Tag: SUICIDE

In the part of our minds where Americans hold an image of what an Asian factory may be, there are two competing visions: fluorescent fields of chittering machines attended by clean-suited technicians, or barefoot laborers bent over long wooden tables in sweltering rooms hazed by a fog of soldering fumes. When we buy a new electronic device, we imagine the former factory. Our little glass, metal, ...

Simone Back, a charity worker living in the U.K., was depressed. She posted a Facebook status update on Christmas Day, reading, "Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one." None of Back's 1,082 Facebook friends decided to call emergency services, and some even mocked her. One of the first responses on her page read, "She ODs all the time and she lies." Back's lifeless body was discovered ...

On Monday evening, a 15-year-old boy in South Korea got into a heated argument with his mom. The mother apparently felt that her teen was spending too much time playing online video games, and scolded him. But, instead of just storming off to his room and wallowing in teenage angst, this gamer decided to take things several tragic steps further. According to police in the southeastern city of ...

The FCC takes cyberbullying very seriously -- and it wants to make sure that schools do, too. Today, the Federal Communications Commission announced that all schools receiving subsidies for Internet access must educate students on the dangers of cyberbullying, and teach them how to use social networking sites responsibly. Schools receiving federal funding under the nationwide E-rate program are ...

A school board member in Pleasant Plains, Arkansas has announced that he will step down from his position, after having faced widespread criticism for a torrent of anti-gay rants he posted on his Facebook page. Clint McCance, who served as the vice president of the Midland School District, recently spewed a slew of homophobic sentiments all over his Facebook page, in response to GLAAD's October ...

In response to the recent spate of suicides by LGBT youth, Internet users and companies have begun a series of outreach initiatives for kids being bullied because of their sexual orientation. The 'It Gets Better' campaign, begun after a Seattle couple posted a video on YouTube about how life becomes easier for gay people when they reach adulthood, has spawned hundreds of similar videos from ...

Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman, is believed to have jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate and another Rutgers student broadcast a hidden live-stream of Clementi having sex, according to WPIX. Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both 18, were charged with invasion of privacy for setting up a webcam to view an encounter between Clementi and another person on ...

In response to a suicide note sent to PostSecret, more than 32,000 people have joined a Facebook group pleading for the anonymous person to keep on living. According to Time magazine, the heart-wrenching letter was published over the weekend. It read: "I have lived in San Francisco since I was young ... I am illegal ... I am not wanted here. I don't belong anywhere. This summer I plan to jump off ...

If you ever find yourself frustrated while making photocopies or fetching coffee as a summer intern, take a moment and consider how much worse it could be: you could be an intern at Chinese news site Southern Weekend, where you could be sent on an undercover, month-long assignment in China's suicide-prone Foxconn factory (which is responsible for producing iPhone prototypes). That's exactly ...

"Get a yellow nylon rope, about eight feet. That is all you need. And look around your apartment for somewhere to hang from. I can help you with the cam when you need to." That's what William Melchert-Dinkel, a 47-year-old nurse from Faribault, Minnesota, told 18-year-old Nadia Kajouji on March 6, 2008. Kajouji, who had been chatting with Melchert-Dinkel online about her suicidal thoughts, went ...

p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } A few months ago, Google began displaying a red phone icon and the number for the poison control center whenever anyone searched for terms like "poison" or "poison emergency." The idea came from a user who complained that finding the number for poison control was too hard to find when she searched for it. So Google started automatically promoting the number to ...

While it's becoming increasingly common for people to leave suicide notes on their Facebook pages, the circumstances surrounding Stephen Garcia's death in particular still gives us the creeps. Distraught over the separation from his ex-girlfriend, the 25-year-old California native was apparently on a court-ordered visit with their 9-month-old son Wyatt when he drove to an isolated dirt trail in ...

A 17-year-old boy from outside of Buffalo, NY, has found himself in a world of trouble after he faked his own suicide over his Web cam. Though details are slim, WIVB 4 reports that the unnamed teen used blogTV (a video broadcasting service like Justin.TV or Stickam) to beam his "suicide" around the word. According to the Buffalo News, the teen used ketchup as fake blood to make it appear that ...

France's largest telecommunications company, France Telecom, has suffered through a staggering 22 employee suicides over the last year. If that isn't enough, another 13 workers actually survived failed attempts. In an interview with Reuters, company CFO Gervais Pellissier discussed exactly why he believes so many employees have been distraught and suicidal. He attributed some worker unhappiness ...

Even in raucous Internet chat rooms, there are a few lines that just aren't crossed. For example, don't joke about broadcasting your own death live on the Web. Apparently, Lockport, New York's Joseph Shepherd missed this part of Internet 101. (Or is that Common Sense 101?) According to the Daily Mail, Shepherd was arrested after allegedly pretending to commit suicide in a webcam-enabled chat room. ...