I know this is the time of year when we’re supposed to be giving thanks and dwelling on the nobility of the human soul.
But as a lead-up to the holidays, a young man committed suicide on webcam while people watched, commented and lampooned him for twelve hours before someone thought to get help for him. And Black Friday kicked off at one Walmart with shoppers smashing through a door and trampling a holiday employee to death, actually stepping over his prone body to get to the bargains.
It’s as if either people don’t understand the things they’re witnessing, or simply don’t care. And I’m not sure which is worse.
PAD
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It’s sad and you do want to shake your head. But sadly the type of stuff you mentioned in the post isn’t particularly shocking anymore.
People suck.
Sometimes it’s not exactly easy to keep believing in the human race, is it?
Personally, I think it’s important to keep things in historical perspective. I don’t think this is “human nature”. It may be a *manifestation* of human nature, but we don’t *have* to be like this. Things are the way they are for historical and economic and social reasons. Human stupidity is a factor, but not the only one.
We can be better than this. It’s important to remember that. Getting there will be difficult – but if we don’t try, the only other option is despair. And that’s just not acceptable.
And yes, this doesn’t help the people who died, or those who lost loved ones to this insanity.
The latter is worse. Easily. Not understanding something can be rectified through education or explanation. Not caring, however, is a tougher thing to tackle.
The latter is worse. Easily. Not understanding something can be rectified through education or explanation. Not caring, however, is a tougher thing to tackle.
Human stupidity is the ONLY factor.
There is nothing in Walmart, and never will be anything there that is worth more than a human life.
Economic or historical conditions will never ever change that.
It is absolutely mind-boggling, unfortunately. I’d love to say that it’s an aberration, but I’m not sure these days — particularly the webcam suicide, given how popular the “all attention is good” meme is at present.
I don’t think the Wal-Mart one is the first of its kind; the webcam suicide, to the best of my knowledge, is.
Either way, you’re right — a head-shaker.
TWL
I worked at Wal-Mart for about 6-1/2 years until I got a better gig at the Post Office. (We’re still treated like cattle, but we’re much better paid cattle.) Where I worked was a relatively small town, then a larger city (Fort Wayne). Black Friday, and the entire Christmas season, was a mild nightmare here. When I first heard of the incident on Long Island, I thought it would turn out to be an elderly greeter who was killed. I’ve since learned it was a temp. I’d had nightmares of being in the store during an earthquake and dying under a pile of Barbies or big screen TVs. But never in a human stampede. Maybe Wal-Mart and other places will learn to spread their holiday sales over a week instead of just having the best prices for an hour or two the day after turkey day. But I doubt it.
Wow. Just last night I watched Untraceable on DVD. That film is about murders being committed on webcam while people watch and comment. So finding out about that suicide is *way* too close to that movie. I doubt that the filmmakers were that anxious to be proven right.
In the second case, I think December 1 or at the very earliest, late not early November should be the starting point for Xmas displays in stores (here in Victoria BC I heard Xmas music in Wal-Mart around November 3-5; can’t recall exact day but you get the point). The original intent of Christmas was religous, and while I don’t mind non-believers using that time for some sort of spiritual day, making it about greed is a total corruption of the original intent. And making Xmas 1/6 of the year can turn even very spiritual people into grinches.
The Wal-Mart thing sickened me because it truly shows that people are buying gifts…just to buy gifts.
There is no such thing as Christmas/holiday/Hanukkah spirit. All human decency goes out the window (assuming there even IS human decency anymore) in the name of getting a bargain. And I think that people had to know they were stepping on someone, but just did not care. In the end, IMO it always comes down to the same thing: selfishness. People do not care because they do not ever see outside of themselves. You cannot ever have human decency, or some sense of responsibility towards the welfare of others/this world until people learn to actually give a crap about something besides their desires at that moment.
The death at Wal-Mart reminds me of why I’m less than enthusiastic about the Christmas season. I don’t object to Christmas, per se, but why anyone would enjoy that mob mentality melee is beyond my comprehension. I just came back from two years in Albania, where Christmas season consists of a few stores with tinsel-laden trees in their front windows and that’s about it. I didn’t miss the “spirit” we have here.
