It’s true what they say: you really can find anything on the Internet – even live suicides. Members of a bodybuilding chat room witnessed Abraham Biggs, a 19-year-old college student, committing suicide in front of his webcam. He announced all the members that were online at the time that he was planning to take his life by swallowing a fistful of pills. Many of the members didn’t take him seriously and started making crude jokes – some even commented that he “didn’t take enough pills” and others egged him on. Very few people seemed worried about the teen’s intentions and tried to make him change his mind. The young man went to lie down on his bed, while the chat room users kept making jokes.
Abraham Biggs laid motionless in front of his camera, his life slowly slipping away. No one in the chat room called 911 to announce that someone had threatened to commit suicide and had taken that many pills in front of a webcam. Some of the users admitted that they didn’t take Biggs seriously as this wasn’t the first time he had announced his intentions to kill himself.
The users started to worry once they noticed that Biggs hadn’t moved in hours. The moderator of the forum was contacted, and he managed to find Biggs’ location. The forum owners and moderators called the authorities from Broward County. The police found Abraham Biggs dead in his father’s bed.
It seems that the Internet has managed to dehumanize people to a dangerous extent, as experts say that he forum users who egged the troubled teen on wouldn’t have had the same attitude if confronted face-to-face with a person trying to take his own life.
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