I finished yesterday’s rather poorly-constructed entry with “I’m sure life was better in the old days” – today we had proof.
One of the big news stories concerns a 42-year-old who committed suicide, live on webcam while talking to a bunch of strangers in an internet chatroom. Now I don’t want to minimise the tragedy of this to his family and friends, and I don’t want to play down the trauma which is now undoubtedly being experienced by those who were chatting with him at the time, but there’s a reliable source that can wring comic stupidity out of any disaster: Everyone’s favourite reactionary twaddle, the Daily Mail. In a side panel to the story they dredged up such comments as:
“The tragedy highlights the dangers of internet chatrooms”
“Anyone may set up a chatroom on a website. Users frequently go under false names”
and my personal favourite…
“In recent years several inquests have heard that suicide chatrooms were visited by people who then killed themselves”
The first statement receives a resounding Gottle Raspberry Award for two reasons: Firstly it doesn’t, in just the same way that the fact he was wearing a T-shirt at the time doesn’t highlight the danger of wearing T-shirts. Secondly, what danger? There must be thousands of chatrooms around the world – they’re no more dangerous than anything else on the internet, but like anything – cars, telephones, cameras (see yesterday) or whatever, they have the potential to be misused. It’s the misusers that are dangerous, not the chatrooms.
The second statement – eh? Anyone can do it – well yes, of course they can, that’s the whole point of the internet. Users frequently go under false names – well yes, that’s consistent with the advice given to young people and other vulnerable persons, to not give away their real name online.
Remember we’re not talking about children now – adults will do what adults will do, and notwithstanding the wishes of Blair’s nanny state, you can’t protect everyone from the consequences of their own actions.
And as for statement three – leaving aside the Mail’s cleverly ignoring the fact that this wasn’t a suicide chatroom – this one MUST come from the No Sh*t Sherlock department: Suicide websites are visited by people who kill themselves? Well WHO THE HELL ELSE would visit a suicide website? And what does “several” mean? As our statistician chum Elly will, I’m sure, confirm, “several” cases – out of all the people who kill themselves – probably isn’t significant.
My heart goes out to the family of this poor man, and to the torment he must have suffered in his final hours. For the Mail to try to use his tragedy to score cheap points is vile.