People do, indeed, suck.
I think the walmart thing is worse. I heard about it earlier from a site called speak your brains but you know spelt badly or something. Anyway my point was that the people were commenting on public websites mentioning darwin awards, blaming walmart and also the people involved. and mocking them for what is a tragic situation and unfortunately from I have heard not just a one of. I could be wrong but I think 26 people died this year in the sales. and that is a tragedy. the guy killing himself and people watching and commentating that is just sick. I don’t know who would do that. I like dark and sick jokes so I can see people thinking it was not real and mocking it the whole way through but if they thought it was real then they have serious problems and also IP address if they commentated so someone should look into that.
I actually think the guy who killed himself is fine. I have no problem with that, It is his life and his choice and I know he leaves behind those who love and care for him but his life his choice. those commentating while he is doing so are sick. I feel comfortable saying so because I tried to kill myself with a cordless bungie jump. as you can tell it didn’t work and I hurt many people by trying but I still feel the same way today as I did then. and actually slightly worse. I mean if you think you are a failure try killing yourself and failing, wow do you feel like crap. I think the people dying who want to live is a terrible tragedy but the guy killing himself and people watching he was just how things go in this world and he may have been right to do so, but those that watched and enjoyed they are really messed up.
I know that some will get upset at this post but I have put my real name and email address at it. I don’t condone suicide but nor do I judge it.
Webcam Death- Either this was a situation where everyone thought the kid was joking, to which means that we as a society do too many “Boy who Cried Wolf” bits and Didn’t mean it so that when this person actually cried “Wolf!” and meant it Those who actuall watched thought he was full of it and decided to be “entertained” by the “gag”
Actually I think this is Kitty Grnovese all over again, though I find it hard to believe the Authorities couldn’t have known about it, anyway without being informed. Patriot Act and All.
Wal-Mart- Maybe the problem has always been “Keeping up with the Joneses” and the law of “supply and demand” I for one would like for the latter “to die and have a cheap funeral” (Hank Scorpio, The Simpsons) but I think tha the most horrific thing was when customers were STILL RUSHING THROUGH WHILE EMERGENCY CREWS WERE TRYING TO SAVE HIS LIFE!
We’re all of us selfish people, but the thing that makes us different from each other is the level and frequency that we can be selfish. George Harrison was onto something with “I ME MINE”
The saddest thing is is that “Ask not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your Country” is an endangered species because America as a society added the corollary, “Ok, but what do I get out of it?”
That would be a reason why they don’t care, either that or perhaps America doesn’t understand that, Life has value, but not when we feel like it.
Don’t know or don’t care? Optimist. You left off “endorse.”
To a certain extent, in the initial rush, I think if you’re trapped there, you pretty much have to go along or get trampled as well. (Post-initial rush, though….).
Ten will get you one, we’ll see this on LAW & ORDER pretty quickly…
I would say that the tragedy at the Wal-Mart is a good example of “the person is smart, but people are stupid.” The mob-mentality frenzy that these people get themselves whipped up in is nuts. My guess is that the people who trampled him were, if they noticed what they were stepping on, either afraid that they would get crushed if they stopped, or believed that since no one else had previously then the guy was okay. It takes a whole crowd’s acknowledgment of the situation to slow down and get a good assessment of a situation like that. The closest I have been to that scenario is moshpits at large concerts. The difference being, when a person falls, five or six people immediately grab them. If a person falls under feet for more than a few seconds they’re likely to stay there longer.
As far as the webcam death, I would really need to know more about the facts before I make a judgment. Did the people watching know where the boy, lived? How much information did they have about who he was? It can be difficult to act if you don’t have a lot of knowledge to start from. Taking that step away from web anonymity to invade someone’s privacy can be a hard step to take. And when you do take it, it’s tough to then not be worried about your own privacy. It’s horrible that people would be interested in something like that, but today is not going to be the day that I condemn people for being disbelieving of a drug overdose.
I agree with Charles Waldo – these are both similar examples as what happened to Kitty Genovese in 1964 and was immortalized by Phil Ochs’ song “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends”.
