“There’s A Kid On MySpace Talking About Killing Himself…”
On December 18, 2006, Zadi Diaz posted an entry on her video blog about a teen on MySpace who was talking about suicide. She asked her viewers and fellow video bloggers what she should do about it. She said in her comments for that day that she didn’t even know if the suicide talk was serious. One comment she received urged her to find out more and see if the kid’s family could be contacted. Another poster also expressed concern and raised the issue about whether or not the incident was real. Zadi contacted a fellow blogger named Rick Rey who scanned the teen’s MySpace page and found a way to contact the teen’s school.1
After the incident, Zadi received many supportive comments on a mailing list where many video bloggers regularly post. She continued the conversation by making concrete proposals for dealing with this kind of situation, which most people understand is likely to occur again in the future somewhere on the Internet. She points out that offline, one can call a 911 service for help and she tries to develop ideas for obtaining timely help online. She proposes a protocol to deal with similar problems in the future.
— Social Network Suicide Protocol
1. Contact the person in trouble directly. Find out if there is a direct way to reach them.
2. Contact the list of friends (i.e. top 8)
3. Scan the page for any information that can lead to direct rescue: school, company, etc.
4. Contact the site officials
From: http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/in_case_of_suicide_note_break.html# comments
Zadi chose to publicize an intimate moment and a very personal choice about whether or not to intervene. When Zadi saw the MySpace teen’s comments, it was a private moment that she could have ignored and no one would have known. But she asked others in the blogging community for advice and support. Such a choice is not trivial, given the variety of self-presentation opportunities on the Internet. Hoaxes have and will continue to occur, and in each instance of a suicide attempt, a witness must decide whether or not to intervene and must look for clues to assess the situation.
In her dissertation on the “camgirl” genre, in which women regularly transmit images of themselves from their home on the Internet, Senft relates a similar event.2 A camgirl named Karen had a bipolar disorder, and her suicide attempt was captured in the Web cam images she transmitted over the Internet. While other people witnessing the event wrote to Karen online and provided text-based “hugs” of support for her, Senft, who lived near Karen, physically went to her address to investigate the situation. Senft describes the feelings of anxiety and irritation that we all might have in trying to intervene in a crisis involving someone we do not know well. For me, such an event brings up many kinds of feelings and questions, such as, Is this the right thing to do? Should I take time to do this? Am I being duped? If I cry wolf too many times, will anyone believe me in a real crisis? What might happen if I do nothing at all? Senft argues that overwhelming emphasis on and unquestioning preoccupation with the “virtual” aspects of Internet interaction stems from a quest for authenticity that ultimately creates inertia and prevents human compassion in everyday online life. She writes, “As a means to resist this trend, I suggest tele-ethicality: a decision to risk engagement in social contracts with people who may or may not be true, or even real, over one’s networks. I believe tele-ethicality not only aids action in mediated environments, but helps understand us better the ways in which we virtualize others in our offline lives.”3
Knowing that the MySpace incident might not have been real, Zadi and Rick risked acting, and through their actions they were able to help the teen. Further, the incident prompted additional efforts on Zadi’s part to find mechanisms to deal with these problems in standardized, public ways. An intimate choice became the touchstone for larger proposals to create public mechanisms of assistance for teens in trouble. It is worth noting that amid concern about the inappropriate release of information on the Internet, it was public information that enabled Zadi and Rick to help. Sharing this personal choice prompts a reconsideration in Zadi’s viewers about how to handle similar incidents should they occur. As Senft suggests, it also prompts viewers to wonder how we all “virtualize” people in “offline lives” in ways that promote a similar kind of social indifference and inertia in the face of pain.
- Zadi’s MySpace teen’s suicide attempt postings: http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/theres_a_kid_on_myspace_about.html; http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/in_case_of_suicide_note_break.html; http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/myspace_in_case_of_emergency_c.html. [↩]
- T. Senft, “Tele-ethicality,” http://www.terrisenft.net/diss/synopsis.php. [↩]
- T. Senft, Web Celebrity and the Personal as Political in the Age of the Global Brand, (Peter Lang, forthcoming). [↩]
