Internet Suicide. So Fucking What.

Some dumbass kid gets all torn up about his shitty life and how some chick he is crazy about will never love him and decides to kill himself. Perhaps all the rest of you are not aware, but this happens ALL THE TIME! The hand-wringing and wailing about this kid make no sense to me at all.

It's also not news that some people watched someone kill themselves. That happens all the time too. In fact, some other guy recently hung himself on a webcam after being "goaded into it" by the people he was talking to on line. This kind of ghoulish voyeurism appears to be a part of our human nature. Not long after they started building sky scrapers, people started wanting to jump off of them. Pretty much from the start there have been people on the street below who egged them on. Guess what? Human beings suck. We always have. Take it back to the Romans who watched people get killed in the Coliseum if you like. Its just who we are.

So to the question of suicide itself. People were criticized for "goading him on". Well, why exactly shouldn't they? I believe that people should be free to do whatever they like with their lives. If you want to OD on prescription medication and kill yourself in front of an Internet audience, go right ahead. Fine by me. No one is making me watch.

Additionally, some of these fuckers just need to go ahead and do it. I'm tired of hearing about "a cry for help". You know what a cry for help sounds like? "HELP!" A self-obsessed ploy for attention sounds like "I'm going to kill myself, I swear!". There are too damn many people on the earth as it is. If you want to do your part to promote population control, have at it my friend. The truth is, that someone is going to miss you, but it won't be me. I really could not care less.

There is an entire industry in the US today that deals with involuntarily hospitalizing people who are claimed to be suicidal. This plays on our mistaken assumption about the sanctity life (see George Carlin's excellent discussion on this subject found on "Back in Town"). We think that life is SO SACRED that a person cannot even make the decision to end it, all at once, on his own. We let people kill themselves slowly with cigarettes and unhealthy lifestyles. Just not all at once.

For the most part, we don't restrict people's ability to create life either. Not even when an honest examination of the mating participants suggests nothing short of abject horror will be unleashed upon the world. No, we allow stupid, ignorant people to fill the earth with their progeny and then we refuse any effort to rectify the situation.

I can hear the usual chorus of voices suggesting that suicidal people are not in their right minds and are making a decision, influenced by depression or trouble in their lives, that they might regret. If they live that is. Which they may not. Others might point to a great list of people who killed themselves who "had so much going for them" or "had so much to offer".

Does having a lot going for you or being blessed with talents and abilities mean that you have less of an inherent right to determine your own destiny?

Some people like to talk about "those left behind". Won't mom and dad be devastated? Won't your girlfriend feel like a big failure? Who will play fetch with good old Fido? Well who knows? Its certainly no business of the guy who killed himself. He won't be here to worry about it. We don't force people to take certain jobs or stay in religions or marry this or that person for fear of letting their parents down do we? Why should we restrict a person's ability to give up on life?

I mean, sure its tragic, but so are lots of things. Whenever I see someone I love with a cigarette in their hands, I think about the tragic demise that very likely awaits them. I would like very much for them to stop. I might even try to influence, prod and bully them into quitting. But I honestly do not question their RIGHT to do it. If tragedy is what you want, I think its your right to have it; just don't expect me to cry for you.