Posted 6:41 AM by Blah blah

Suicide Threat

Oh my God. This guy Mr. Sparkle started a debate on RBJ about One Good Reason for Him Not to Commit Suicide!

We've never heard much from him before. I take all suicide threats VERY VERY SERIOUSLY. I cannot believe that what people tell him in this public debate may actually influence his decision to take his life.

Please show him your support! And help to find out more about him (in case we need to call the police). He is not the first person on RBJ to talk about suicide. Anna (Enygma) also posted a very suicidal entry a few weeks back. I was alarmed and wrote Carlos about it. We both wrote to her privately.

Esther, the Korean Berkeley grad, told me how in March and April 2002, two guys at UC Berkeley (my university) killed themselves within three and a half weeks of each other. In March, Nicolai Rosen suffocated himself in an office with a plastic bag. Then April 4, Kevin Hogue jumped off of a 10th-floor balcony to his death. What's more eerie: both of them had websites and wrote blogs. Both killed themselves at Evans Hall, one of the tallest buildings on campus (and thus a suicide magnet). When you know someone online and read him daily, then he's gone, it's a doubly tremendous shock. You wonder how much more you should have paid attention, should have tried to get him outside help.

PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH:
- Here's Nicolai Rosen's website. See how much he takes a "fuck the world" attitude and follows anarchists like Eric Raymond.
- A memorial page to Kevin Hogue (Stars' Pyre). Kevin Hogue's LiveJournal site. See how, just days before he did it, people would not take him seriously and mocked his depressing rants. Could that have helped drive him over the edge?

I am no stranger to suicide threats. Someone close to me threatened suicide once on a website. This was no joke. I read it and freaked out. I like to think I helped save this person.

A pretty, intelligent Taiwanese girl, Theta (YunJu Tai), whom I knew only from a series of emails we wrote each other, killed herself on Feb. 10, 2001. I've linked her website too. She was a physics student at Taiwan's top school, National Taiwan University. I wrote the whole story here and here.

Let's show support to Mr. Sparkle, everyone!