Sociologists have done experiments where people lay down in the middle of college campuses (even some seminaries) and students walked by and did nothing. Everyone assumes someone else will make the phone call, few are willing to be the one to make the phone call themselves as long as it is clear there are others that can take the responsibility.
I think part of the irony of us discussing this here is that these situations are so horrific, yet so meaninglessly venal and banal, that if they took place in a comic they would be leading up to someone becoming so frustrated and so angry that he or she snapped, rose up, and said “No! No more! Not in my city, not anywhere!”, becoming a hero to prevent it from happening again.
We need heroes.
I cease to be amazed by the idiocy of mobs. In fact, I think we should take comfort in the fact that out of the thousands of stores that had large groups of people waiting to burst in only a handful had mobs that were willing to throw out any sense of decency in the quest for a cheaper TV.
(One can only hope that the people who crushed Jdimytai Damour to death are no condemned to watching video of themselves acting savagely on those same TVs. Do they glance at their children and wonder if their kids make the connection that mom and dad killed a man for a TV?)
Let’s not get carried away. I would protest against anyone who would look at this incident and use it to categorize Long Islanders or New Yorkers, much less “people”. It’s a shameful episode but only to those who did the deed. I would hazard a guess that among the majority of the people who post on this board we could come up with many examples of when we helped out strangers or did some other deed that elevates us above this mob (admittedly, that is a very low bar to rise above).
As for the internet story, I don’t know all the details. I could see, as others have mentioned, that people might not have believed the kid was serious. Of course, there are also those who yell “Jump!” when they see someone on a ledge–perhaps those people are now computer literate.
Nevertheless, my experience has always been that the vast, vast majority of people are fundamentally good. Even when one looks at atrocities that dwarf the events we are talking about here-the massacres in Mumbai, for example–the number of killers is dwarfed by those who attempted to thwart them and help the victims.
PAD, you need to do a little more research before you post this stuff. On the webcam case, people did try to notify the authorities, but few, if any, knew where he lived. The kid killed himself by OD’ing on pills, so some people tuning in just saw a person laying on a bed. And, this being the Internet, some folks made some smart-ášš comments. This happened on a site called Justin.TV which I understand is an anonymous webcam site, so it was probably hard to track the kid down to help him.
Research, PAD, research.
I need you to be just a touch more patronizing, Tom, presuming that’s possible. Then I’ll dump you off the board and that will be that. I have much less tolerance for snottiness and rudeness these days.
My research, which I did plenty of, indicated that no one contacted the police or 911 to report a suicide in progress for twelve hours. Pretty amazing how the police managed to break into the kid’s room and find him once someone actually called them.
Don’t get snotty like that with me again. I mean it. I’ve absolutely had it with such attitude. This site is my house. Show some gøddámņ courtesy.
PAD
Well, Mr. David, you did ask what’s wrong with the human race. Mr. Keller was merely offering himself up as an exhibit.
Sadly, neither of these is the first incident of its kind. The first on-webcam suicide was in the UK in March ’07, and the Wal-Mart (vel sim) tramplings on Black Friday have become something of a tradition…
This is truly tragic, but I don’t think it’s the death knell of the species. What it should be is a clarion call for businesses to consider what we already know about psychology, especially the psychology of crowds.
I’m not sure that the suicide in the net was an example of what we’ve come to as much as it was an example of someone who crys wolf not getting the help they need when they really need it. Several news stories I’ve read stated that he had said that he was going to kill himself a number of times before. Many of those who watched the kid’s suicide were said to be skeptical that it was a legitimate suicide attempt and began mocking him. He also wasn’t the first webcam suicide.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5203176.ece
The Wal-Mart thing wasn’t that shocking to me when I heard it. People have been acting like mad mobs of herd animals for years now when it comes to stuff like this. I remember as far back as the Cabbage Patch Doll craze in the 80s when people were getting injured and others were getting into fights on the store floors over the last dolls. People in packs are sometimes very, very stupid.
I think the up side of this though, and there is an upside in this, is that this only happened there and not at the thousands of other stores that opened their doors on Black Friday’s early morning hours. Millions of other people didn’t act this poorly.
