they are running around saying I'll kill you and something like that. Are you going to sit back, and think "Oh, he or she won't do that."? No. Of course not.

For the people that egged him on, I hope you're happy. You caused a death of a 19-year old that had a big life ahead of him. You crushed his life, his dreams, his hope, his faith, his loved ones. More importantly, you've crushed yourself. The people that egged him to suicide should learn a valuable lesson. Think about what you just did. For the people that have thought deeply, I hope you won't do this again.

As for the people who thought this was funny, let me tell you this. If that was your brother, or sister, or your best friend or one of your parents, how would you feel? Would YOU think it's funny to see one of your loved ones suicide right infront of you, and yet you're sitting back, laughing, taking a joke out of this. What if, and this very second, they suicided, and just disappeared? Would you think that was FUNNY?

I hope that the people who thought it was funny carry this guilt on for the rest of their lives, knowing that they helped to cause someone's death. They caused a family to be extremely sad.

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Well first of all this is just sad. When someone do something like this I do not think it is mainly for attention, but perhaps that he was just tired of life in general and wanted people to notice and maybe remember him slightly even after he had left this world. It is such a terrible way to die, but people dp this every single day. I would not bare to be one of the viewers, I can not believe why some actually watched it! If that was me I would feel so terrible, and think a lot about what I had viewed. Seeing someone die is not the nicest thing I suppose, and afterwords many probably wondered what they could have done... But come on; if this kid had problems he would probably commit it anyway, but it is still sad. This world can be a cruel place, and I feel terribly sorry for all those he left behind. I would have felt guilt - but maybe that is just me.

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This is not shocking, not new for the Internet, and definitely not unexpected.

There is an imageboard/forum that I'm sure a handful of us may be familiar with that subjects this kind of material just about every day, not to mention that it is a very common reply to a newbie to any forum on the Internet.

People kill themselves every day, for one reason or another. A lot of younger folks threaten suicide for attention, and then there is a portion of that lot that actually are willing to push that limit. Usually the folks that threaten with it to receive attention would do it on a wide-scale medium, like the Internet in this case, so I'm sure that even the part of the audience that was joking didn't take his threat seriously. But it would probably be surprising to know for a lot of us that people show the lowest standards of humanity while they stay anonymous behind a computer monitor on the Internet. Just look at YouTube comments. And forum posts in flaming threads. It's amazing what gumption people will muster when they know that no one knows who they are.

The imageboard/forum that I talked about earlier earned its nickname of being the "*ssh*l* of the Internet" because it promotes anonymity with its participants... with no membership, no information, not even a name required to post content onto the forum. Everyone is Anonymous. And I'm sure it's starting to click with some more Internet-savvy folk why Anonymous is an Internet meme.

I think that this kind of thing desensitizes people. It's easy to see how people become less caring for human life when we're constantly bombarded on the news with numbers, casualties, environmental disasters, and criminal activity. A murder here and there doesn't even faze us... it just commands a sort of "mandatory response" like "Oh my word" just to add to the supposed drama of the situation at hand. Do you really care about all of the kids that perish from malnutrition, the people that lose their homes and lives to the latest floods, the murder that happened in a city miles away from your home? That's something that we can all ask ourselves when we catch ourselves "feeling sympathy." Is it really sympathy, or is it the expected response that we've literally trained ourselves to reply with when confronted with a matter that doesn't deal with ourselves?

This teenager is one of many that will undergo depressive cycles, or become a victim of a supposed mental condition, or whatever. Are we going to be equally shocked to hear about the suicides that we DON'T hear about? Television does a pretty good job of blowing things out of proportion, doesn't it? While we throw out "grievances" towards this one incident, many others will die unbeknownst to us... with the "war" in Iraq, the epidemics in third world countries, even the situations like poverty, lack of heat, or anything else that we've put ourselves into in the "good 'ol USA."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this kind of stuff is not new, especially with an audience goading a particular someone to go kill themselves with no inclination of actually facing that reality if and when it does happen. It's been on the Internet and will probably always be on the Internet... along with all the other horrible things that people say under the protection of anonymity.

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Shocking man!! And really sad as well that a huge number of people watching the disaster could not do anything to prevent the mishap or help out.

Not to mention the fact that people watching were actually egging the teen on - cmon man even if it was a joke i doubt I would ever try to coax someone into committing suicide let alone watch the entire episode. It is very disturbing to see people take pleasure from such idiotic deeds by crazed individuals.

Hopefully something like this will be averted in future and internet will be slightly more regulated to an extent that people can take action more quickly if they believe that something wrong is taking place.

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