Surreality TV

You know all those movies and TV shows that have crowds of onlookers staring up at some desperate character standing on a ledge? Eventually, someone will shout "Jump!" because that's what is expected of a crowd of people standing on the street below. Given the opportunity to watch someone take their own life, would you be part of the group chanting for the big dive, or would you do whatever you could to keep it from happening? Or would you keep walking?
And what about the virtual sidewalk? Police found Abraham Biggs Jr. dead in his father's bed Wednesday, twelve hours after he declared on a web site for bodybuilders that he planned to take his own life. He took a fatal drug overdose in front of an Internet audience. Although some viewers contacted the web site to notify police, authorities did not reach his house in time. And there were plenty of chanters too. As Abraham was lying on his bed, Wendy Crane (investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office) said, people were typing things like, "Oh, that's not enough to kill you." Others, she said, were egging him on, saying things like "Go ahead and do it."
Twenty-five years ago, it was Ozzy Osbourne. Now it's the Internet. Suicide is much more interesting when you have an audience. Plenty of potential suicides have driven across the Bay Bridge on their way to the more iconic and infamous Golden Gate Bridge to end their lives. If life were truly meaningless, why bother with the ticket you would get for stopping on the bridge before leaping to your death? Because it needs to be a Grand Gesture.
I was up in Seattle a few months after Kurt Cobain swallowed a few ounces of buckshot, and I had the morbid opportunity to drive past his house. From his bedroom window, he would have looked out across Lake Washington to Mount Rainier. That view would have been enough to get me out of bed on any given morning. But I wasn't Kurt, and I wasn't Abraham Biggs. And like the front lawn of Cobain's house, the World Wide Web is filling with tributes to this kid that they never knew. They just saw his pain, and for a moment they shared it. Now the door is open for a hundred more to log on and share theirs.
Here's my advice, the words that I took from John Irving: "Keep passing the open windows."