My research, which I did plenty of, indicated that no one contacted the police or 911 to report a suicide in progress for twelve hours.
And did your research inform you about the fact that this individual was a well known troll on the site, and that he had threatened suicide several times before he actually went and did it?
I’m not condoning what happened, but having dealt with trolls far, far worse than the variety that’s been seen on your blog here, PAD, the reaction of the others on that site is not surprising in the least. It’s a classic crying wolf situation.
It was my understanding that the guy took the pills before he even started filming. It’s not like people watched him set up a noose and kick away the chair, or hold a gun to his head.
I don’t know anything about this case other then what’s been posted here, having said that it reminds me of something on the net that I witnessed years ago.
Back in the 1990’s I belonged to the mailing list of singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega, in the middle of the night one night someone posted what amounted to a suicide note on the list. Someone in Europe read the note contacted authorities there, who tracked the email address to the states and contacted authorities here, who tracked it down to a local level and the attempted suicide was foiled by local police busting the girls door down and administering the needed medical attention. All of this was related on the list by no less then Suzanne Vega herself who thanked the European fan and personally contacted the sucidial fan by phonec in the hospitial.
This was back in the 1990’s, say 95-96, when the internet was realitivly “new”.
My point in brining this up is this, if back in the mid 90’s, the authorities was able to track an email address back to a physical location in time to offer the proper aid to someone who had downed a bottle of pills, I have no doubt that had the authorties been contacted they would be able to do it today, when presumably they have much more experience tracking people over the cyber space, (a lot of bigger police departments even have seperate cyber crime divisions just for these kinds of things).
I can believe people might have thought this was a scam by a troll, and not reached out on that basis, but I don’t believe that the authorities had been contacted and weren’t able to track the guy down in time.
Just doesn’t ring true with what I’ve seen in the past.
// The Wal-Mart thing wasn’t that shocking to me when I heard it. People have been acting like mad mobs of herd animals for years now when it comes to stuff like this. I remember as far back as the Cabbage Patch Doll craze in the 80s when people were getting injured and others were getting into fights on the store floors over the last dolls. People in packs are sometimes very, very stupid. //
The Wal Mart thing is something we have no one to blame but ourselves. Despite the fact there there are tons of websites that debunk “Black Friday” as the “biggest shopping day of the year” or even “the best day to get things on sale”, hype has made it seem like if you don’t get to the stores on 5AM the day after Turkey Day, you won’t find anything you want, and if you shop any later you’ll be paying triple for it, assuming you can find it, which you won’t be able to because it will be gone by noon Friday, (Or so the ad’s imply). And retailers have fed into this with idiotic promotions like, “TV’s for only the first 100 customers, doors open at 4AM” and “black Friday only specials, while supplies last, make sure you’re there early”. On top of that we have manufactures who intentially under make products that they know will be in high demand, (to make it seem that there’s an even greater demand, keeping the price high to maximize profits, (The Cabbage Patch example was one of the first times a toy company did this and it’s only gotten worse over the years)). All of this feeds into the, “I gotta have it, I gotta have it now, and I gotta get it cheap as possible” mentality that all to many consumers have at this time of year.
With a mindset like that activly promoted in society, it’s not surprising that these kind of things happen, what’s surprising is that we don’t see more of it on “Black Friday”.
Does saying he was crying wolf when he doesn’t follow through magically mean he can never commit suicide? Do we think we’re casting spells to bind the hands of suicides when we tell them they’re crying wolf? What is saying he was crying wolf supposed to do other than feed his urgency to kill himself?
Those who stood by and watched the suicide trampled over his account of what he was going through with their own account of what he was going through. I’d say this is worse than the Wal-Mart trampling, simply because the beast who killed the Wal-Mart temp doesn’t feel the need to attribute any strawman-agendas to him.
