A 19-year-old man has committed suicide live on the internet encouraged by others who were watching, according to reports. The teenager, named as Abraham K Biggs, from Broward County, Florida, took an overdose of pills while broadcasting himself on Justin.tv, a live video streaming website.
On a chat forum he told others he was going to commit suicide and posted a suicide note on another forum before taking the pills and turning on his webcam. The 19-year-old lay on his bed and only after several hours of no movement did others begin to take him seriously. With the video still running, forum members managed to contact the local police who eventually broke down the door, found the body and switched off the camera. Up to 1,500 people were viewing the feed, according to one report. On Wednesday he went to the bodybuilding.com forum and detailed the amount of drugs he was going to take. The moderators of the forum reportedly did not take him seriously because of his past threats and other forum members encouraged him to carry out his threat.
Mr Biggs then posted his suicide note, where he said he had hurt other people and hated himself for being a failure. “I am an a@#hole. I have let everyone down and I feel as though I will never change or never improve. I am in love with a girl and I know that I am not good enough for her,” he wrote.
As he lay motionless on the bed after taking the pills, many forum members continued to insult him, believing that it was staged.
I can well imagine the comments this was generating.
Very sad indeed.
For gods sake, why isn’t everyone aware by now that repeated threats about committing suicide are a prime indicator that the person will actually follow through sooner rather than later.
Whoever the hell was administering the forums where the threats were made needs at the very least to be made to see some sort of suicide prevention councilor for some ‘re-education’ or even face charges of assisting a suicide through negligence.
As for the filthy bastards who watched, I hope they get screwed up when they realize they’ve been an active participant in someone else’s death.
It is sad this young man’s life ended as a reality tv show.
“least to be made to see some sort of suicide prevention councilor for some ‘re-education’ or even face charges of assisting a suicide through negligence.”
Just shut up. Quit looking to blame others for the actions of one lone individual. No one forced him to do anything. The last thing we need is more regulation of speech.
Don’t get me wrong the guys who encouraged him are assholes.
I for one believe in the right to die. I mean, if the right to live is going to be championed, then so should the right to die. If your world is so bad that you can’t stand to live in it anymore why should anyone stand in your way? There are enough ppl on this planet as it is.
I would not have encouraged this man to do this, but I wouldn’t judge him either. The desire to end it must be strong enough to actually carry it through. He would have been damaged goods for the rest of his life had he lived and who knows what other lives he would have adversely affected along the way.
Wow! What #1, 2 and 5 said.
But, now that I think about it, I wonder that it took this long for this to happen. So sad, yet so inevitable.
What next?some guy cutting his head off on a live video feed.
#8 Well, I hope not. The angst I have is learning he was 19years old, which to me is virtually a child.
Unfortunately, kids at that age get horribly upset over trivial things. When they threaten suicide it’s important for them to be helped by an expert. They don’t have enough experience to realize the import of what they’re doing.
‘Running Man’ is more a prophecy than a movie. Just wait.
#2
There is a “crying wolf” aspect going on here. Plus how a lot of things you see on the internet are fake, and are just publicity stunts.
Who knows what kind of person this guy was. If he’s a whiny douche bag dwelling on how much life sucks and constantly complaining about mundane things in his life, then let him kill himself.
I’m sure everyone else on those forums were sick and tired of this guy if he was constantly bitching about his life, and threating to kill himself, over and over. The forum members, nor the moderators are responsible for his actions, he was already depressed and suicidal before he ever joined that website.
Perhaps blame should be placed on his parents, or whom ever he lives with? Not people on the internet who live around the world.
OK. Enough sadness! Let’s go to Sarah Palin – the comic gift that keeps on giving.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/21/palin-interview-causes-stir/
It’s important to educate yourself on suicide’s common misconceptions:
http://www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=705EC833-E77D-2519-FA362EDFA62268C7
People kill themselves for what seem like stupid reasons. When my brother was first in the service, one of his ship mates, around 20 years old, killed himself because he was behind on his car payments.
My brother had to accompany the body to the funeral and try to explain to the family what happened.
Go figure…
Um…. Darwin? What?
This reminds me of a movie where a kid was killing people live on the net while people watched. The more people who watched the more acid poured into the pool where the detective was held in. The overall issue is that people don’t take stuff like this seriously and the rubber neck effect draws more and more people to watch.
There is something sooo wrong with this. Nothing inspires imitation quite like suicide. Can you imagine a rash of people commiting live suicide. The nature of suicide is often a cry for attention. There will always be suicides, but should something like this become popular among those suicidal, I shudder for the fate of my beloved internet.
Poor guy. I feel sorry for the family who has to wonder why people would stand by and watch this. It reminds me of Kitty Genovese (Ithink I have the name correct) who was stabbed repeatedly, to death, in NYC without anyone intervening. Teenagers are, in a sense, ‘crazy’. Their intellect has developed, but the frontal lobes – the executive center of the brain- don’t really mature until the early twenties. Often people look back at the decisions they made in their teens and even twenties and wonder -WTF was I thinking? This is a very interesting area of neuorpsychology; with the advent of PET scans , researchers are able to map the development of the brain, which does not stop developing until the early and mid twenties. The last areas of the brain to develop are those responsibe for ‘executive’ decision-making. Thus, the tragic decisions of teens to kill themselves, often inexplicable to those who know them. You can go on about ‘too many people on the planet’, but nevertheless, if this was your brother or son, you’d be shocked that nobody really seemed to care.
I know his is being reported all over but has anyone actually checked that this isn’t urban myth? It has all the hallmarks.
#17, chris,
Not Darwin. Suicide automatically disqualifies someone from the award.
Now let’s plaster this tragic story all over every website and TV news program so that hundreds of suicidal people everywhere can imitate it. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Good thinking.
An Hero
One can be a hero in two ways negative or positive.
Whichever one chooses is a matter of courage and guts. But he was in a very good age (19) to make it up with everyone he claimed he has offended/let down especially his beautiful lover and God.
#18 – Are you one of the encouraging forum members?
Pills are for pussies! Do it like a man!
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31806
/sarcasm
I think we should encourage James Hill! 🙂
Just kidding, he’s probably too much of a pussy.
# 2 Zybch said, “Whoever the hell was administering the forums where the threats were made needs at the very least to be made to see some sort of suicide prevention councilor for some ‘re-education’ or even face charges of assisting a suicide through negligence.”
Sorry, no one is responsible except the person who committed suicide. If I don’t make sure someone examines your head am I then responsible the next time you post garbage?
Agreed!
I heard the father on the radio saying that there should be regulation passed to prevent this and it smells like a lawsuit against the Web site. Shouldn’t the father think about knowing his kid a little better before blaming a Web site?