By: Ndidi Igboeli
On November 19th, 2008, 19-Year old, Abraham K. Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site, Justin.tv. He announced his intentions on bodybuilder.com. Some commentators were allegedly egging him on. Biggs overdosed on pills while on camera and appeared to be breathing for hours until watchers realized he might be serious, at which point they alerted the police. Biggs’ father subsequently condemned both viewers and the site’s operators, calling for tougher regulation of the internet.
In the context of a duty to rescue where the distressed is not physically available to be rescued, where they may be states, even miles away across a computer screen, does that duty still exist and can there still be a nation of bystanders?
Our cybersuicide innocent bystanders are technologically connected, not in space, but rather by wires and by the cyberworld. The low costs of distributing speech over the internet, plus internet anonymity, make it easy for individuals to inflict significant harm to others. The decision for anonymity may be motivated by fear of retaliation, social ostracism, or merely a desire to preserve your privacy. These interests are at odds with society’s interests in prosecuting criminals and civil tort plaintiff’s interests in locating defendants.
In The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton states that technology and bureaucracy were the preconditions to the Holocaust. Bureaucracy creates efficiency, impersonality, and drones that simply respond to orders. Technology creates specialization and professionalization, which makes us desensitized to the things that bring us moral revulsion. It allows us to have greater access to weapons, and desensitizes even children with increasing access to violent video games and toys.
Was this a true suicide?
Recent discussions of suicide tend to indicate that the majority of suicide cases now are connected with personality disorders and medical ailments. An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder. Additionally, Megan Taylor Meier was known to have suffered from low self esteem, attention deficit disorder and depression. These instances give new meaning to suicide when eggers manipulate these circumstances, resulting in death. It suggests that it is part suicide, part homicide.
Who should be held responsible?
Should the Internet website be held responsible? Allegedly, with the case of Abraham Biggs, the moderator of the bodybuilding site wherein Biggs announced his intentions ignored his words. Clearly further investigations would have to be done as to the truthfulness of that comment. If it turns out that they knew that this was happening and had the ability to intervene and did not take action, I believe that there should be a moral and legal reprimand.
The eggers cannot hide behind the cloak of assisted suicide for the right to die with dignity. Rather, they spouted what seemed to be meaningless, but inappropriate words that render them on the border of homicidal. We can never know to what extent these eggers played in causing the victims’ death, but as a matter of public policy they should certainly be morally and legally reprimanded.
Because of our sense of morality, we claim a right to criticize legal arrangements. The existence of unjust laws, the reasonable person and a non-duty to rescue proves that morality and law are not identical and do not coincide; however, the existence of law that serves to defend basic values, such as laws against rape, murder, fraud, malicious defamation of character, also prove that the two can coexist peacefully. In an effort to be active bystanders, we must reject the notion of innocent bystanders, understand the venues through which dehumanization thrives, such as technology, and endeavor to cope with moral justice as our leading principle. Duty does exist half-way around the world, and Deathcams are merely sophisticated windows into another’s reality. We do not shed our moral obligation at our chatroom’s gate.