I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t think to say to a suicide, “Here’s my car keys, here’s a vacuum hose; I here it’s the least painful way to go” before they act on the urge to accuse him of crying wolf. Except if they hated him.
a young man committed suicide on webcam while people watched, commented and lampooned him for twelve hours before someone thought to get help for him
To be fair, it from what I’ve read of it it wasn’t altogether clear that that is what he was doing. This wasn’t someone holding a gun to their own head, or tossing a rope over a beam. He was laying down on a bed having overdosed so that he was really dying and then dead wasn’t obvious.
Yeah, those egging him on when he said he was going to overdose deserve some condemnation. But some of their skepticism about what was supposedly going on is understandable. To a certain degree, it is worth some praise for those who eventually DID call for help (a non-trivial task given the guy was not local to most who called for help) as it was easy to imagine them rather just getting bored with watching a guy “sleep” and turning instead to other amusements.
The Wal-Mart shoppers, OTOH? Well, their willingness to shop at Wal-Mart already shows their level of humanity. But trampling someone to get to the goods is truly a further level down the scale. One almost as deep at the one occupied by Wal-Mart managers.
They had the option of learning to live with the uncertainty. They deserve all the condemnation that goes with an act with only bad outcomes.
For what it’s worth, I work at Target and I was there at 6 a.m. Friday morning when they opened. Target had set up partitions (smallish metal gates like you’d see at a concert) and created “paths” for people to go to different sections of the store. People were also let in a few at a time, so while lots of people were walking pretty fast, there was no running — or potential for trampling. I’m not saying this absolved the people who placed getting a bargain over a person’s life, but if a store knows that it’s the biggest shopping day of the year (and we *all* know), and they have time-specific sales, they should really prepare for the safety of their customers.
As for the people who trampled the poor employee, or walked past him instead of helping, I hope the police find them and prosecute them. “Depraved indifference” sounds wholly apt.
I knew there was a reason why I call it “The Festival of the Stupid.”
You can’t get me anywhere near a mall or a department store for that whole weekend.
Iggy
Let’s also remember that the “shoppers” in question broke down the doors. At some point you go from shopper to looter and I think they clearly crossed that line. While Wal-Mart should have had more security there, unless they were ready to shoot at the people breaking into the store it’s hard to imagine what they could have done. Maybe an armed presence would have discouraged the more violent elements. The really creepy aspect isn’t the ones who broke in and trampled the guy–that’s what criminal scum do–it’s the people who, after witnessing this kept on shopping, even as the workers in the store were trying to get them out;
Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like “savages.”
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,'” she said. “They kept shopping.”
Yikes. I’ll bet there are a lot of embarrassed people in Valley Stream right now, though probably not the people who ought to be embarrassed.
On the other hand ABC news reported a dying child allowed a wish. He did not wish for Disneyland. He wished for food for the poor during the holiday. Many people heard the local newscast and came out to donate food, make food and feed people. The child died the other day. He died happy. He saw all the food given to others. There is talk of doing this again in his memory.
On a more practical note a farmer saw crops that would just be plowed under for fertilizer. Instead the farmer told local people to glean the fields. He thought X number would come. Ten times X number came. He thought that was good and was willing to try it next year.
There are very bad stories to tell us how far we have fallen. There are other stories to show us how to grab onto the crevices and pull ourselves upward.
That is pretty screwed up. I myself am a Walmart employee and I heard about the trampling from a customer today. It happened in New York. As for the webcam suicide, did those people think it was a joke or are they soulless morons?
NATURAL SELECTION.
Let;s hope these idiots didn’t have a chance to reproduce.
Is a cheap price on a WII really worth your life?????
by the way…
When my live gets to be too much I talk about ending it all
AND NONE OF MY SO CALLED FRIENDS takee me serioesly….
Ðámņ, I’m talking about suicide again./
If I ever DO
I am responsible for my own acxtion…
and if on my Birthday I wanna finally give up….how can anyone stop me.??????
seriously, It’s 2:30 in the morning and I can write what egver I want, BUT if I wajnt to tuen the camera round and call it quits…. noone can stop me.
I just reread whaT I wrote and I have no idea why I wrote it.
I really need to styop reading PADF”S site when I get home from the bar.
See/Write you next month/
Peter, can you post the sources from which you originally heard these about these two incidents?
