I am deeply saddened and shocked after reading the article of a teenage boy from Florida who killed himself in front of a live Internet audience on 22nd November 2008. My mind can’t stop thinking and reflecting upon this tragedy.
- Biggs killed himself after announcing his intentions in a blog
Abraham Bigg’s, 19 announced his plan on his blog and streamed live pictures via a webcam from his home Pembroke Pines, near Miami. People watched him as he overdosed on anti depressive drugs. He remained comatosed online for hours before he died. It is shocking that neither the website’s operators nor any viewers alerted the police. I kept reading the updated article as it remains one of the top stories on the world news in the BBC. The headline just caught my attention and when I read I couldn’t believe what I saw.
I am distraught and I wonder with what expectations those people mention their suicide plans on their blogs. Fair enough it could be a hoax but to what extent? Does it mean that in your blog you can write whatever you want and is there no limitations? This surely doesn’t sound normal to me. One more life is gone when someone maybe could have prevented it from happening. The fact that there were some viewers who encouraged the boy is outrageous. The medium of communication has become extreme. 10 years ago people hardly knew about Internet. Now in this fast paced world everyone relies on it, describing as the new era of communications.
I wonder what more the world and its people have to witness via Internet. But what is most astonishing than anything else is that there were people watching it until the boy stopped moving. Only then someone actually bothered to let the site moderator know. The last transmission from the webcam is of a police officer bursting into Abraham Biggs’s room, when he discovers his body and then he places his hand over the camera. Biggs Jr, was studying to be a paramedic at a college where his father is a maths professor. Abrahim suffered from mental illness, which his mother claimed had finally claimed his life.
Sadly I wonder what makes people go through this. With the use of Internet, people are crossing all their boundaries. There is no control over anything. The Internet is having a negative impact on people’s lives and motivating them to take wrong measures. People are so much into the Internet that the effect it has on us is adverse and shocking.
Blogging is a good way to put your postings across to people and share your ideas but to put postings about suicide: isn’t that mental! This is the first time I am blogging and I can’t believe I am writing about the person who mentioned committing suicide on his blogs only. This happens to have been a mere coincidence that I actually found out the story to start with. I know now what I will talk about in my blogs. It will be about how medium of communication like television, Internet is affecting people’s life and to what extent people believe it. This sounds like a very challenging and exciting task. So folks I shall be updating news about people who create hysteria and are strange. Times have changed; with such mediums manipulating your mind.
However, the footage has since been taken down and his father is now calling for more regulation of chatrooms. Surprisingly I am now very interested in writing blogs.
Last Message by his Mother:
”My son, Abraham Biggs Jr, was well-loved and cared for. However, the mental illness of bipolarity and depression got the better part of him,” said his mother on MySpace. The sense of disbelief at the teenager’s death was heightened by the realisation that his end was drawn out and, most likely, preventable.
