Don’t forget that she didn’t suicide till well after the prank. It would only take a day or two for word about what had happened and what the consequences (if any) had been on the nurse to spread to the point the 3rd assistant cleaner three wards away could have told you all about it. Any one of whom could have an anonymous conversation with a journalist. And yet has there been an “undisclosed sources say that Ms Saldhana was the subject of reprimands…” etc style of story?
No there has not.
I haven’t said anything about who is responsible for what. Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that the nurse was known to have been extremely upset at having been pranked. There is no need to search any further. The idea that there was impact on her job is pure speculation, ie people making shit up.
I think the majority of the world’s pranksters should be shunned as imbeciles and jerks.
I also think that it’s not reasonable to say that suicide is any more foreseeable from this than from any action we take in life that might make someone feel bad, even temporarily. And the stupidity of pranks has nothing to do with the outcome.
If someone killed themselves every hundredth, every thousandth, hell every millionth time someone else was a jerk, we wouldn’t have any people left.
Attempt at a neutral post:
It should be, in principle, easy to tell one way or another whether “prankers” are worth it or not.
As Kim Jong Il* said, “money should be capable of measuring the worth of all things”.
So let’s consider the value of all pranking versus all deaths from pranking.
So far as I can think of, this nurse is the first person to die from pranking in a while. In any case, I can be reasonably sure that there have been a thousand prank phone calls recently without anyone dying.
So what is the value of her death? I’ve no idea. But there’s a fund being set up for her. Let’s call it 5 million dollars, at most. Sorry to put a value upon her life, it sounds nasty, but realistically she is very unlikely to have added 5 million dollars worth of economic activity to society during the rest of her life.
Let’s look at the prank. Let’s be conservative, and say it brought 1 million people, 1 cent of happiness. Actually I think it brought more people more happiness, but let’s just go with that for the time being.
And then let’s multiply that by a thousands, for as I said we need to consider many of these pranks before the death becomes relevant.
Thus I conclude that the prank and pranks like it created 10 million dollars worth of utility, as opposed to 5 million dollars worth of suffering caused by these pranks.
I have been very conservative here.
Anyone who thinks that using dollars to weigh up the pros and negatives - I do agree that it is a bit unsavoury. BUT I CHALLENGE YOU TO COME UP WITH A BETTER MEASURE. If you can’t, then we have no way of measuring what is right and what is wrong and so we just have to go by gut instinct, or perhaps flip a coin.
I continue to be in favour of pranks.
*Obviously a silly person to rely upon but chosen [chosun? ha!] because he’s about as far from a capitalist as you can get. Much more respectable capitalists would say similar.
No, if you’re going to include the 1 cent of happiness increase from the prank for 3rd parties, you have to include the 1 cent of happiness decrease from the prank for other 3rd parties (I, personally, think they make the world stupider). You also have to include the non-death happiness decrease from the victims.
I don’t have any objection to an economic measure being used, but you can’t just pick and choose which people’s experiences are to be included in the measure.
htf am i supposed to derive happiness from somone’s suffering? death is a strawman - the final line should be well crossed when someone’s livelihood is put in jeopardy.
I’m going to say it: As an academic and intellectual (and all-'round deep thinker) I found the “prank” (such as it was) totally inoffensive on its own merits and, yes, actually amusing. It wasn’t Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but does everything have to be?
Yes, I actually found it funny.
That’s a fair point. My attempt was only a first approximation. The only fair way is of course to add everything up.
But I do hope my pointing out what’s going on helps “un-convince” Cat Whisperer about the importance of the severity of what happened to this poor lady outweighing the jolity these aussies exerienced.
And moreover also helps elbows understand why her wish for a society whereby humour is never at the expense of others is a bad plan. Obviously serious bullying is a bad idea but a wee bit of piss taking is a great thing, over all.
While I’m at it, and this is directed to no one in particular: please listen to all of us saying UK employment rights are such that this nurse was in no danger, although I accept she may have thought she was.
Listen, I feel badly for the nurse’s family. To be internationally ridiculed must have been really rough. I’m glad no one pranked me and taped it for their own amusement. But, to place all blame on the DJs for her death is ridiculous. Committing suicide because you were embarrassed is not only completely irrational, but it’s way overkill. Pardon the pun.
So who’s to blame?
I blame the nurse 5% for falling for a stupid prank, the receptionist 20% for passing along the call along without some sort of filter, the DJs 25% for playing a stupid prank, the world media 25% for running with the story and perpetuating the humiliation, and the public 25% for feeding their enormous and inexplicable obsession with this family. I mean, honestly, a mother-to-be was suffering from morning sickness. I’m not even sure that’s worthy of a news crawl, let alone the front page.
The woman who killed herself was the one who passed along the call.
Thank you. When it was originally reported, they assumed it was the nurse who gave out Kate Middleton’s information.
Still, I can’t totally blame the DJs. It was a stupid prank, but the consequences far outweighed an appropriate punishment.
Yesterday I read somewhere (yah, no cite) that the suicide occurred the night before a scheduled meeting with the hospital. So maybe the hospital claiming there had been no disciplinary action is true only on a technicality.
I still don’t think I’ve read, or heard anything about the nurse who actually gave the information.
Come on, this was the first official confirmation of the royal pregnancy and the announcement of the third and four in line to the throne. (second and third if Charles doesn’t accept)
I think that’s worth a line in a newspaper.
This is the variant on the “broken window fallacy”, whereby breaking a window (causing a suicide) stimulates the economy. In reality, nothing of value was created by the prank, it merely satisfied mind hunger. Money would have been spent elsewhere had the prank not been pulled and satisfied the mind hunger of others. Of course, we can apply a cost/benefit model to pulling pranks or even banning pulling pranks in the future (likelihood of causing a suicide vs. likelihood of entertaining people, plus implications for right to free speech) We can also discuss whether the amusement of the show’s listeners outweighed the disgust of those sympathising with the nurse’s anguish (though there is no real objective measurement of individual emotion).
There’s also a cognitive bias that we judge actions as more or less permissible by their consequences rather than their likely outcomes. The suicide was not foreseeable, but there are calls that the DJs lose their jobs. No such calls for the countless other pranksters.
While I think it’s sad that someone, anyone, reaches a level of despair so severe that they take their own life, this woman most definitely had to have other issues. For the DJs to bear the brunt of it kind of pisses me off. We’ve all heard the call. Who in their *right mind *would fall for this? So okay; someone did.Killing yourself over it? I’m sorry; that does not compute. There is absolutely no way anyone could have foreseen such an outcome and all this blathering about “learning a greater lesson” is getting a little too Kumbaya for my taste.
Agree, WOOKINPANUB.
The only person in this whole scenario who definitely COULD have foreseen dire consequences as a result of what they did was the nurse who necked herself. But I don’t see any bitching and harping about stupidity and selfishness there.