The most prominent search result from Google was a an anti-psychiatry pseudoscience site.
Wikipedia has info on Abraham K. Biggs, the 19-year-old suicide victim, in its Justin.tv article (the site on which his suicide was broadcast), and it appears to be sourced, but the most prominent source is Wired, and I’d like to read about the store trampling incident (not that it surprises me).
Is a cheap price on a WII really worth your life?????
Of course not. None of the tramplers would say otherwise. Now, is it worth the life of some stranger, well, evidently that’s another matter entirely…
Luigi–lots to choose from for the Wal Mart story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html is as good as any.
Luigi, if you go to Google News and enter the search terms “Justin.TV” or “Wal-Mart,” you’ll find plenty of information from credible sources.
Biggs’ death belies the idea that he was “crying wolf.” It is not unusual for people to threaten suicide more than once before actually going through with it. Suicide threats are like bomb scares. It’s better by far to go through the motions every time than to take the risk that the one you ignored may turn out to be the real thing.
According to the New York Times, Biggs announced online his intention to die by his own hand and even detailed the drug cocktail he intended to use to end his life. While watching him die, online chat participants debated whether what they were watching was real. People had numerous chances to do the right thing but chose not to.
It would have cost so little in terms of emotion and effort to simply offer the man some encouragement while he was alive, and to call the authorities when he broadcast his death. I’ve never met a single police officer or paramedic who would fault someone for making that call in good faith, even if it turned out to be a false alarm.
Even if some believed Biggs was merely trying to get attention (an obviously erroneous belief), that doesn’t justify egging him on. That doesn’t justify not calling the authorities the instant they tuned in to his suicide — or better yet, the instant they saw his suicide note.
dave w., I’m not certain whether you’re seriously thinking of suicide or just trying to stir up the pot. If it’s the former, I can tell you as one who contemplated suicide myself that there is help and it is worth seeking it out. If it is the latter, I would still recommend you get help as there are better ways to satisfy one’s emotional needs than to manipulate others. Life is worth living, and is made even moreso if you choose to take the reins of your own emotions.
// Let’s also remember that the “shoppers” in question broke down the doors. At some point you go from shopper to looter and I think they clearly crossed that line. While Wal-Mart should have had more security there, unless they were ready to shoot at the people breaking into the store it’s hard to imagine what they could have done. Maybe an armed presence would have discouraged the more violent elements. The really creepy aspect isn’t the ones who broke in and trampled the guy–that’s what criminal scum do–it’s the people who, after witnessing this kept on shopping, even as the workers in the store were trying to get them out; //
Regarding the Wal Mart story, I’ve read, (on CNN and elsewhere), that people where lining up at 9PM the night before and there was more then 2000 people in line when they opened the door, which brings up another question. Where were the local police and why did they allow people to loiter in the parking lot overnight.
When I was in college I went with friends to hang out overnight to get concert tickets at a local ticket outlet and was told quite firmly by the local police “to go home, come back in the morning, or stay and get arrested”. (apparently the other residents and neighbors of the area were tired of the damage and noise from people standing out overnight for tickets and responding to complaints the cops began to enforce existing laws to prevent such a thing from happening). We came back in the morning and got tickets with little fuss. And there were plenty of cops around in the morning to ensure a riot didn’t break out when the ticket place opened it’s doors.
Surely the same thing could have been done here. Surly the local police would have seen the crowd growing during regular patrols, and could have forseen that maybe this might turn into an ugly problem.
Yes Wal Mart could have done things better, (including not using advertising to create the frenzy attitude in the public mindset to begin with), but to my mind it seems they are not the only ones who fumbled on this.
Regarding the Wal Mart story, I’ve read, (on CNN and elsewhere), that people where lining up at 9PM the night before and there was more then 2000 people in line when they opened the door, which brings up another question. Where were the local police and why did they allow people to loiter in the parking lot overnight.
Not being a lawyer (and I’m sure one will pop up in short order to clarify it) I’m not certain that it would technically be loitering. My understanding is that “loitering” is specifically hanging around someplace with no purpose, typically with an eye toward causing problems or doing something of an illegal nature. Simply lining up and waiting to get into a store when it opens wouldn’t fall into that category, especially if the crowd was behaving in an orderly fashion.
