Teenager Commits Suicide While 1,500 Watch

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Written by Andrew Call

Wednesday, 26 November 2008 10:06

Suicide is a touchy subject, but it’s also reality and something that cannot and should not ever be ignored.

This week I learned that a 19-year-old from Florida committed suicide online while over 1,500 people sat back idly and watched. To say the least, I was sickened and angry with all the people who sat by watching this young man’s 12-hour streaming video and didn’t try and help him.

Abraham Biggs had told countless others through an online forum that he was planning to kill himself, but the moderators of the site he was using took his plans as idle threats because he had made them before. Unfortunately, this time Biggs followed through. This is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter how many times someone has said they are going to kill themselves, if you’re in a position to do something then it’s your obligation to take everything seriously, no matter what. Doing your job could mean saving someone’s life.

Many members of the forum even encouraged Biggs to take his life by egging him on and daring him to do it. Are you kidding me? I didn’t realize there was that kind of evil out there, that kind of inhumane, malicious way of thinking. I guess I’ve just always thought that people were better than that. I always hoped that if it ever came down to it, people would be there for each other.

Biggs overdosed on pills and it wasn’t until hours after his body had stopped moving that people on the Web site began to grasp the weight of what had just happened. Some forum members kept jeering and insulting the deceased teen, saying that it was all a joke and he was putting on a show for the people watching. Viewers eventually notified police, who broke down the door and found the body.

Biggs wrote in a blog two days before he committed suicide, “I have reached out for help so many times, and yet I believe I was turned away because of the things I did, that it is a punishment I am willing to take, for I know that being who I am has only brought myself and others pain.”

I hate to see someone so young go so soon. In a world as diversified and “accepting” as the one we live in today, why wasn’t there someone that could have helped this young man? How can someone not try to understand what was going on? I just don’t understand.

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