The Internet Did Not Kill Your Daughter

CNN.com – Parents: Online newsgroup helped daughter commit suicide – Nov 10, 2005

19 year old decides she wants to commit suicide. She, like any smart person of her generation, decides to research it and invariably finds the topic she wishes to know more about on the internet. The group, called ASH for alt.suicide.holiday, is made up of people who support and research methods for suicide. She posts 100 messages in 9 weeks. In a somewhat group collaboration (that is, after all, what the internet is all about) she outlines her entire plan for suicide. She carries it out, as planned. Parents are outraged!

Now, there are two types of people that want to commit suicide. The first type is your emo that doesn’t want to die and is just depressed and wants to cry out for help, attention, or because suicide is “cool” somehow. They [b]attempt[/b] suicide, or talk and think about it, but rarely carry it out. They don’t even bother to find out the best way.

The second type genuinely wants to commit suicide. They research it, find the tools to do it, and then actually do it. These people, in their minds, have genuine reasons they want to die. Whether they are appropriate to us as a society is another question (and whether that even matters is yet another). This girl is in the second category.

Look, the group did not brainwash your daughter into committing suicide. She obviously wanted to commit suicide before she came there. They helped her achieve her goal. If anyone is to blame it is either the person who commits suicide (for the hurt they cause their loved ones) or people who wanted her to live and said nothing. The group on the internet consists of people in neither of these categories.

Religious consequences aside, I have a hard time figuring suicide as the fault of anyone except the person committing suicide. She was 19 years old after all, old enough to make her own decisions, under the law.

This is the kind of BS reporting that makes the old men in congress want to create laws making sure this doesn’t happen again. No thanks. I would gladly pay a few 19 year old girls who want to commit suicide as a price for my unencumbered freedom of speech on the internet.