It’s entirely possible, Darren, that the actions of the cops when you were in college were in fact based on nothing except that they didn’t want a bunch of college kids hanging around possibly getting into trouble, and thus overstepped themselves. Or perhaps they were indeed within bounds: loitering laws vary from city to city and state to state. So what would have constituted loitering and was thus actionable wherever you were waiting for concert tickets might not have been against the law in Valley Stream.
PAD
My impression of events like the Wal-Mart death is that they’re a series of small bad judgements. Nobody ever puts their own wants ahead of human life, they just don’t consider the consequences.
The police that didn’t disperse the crowd probably didn’t think any real harm would come of it. The didn’t see a crowd of murderers, just a bunch of people who were willing to put themselves through some grief.
The people who busted through the doors didn’t make a decision to do that. One person starts pushing a little, then other someone else pushes because they see others pushing and their urge to be first clouds their judgement. There’s no real decision making here, more of a negligence in decision making.
It’s like the guy who takes one more drink before driving or talks on the cell phone at an intersection. He’s not deciding that his wants are more important than others’ lives. He’s not really thinking about it at all, because 999 times out of 1000, you can make a negligent mistake and nobody gets hurt.
Hopefully WalMart will get sued over this and the entire disgusting feeding-frenzy-inducing practice of “Black Friday Sales” will come to an end.
As far as as the suicide, so what? If some one wants to end their life and they do it in a way that doesn’t threaten others (say driving your car into oncoming traffic or with a bomb) LET THEM. Let someone end their life if they want to. The human race isn’t going to die out from suicides and we don’t need a surplus of people who don’t really want to live.
Bladestar: “…we don’t need a surplus of people who don’t really want to live.”
I’m glad my friends and family didn’t take that attitude with me when I became despondent. Conversely, I’m sorry you can’t see the value in showing compassion for others. Fortunately, most people whom I’ve encountered personally don’t feel as you do.
Bill, thanks for pointing that out to me. Do you have one for the Wal-Mart incident?
I think it’s more compassionate to let someone who wants to end their life to respect their choice…
Perhaps “crying wolf” wasn’t the best phrasing for it, but the fact remains (by the most recent reports I’ve read) that he had a bit of a trollish history and that this wasn’t the first time that he walked away from a thread by posting that he was going to go kill himself and saying how he was going to do it.
Should people take that kind of thing seriously every single time someone makes such a threat? Maybe they should. However, when I was in my late teens and early twenties I knew a lot of guys my age who liked to whip out comments like that in conversation for pure shock value or to be an ášš. By the time they’d made statements along the lines of mixing an entire bottle of sleeping pills into their fifth of Jack and chugging the whole thing down for the tenth or fifteenth time the comments they received back were along the lines of wishing them sweet dreams. No one expected them to go do it and none of them ever did. They just thought that they were being cool, edgy and shocking with comments like that while everyone else thought that they were stupid. Many reports seem to indicate that this guy was known as a bit of a troll and did much the same thing.
Bill, you surf several blogs. Think about the worst one or two trolls from those sites that you have had interactions with. How would you react if every time they got to the point of a thread where everyone was done feeding them and giving them their much craved attention they left a “suicide” message and had done so for one or two years? Let’s say that, after confrontational or argumentative post after post, our troll departed threads with comments like the following.
I would think that even you, before just getting to the point of ignoring him all together, would read the posts as someone trying to be sarcastic while coming off retarded and maybe even tell him to be sure to wash behind his ears on your less then kind days.
Is this the level of previous posts that this guy left? I don’t know. The few write ups I’ve seen talking about his prior suicide comments did make it seem as though they were seemingly written and certainly read along the lines of sarcasm and for pure shock value. And if someone has any familiarity with blog sites they’ve likely come across something like this before. I didn’t make up the above example from nothing. I’ve seen troll posts like that before. I’ve actually read a bathtub comment like that before. And, years ago before the web made it easy for people to compose an entire post of such nonsense, I’d heard sarcastic little šhìŧš who thought themselves shocking and provocative say stuff like that in a conversation.
