There are fads that I understand and there are fads that I don’t understand. The following fad falls into the latter category:
Suicide craze linked to social networking site Bebo | NEWS.com.au
THE deaths of seven young people from the same town in South Wales could be linked to a suicide craze sweeping a social networking internet site, British police believe.
Natasha Randall, 17, is believed to have become the latest victim after she was found hanged in her bedroom in her family’s Bridgend home last Thursday.
Police fear her death could be linked to six other copycat suicides in the same town, all of which appear to have been prompted by messages on networking websites.
Detectives believed many of the victims had their own web pages on the social networking site Bebo and could have been driven to kill themselves as a way of gaining prestige among their friends.
After their deaths, friends set up “memorial” websites for each of them so people could leave messages, photographs and video tributes.
“They may think it’s cool to have a memorial website,” one officer told The Times newspaper.
“It may even be a way of achieving prestige among their peer group.”
The article goes on to mention that within a day of Natasha’s suicide two of her friends tried to off themselves as well, but didn’t quite make it to fully dead status. Now they’ll never get their own memorial pages on Bebo. On the one hand it’s tragic that there are kids out there so starved for approval from their friends that that they’re literally killing themselves to get it at which point said approval is pretty much a moot point. On the other hand my first thought was along the lines of “well at least they’re only killing themselves and not trying to take out as many other people around them that they can.”
Ah, the sickening stench of angsty Teen Spirit. How I don’t long for those years!