Yes, but it’s my understanding that Biggs was already passed out on the bed before he had a chance to actually read any of these comments. You can’t be “egged on” if you aren’t even aware of the “egging”.
Um, it was just a fucking question. Relax.
That was only true for the thread he’d started on the message board. Apparently though, there was plenty of this type of conversation, including him, going on in chat, all before he completely passed out.
Very well then, ahem:
[shaking fist]
Damn you Canada! First Ryan Stiles, now this?!
Long before the internet onlookers would cry “Jump! Jump” to people on high ledges threatening suicide. This has nothing at all to do with the nasty internets, it has to do with human behaviour.
Is there a transcript of that (the justin.tv chatlog) anywhere? I have read most of the bb.com thread, but have only seen a screenshot of the justintv chatlog during the SWAT team breakin.
Exactly. He still would have killed himself without the internet. He just wouldn’t have had an audience.
None that I’ve found. Many of the members there alluded to it being pulled along with the archive of his webcam, which is understandable. I just read several references to it in the bazillion threads there on the subject. Also, for a while, the screenshot you mention was linked to the actual (all be it brief, thankfully) footage. It was quite sobering, as has been the entire thing.
Sorry I’m not more help.
Y’know, I’ve never had a webcam, but I imagine it would give a feeling of somehow being more connected, that people were, kinda, in a way in the room with him. Maybe he just wanted to feel like he wasn’t totally “alone” as he drifted off…he sure wasn’t interested in chatting or “attention-whoring”, it was rather methodical.
I don’t want to seem like a complete callous bastard, but if his organs can’t even be harvested( it’s unlikely he had a donor card, d’ya think?), what an absolute waste of a young life.
Yup. Humans don’t care a lot about people outside of their monkeysphere, and that is just a fact of human psychology/physiology. Sure, I can make noises about how dead kids in Darfur is a crime and it’s horrible and all, but it doesn’t really mean anything to me because I don’t know them.
You’ll be happier adopting my world view:
There are no good or bad people. They are all evil, but some are on my side.
Less disapointment that way. Cynical of course. But I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than betrayed.
OK, I understand that in grief, people say stupid things.
But, yeah…huh? Your son posts a really awful thing on the internet and you’re railing against…awful shit that people put on the internet? Then blaming it on, who? What? 
He can control the Internet. I told you he was hardcore!
Personally, I feel that there is a difference between the mere indifference of not caring about the deaths in Darfur and the active cruelty of encouraging someone to commit suicide. I think some people harbor hostility towards the suicidal because they tend to think of them as “Attention Seekers”, selfish, or weak for not being able to “snap out of it”. I think those beliefs are where the mean-spirited taunting behavior really comes from.
As for this dad, people who are grieving often have anger that they need to vent. Sometimes they get angry at the dead person, and sometimes they vent it at others who really may not have anything to do with the tragedy. There are few things in life as heart-breaking as being a parent and then having to bury your child.
My apologies, Justin.tv is based in San Francisco and I misread that the son was located there as well.
So, any cite that the father is calling for teh end of teh interwebs? Or even having Justin.tv shutdown? Or do you just like pouncing on any word a father whose son just killed himself says and making straw men out of them?
It’s pretty obvious how the father could see his son’s suicide as having been egged on, even if in the night in question he had pulled the trigger so to speak to the point that he wasn’t even reading anyone’s comments. The guy was obviously disturbed to the point that the reaction to him saying he was going to kill himself was met with calls to just do it already, since he had ‘trolled’ on it before. Not that I imagine the comments on the first time he said it was much different. You know, none of us are as cruel as all of us.
So in closing, 1) the father hasn’t said jack shit about censoring the internet, and 2) let’s hope a loved one of yours doesn’t kill themselves in some kind of spotlight and see what kind of painful grief stricken things you say don’t get splayed all over the world for people to ruminate about and make rolleyeyes at.
Oh and just to press the matter since this is the whole point of the thread, where again did the father call for censoring the internet?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=6314787
Quotes from above link:
“Father ‘appalled’ by virtual audience to son’s webcam suicide, calls for Internet regulation”
The father … called for tougher regulation of Internet sites.
“I think after this incident and probably other incidents that have occurred in the past, they all point to some kind of regulation is necessary”
Got it now?
Call me back when the father has started some actual regulatory action and it isn’t just newshounds looking for a story. Really, you don’t get how a grieving father can lash out and how news networks lap this shit up and print anything he says? Where again has he lead the campaign to have justin.tv banned? Or any campaign to censor the internet?
Got it now?
It’s a fucking news story. Throwing hate at the father is just way out of line. Honestly, have you never lost a loved one? Now imagine that you’re being hounded by the media in your grief for a quote on what it means to the newsreaders. He lost his son 3 days ago, and I doubt he wanted to become some sort of internet meme.
Seriously, if the father leads some actual campaign to shut websites down, call me and I’ll be all against it. Making rolleyeyes and getting worked up at his grieving comments is pretty fucked up. He hasn’t as much as called for justin.tv to be shut down.
But people encouraging someone they don’t know to commit suicide aren’t engaging in cruelty - they don’t know this stranger, and they don’t care about them. Sure, in the abstract we should all aspire to better behaviour than that, but the person being encouraged by people they don’t know can also say, “I don’t know these people, and they don’t know me - I have no reason to care what they say.”
That view makes no sense. The lack of emotional connection to the person you’re encouraging to commit suicide does not somehow make your act any less cruel – it just makes it easier for you to do.
ETA: The alternative is sociopathy. You don’t care about Darfur at an emotional level – but you can still think the situation needs to be helped and lobby for that to happen. You don’t know the people you pass on the street –you don’t trip them, though.