The net has two great failings when it comes to social interactions.
It has (1) made it far too easy for the idiots and the áššëš of the world to more or less anonymously pester more people than they ever could before. It has also given them far greater levels of “courage” than they would have ever had before because they can be as vulgar, crude, asinine, hostile or “shocking” as they want to be (and to far greater degrees than they would ever have dared to be in face to face discussions) because the absolute worst thing that they might face is getting banned from a website. And that wasn’t much of a threat because they would either come back a few more times with different registration information before having their IP blocked or they would then crow to like minded twits about how they were booted of the board because the members and moderator couldn’t handle their “truths” and towering wit and intellect. Or, if the board is like this one or Colleen’s and run by someone with some level of celebrity in their chosen field, they’ll “get even” with them by going around the web and making up bad stories about them.
This creates a problem because (2) people tend to get a bit jaded with what they’re seeing on the web. Constant exposure to trolls, chain emails, websites that deal almost exclusively in “facts” rather than facts and a steady stream fake videos about various topics tend to make most people not want to put the words “reliable” and “web” in the same sentence all that often.
Here you had a guy who it seems was, by design or by social ineptness, considered a troll by some of the people he regularly interacted with, repeatedly made statement in some level of detail about how he was going to go off and kill himself, he then took his cocktail off camera and laid their quietly on camera as the drugs did their work. Most people likely assumed he was being a trollish idiot again and I can understand why. It doesn’t make it a good thing, but it’s not as bad as, as it has been described by some, people who flat out %100 knew that he was committing suicide, watched him take the drugs and then cheered for him to die. And when some people started to worry that he wasn’t moving and that this might be real they did start trying to get in touch with authorities. Not everyone who was posting there granted, but some.
As for the people who may have thought it was real and cheered anyhow… Sad, but not new in humanity’s history. There have always been crowds of cheering onlookers for public stonings, beheadings, burnings and assorted other executions. There have always been people who thought that snuff films were the coolest things on earth and who made things like “Faces of Death” mega selling VHS tapes because they thought that they were looking at real deaths. The web just allows every town’s idiots to meet, get to know each other and get word to each other so that they can all “show up” in one place and give the appearance of there being more of them than ever.
This was not an example of mankind at its best, but it wasn’t a sign of our degenerating into a lesser or more uncivilized society either. This was just a sad example of of the occasionally perceived “unreality” of the world wide web being mixed with the same old, same old insofar as our village idiots.
Jason M. Bryant: “There’s no real decision making here, more of a negligence in decision making.”
There’s a line in the song “Freewill” by Rush that is one of the foundations of my worldview: “…if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” Whether people were consciously indifferent to the unfortunate Wal-Mart employee’s plight or caught up in a mob mentality is irrelevant. A distressing number of people put their material wants ahead of good sense and even human life. It’s as simple as that.
The webcam incident is sad, but I think is just a more public exposure of the tragedy and therefore it’s hard to judge. Imagine a 19-year old showing up at a drinking party and announcing, “I just OD’d on pills”. How many of his friends would take it seriously until he had long been unconscious? Would it even make the news? We live in a world of hyperbole (I’m gonna beat the **it out of you, I’m gonna kill him if I see him, etc, I’m gonna kill myself if they lose the playoffs) – no one ever takes it seriously. Since anything goes on the web, and the web is full of hoaxes, why would anyone believe this kid was telling the truth?
The Walmart incident I blame on Walmart, knowing there were 2,000 people swarming outside and not having the means to handle it. Even after the police arrived, the police were being trampled. Why not just shut the doors at that point? If you want business, why not offer the sale all day, instead of starting a frenzy in people desperate to make a crappy holiday memorable for their families? I see no reason why they shouldn’t be charged for starting a riot. The “sales” weren’t even worth it. If $5 pajamas and thin $5 plain hooded sweatshirts are the salvation of your holiday season, then God Bless. I despise Walmart, but since they’ve killed off every KMart, Caldors, Bradlees, Zayres, Ames, and every other comparable retailer in our area, I don’t have much choice.