My Public Apology

"Prosecution of anybody "egging him on?"

I do want prosecution of egging someone on who is suicidal. Suicide is a medical emergency like a heart attack. Inducing a heart attack in a person with poison and inducing a suicide in a person with words are the same to me.

Incitement to commit suicide should be the same as incitement to commit murder.

For what it's worth, after my brother killed himself (not on webcam, thankfully) it was humour that got me through.

I found your comment funny.

...and people think you're from New Zealand. ;-)

(Apologies to any Kiwi friends out there...I loved the semester I spent in your country. And no, I didn't see any sheepfuckers. Lots of sheep, though.)

In situations like these, people often run to the "humor helps people cope with death" excuse. Except in these situations, nobody involved is actually doing any coping, because they never had a relationship with the deceased, not even of the Princess Di sort where the relationship is one-way. Nor is the turn to humor nearly this quick among those who are genuinely coping.

Instead, these situations are almost always instances of the peanut gallery instinct run amok. We've come to naturally jeer a lot of the things we see on television (which is why MST3K was a success), and it doesn't take much to go from jeering a bad TV show to jeering the content of the news. Hence, we get the Darwin Awards, which nobody in their right mind could mistake as a coping measure. Instead, it's the death of real people used for our entertainment.

I strongly recommend reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business to get a handle on how warped our sense of reality has become in the age of television.

I'm not about to persecute tdavis for his original comment, but I also think a lot of the counter-reaction here oversteps the mark. If one is going to react to events like these at all, so soon after the event itself, they should do so with a measure of respect. Tragic events like death are considered tragic for a reason, and any attempt to sidestep that fact makes us a little less human. We've seen what happened to Rome, after all.

The apology was appropriate, and that's about all that needs to be said.

I didn't downvote, I didn't upvote, I didn't vote sideways, and I didn't vote for the down-up-vote, etc. because I just don't care. You're thinking: what a jerk! Well, I care as much about this poor soul as I do about any of the other thousands of people who died today. I am a compassionate person, but I have some gripes, so please hear me out.

I live in the UK, and for the past several weeks we've had to suffer the media being obsessed with itself over [this](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7741322.stm) and [this](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7740926.stm). They've each consumed 4 or 5 days of consecutive news headlines at the top of the bill. Politicians even get themselves involved - no doubt to disassociate themselves from having to answer real questions about their calamatous mistakes! It's a real circus, with destructive consequences, and this too is a circus, albeit a smaller one.

Yesterday I clicked on a link regarding this whole saga; it was worded with (fake) outrage over the Justin.tv CEO's notable lack of compassion from the press release. Personally I always find that press releases are great vehicles to show compassion! Anyway, right there in the middle of the screen was a very prominent screencaptured image of that boy's dead corpse. Uh, yeah, thanks for that er suicide porn. Very appropriate. Very well considered decision.

There is apparently good reason why established media don't go in to the details and gratuitous imagery of suicide that it reports - studies show that it can inspire further tragedies to take place, perhaps by indulging the fantasies of those among us who may be contemplating taking our own lives. With journalism, professional or amateur, online or offline, comes a great responsibility granted to it by a free society that shouldn't be taken lightly.

I fail to understand why tdavis felt the need to post a "public apology" over this. I can just imagine him standing in front of a press pack, his humiliated wife by his side, trying to worm his way out of some scandal to salvage a career. It never seems credible to me when people retract something they've said - why didn't you just say that you acknowledge that you have a dark and twisted sense of humour and that you won't apologise for it?

I thought HN was supposed to be a community of tech oriented entrepeneurs collecting relevent content, but judging by the cumulative editorial process that I've witnessed lately it seems to be descending into becoming nothing more than just another category of foxnews.com.

Now, you can release the hounds and I'll just stand here.