Cyber-suicide.

Something old: woman poses as an e-love interest to a girl who was mean to her daughter in order to get some revenge in a breakup. The girl kills herself, and the woman gets off without felony charges.

Something new: a 19 year old Florida resident hangs himself while streaming video of himself live, while commenters cheer him in on his attempts to kill himself.

Now, on to the nut-meat.

It seems that there are several issues here. Especially since some people seem to not even understand what causes people to become suicidal. And, clearly, there are quite a few who manage to feel zero empathy for them. So, I will address that first.

I cannot speak on the subject authoritatively, but only speculatively, in what I understand about the nature of depression, and its relation to suicide. Depression is a sadness distinct from the normal emotion, in that it lacks the normal connections and context that makes sadness a healthy response. It is not a reaction to a given event, its duration are far more outstretched, even if its intensity is no greater than a person's normal sorrows. It is comparable to chronic joint pain, with the normal emotion being similarly compared to, say, a sprained ankle.

Why does this distinction matter, you may ask? Because these long stretches of mild to moderate depression can be psychologically taxing to a degree that incredible, but short-term sadness, cannot be. People most often commit suicide while on an upswing after reaching the depths of a depressive episode. Why only after? Because they are depressed too bother killing themselves beforehand. To that degree, suicide is an interestingly paradoxical blend of emotions: it is frenzy after a bout of laziness, it is exasperation at being exhausted, it is a hatred of yourself for always being stifled by sadness in the a period where you are finally free from sadness enough to take your own life away, unimpeded.

For those that wonder why teenagers who have no real perceivable problems commit suicide over seemingly trivial things, that is why. It is about an escape from a cycle of melancholy that isn't attached to events like most people tend to experience sadness. And, in the case of the less cited cases in which it is the elderly killing themselves off, it may be an escape from actual, chronic physical pain (less common in teenagers, though to a small degree it could be a contributing factor to depression).

Now, for the first case, the woman who teased a girl online and accidentally caused the girl to kill herself. Let me just say that I think it was incredibly petty of this mother to do this, but she also did not realize that it would result on a girl killing herself. In fact, considering the nature of a suicidal individual, who usually is not responding to any one event, but the perception that their entire life is crappy, when deciding to kill themselves, it is hardly fair to blame the mother for inadvertently pushing this girl over the edge. It is tragic, but it would hardly be predictable for anyone who wasn't more closely familiar with her (she, at 13, was diagnosed with depression and on antidepressant medication).

The second case brings up the fact that many people plot suicides online (as well as bringing up the ridiculous fact that suicide and suicide attempts are illegal in most places in our country). And, I am sure that anyone who has seen one of those threats to commit suicide have seen the typical internet tough guy responses. Namely, goading the person to go through with it, or verbally brushing them off and dismissing them. This is almost understandable, however, when the amount of these threats made lightly (or without direct results, at least) are high.

And then there are responses to actual suicides. Genuine pity, morbid jokes, indifference, deeming the person who killed themselves to have been mentally weak (and thus, deserving the fate they brought upon themselves), or outright contempt for the person who did so, for failing to consider the feelings of those they left behind. Sometimes it is a combination. But it is the latter four that can become the most disgusting, given the standard tendency of internet commenters towards idiocy, arrogance, and misinformed hatred, all just to maintain a false veneer of bravado and superiority. It is a sad reflection of the more regrettable inner thoughts of a populace who would be far more sympathetic if they could just see a human face.

Needless to say, I don't approve. But, I also feel that people who are trying to determine whether they should live or die according to whether notoriously rabid and moronic internet folk care about them are more or less condemning themselves to a death sentence due to their own ignorance, rather than just due to uncontrolled feelings of worthlessness. This, I also do not approve of.