Man Commits Suicide on Live Webcam
A 19-year-old Florida man killed himself yesterday while in front of a live webcam. Abraham Biggs from Broward County Florida posted on the bodybuilding.com forums that he was going to commit suicide.
Biggs even cut and pasted a long suicide note to the board. Forum moderators and other board members didn’t take him seriously and some even encouraged him to commit suicide. Biggs overdosed on drugs and was seen lying motionless for several hours before police and paramedics finally arrived.
At approximately 5 AM Wednesday, November 19th, 2008, Biggs, known as “candyman” on the bodybuilding.com forums, posted his intention to commit suicide in the miscellaneous section of the forum. Titled, “I’m gonna have 40 2mg bars of Xanax Tonight!” He also cut and pasted a long suicide note that started with, “I am going to leave this for whoever stumbles across my bookmarks later on. I hate myself and I hate living.”
You can read the initial thread here.
Moderators and other forum members brushed off Biggs by replying, “Cool” and “Have fun” and some even dared him to kill himself. A few hours later, Biggs started a justin.tv live stream channel and downed several pills in front of his webcam.
For the next several hours, people watched the man slowly die. Biggs eventually stopped breathing and lay motionless on his bed. At times, viewership swelled to approximately 1500 people and many people continued taunting Biggs. Some even believed the whole situation was a prank.
One of the viewers eventually called the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. Late in the afternoon, a horrified audience saw a red laser sight on the body and then a deputy sheriff appearing on camera with his gun drawn. Shortly afterward a paramedic arrived and covered up the webcam.
Michael Seibel, CEO of justin.tv, has released a statement saying that he regrets that the suicide had to occur. He adds, “we have policies in place to discourage the distribution of distressing content and our community monitors the site accordingly. This content was flagged by our community, reviewed, and removed according to our Terms of Service.”
- Networking,
- justin.tv ,
- webcam ,
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Such a sad tale. What was troubling this man so much that he felt compelled to end his own life? Instead of egging him on they should have helped him - and I hope they can live with what happened on their conscience. Life is too precious to be thrown away like this.
On a similar note, I have just browsed on one of these sites to see a 15-year old girl talking to strangers live on a video feed. Whilst I am an advocate of free speech and the pursuit of liberty, there is no way on earth I'd let a child of mine do that. Some of the comments are so incredibly lewd and yet the audience is well aware of this girl's age - how some parents let their offspring become so accustomed to this form of networking/mentoring escapes me. What do you think?
Well is what you call freedom, is it not?
But you people need to go back to your bible and implement it into your daily lives, and also put some limitations otherwise your society will degrade even further. Just you wait and see.
People and children are like animals, and they need some guideance and limits and people to control and advice about rights and wrongs till people are all grown up and able to make choices for themself. But many western people end up abusing their own children and even killing babies!
Our system may not be perfect, but nothing is perfect. Your leaders need to look at the system they have and other alternatives. Otherwise you'll end up having wars with the youth and adults in the future or locking all young people, in the next 10-20 years. People need to stop craving more wealth and money and just be happy with they have and prey to your God and stop the wars and the likking of poor people in other countries. Focus in your future and your youth. Fighting keeps on going while if you make peace there will be a future for all including the poor and needy.
Jon.