You’ve probably heard the story about Abraham Biggs, the 19-year-old Florida boy who committed suicide in front of a Web cam the other day. You can read his suicide note here.

It’s a tragic and terrible story on pretty much every level, but it’s one that provides some insight into this communications medium that so many people are still trying to comprehend.

Insight number one, I think, is the degree to which someone will take their private life public online, and the willingness with which kids today (not to suggest this is a phenomenon limited to kids, but we’re talking about a teenager here) make everything public. This article in New York magazine last year did a good job of examining this phenomenon.

Countless Internet users are celebrating virtually every moment of their lives by cataloging it online. Given the infinite celebrations memorialized digitally every day, should it really come as a surprise that there are those who are documenting their personal tragedies, too?

For all the talk about us losing our privacy in the 21st century, we often forget that a huge component of that privacy loss is voluntary.

Insight number two is the degree to which someone will mock or ignore someone else’s tragedy.

There’s a lot of black humor and trash talking online. There’s also a lot of posing and pretending online. Put the two together and it doesn’t take a great leap of understanding to see how someone might post a mocking comment about something horrible … something that deep down they may think isn’t really happening anyway.

Which is in no way to excuse those who cheered on Abraham’s actions. Idiots abound, online and off. The image of someone on the ledge of a building and someone in the crowd below yelling “Jump!” is something of a cultural cliche. What we see in this case is the digital equivalent of that.

We’re also seeing the digital equivalent of the bystander effect, famously seen in the case of Kitty Genovese and expressed by Phil Ochs in the song, Outside Of A Small Circle of Friends.

But there’s more to see in this case, and some of it is encouraging. Ultimately, the police showed up because those who were viewing the online broadcast took Abraham’s words seriously and contacted the authorities

Insight number three doesn’t exist yet, but it lives somewhere at the point of discussion that I think deserves to be explored because of this case: When is it appropriate for the online community to react? What is the responsibility of members of an online community when one of their own announces the intent to do harm to himself … or herself … or someone else?

Biggs had announced his intentions of committing suicide on a bodybuilding site. Clearly, albeit in 20-20 hindsight, a cry for help. I suppose those who participate in that forum are doing a lot of soul-searching right now. Had they contacted authorities just a few hours earlier, might Abraham Biggs be alive today?

Meanwhile, conversations about this incident abound — from comments on stories posted at the Los Angeles Times to Huffington Post to The Inquisitr to dozens of others. Plenty of stupid comments will be made in those discussions, which will have their fair share of misplaced anger and ignorance.

If anything positive is to come of this situation, though, perhaps it’s that everyone who participates in online communities understands a little better that among the pixels and Web pages and databases and routers and DSL connections — that there are actual flesh-and-blood human beings on the other side of that computer screen.

Maybe this is insight number three: If you’re interacting with someone typing on a keyboard 1,000 miles away, that person ought to be treated with the same deference and respect and humanity as if you were both in the same room.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Rants 'n' Such, This 'n' That.