The Media Zone

How the media make sense and nonsense of the world

Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. is Senior Editor of the Journal of Media Psychology and Emeritus Professor of Media Psychology at Cal State, Los Angeles. See full bio

November 21, 2008, Depression

Comments on "The Not So Strange Case of Abraham K. Biggs"

The Not So Strange Case of Abraham K. Biggs

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on November 21, 2008 in The Media Zone

Suicide Online is going to be, I fear, a staple of the 21st century. It's not quite snuff movie material but it's close to it, i.e., offing oneself rather than offing someone else. I use the dramatic, disrespectful term "offing" because, to a certain extent, what we're seeing is the exploitation of social interaction sites to exhibit oneself in a final act of finding relief. Read More

It is increadibly sad that

Submitted by Kim on November 21, 2008 - 6:21pm.

It is increadibly sad that people use the internet for this purpose when it can be used as a tool to reach out to others and ask for help, not stage a suicide. This screams of desperation and attention-getting. I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the kid or be annoyed with his blatent appeals to get attention in such a negative way.

abraham biggs attention-getting

Submitted by Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on November 21, 2008 - 9:07pm.

I think, Kim, it's totally possible and quite appropriate to feel both sorry and annoyed. I had earlier written several blogs on the value of the Internet for people who need to reach out and talk about their pain, their ideation and then find people who understand and share and quite often find another way to think about their situation and come up with strategies to cope and go beyond their psychological "stuckness." That's one of the upsides of the Internet and all its diverse forums, blogs, social networks, information sites, etc. But like any tool, it can be used for all the wrong reasons. We live in an age of celebrity. Regretfully, suicide can be seen as a road to that fleeting celebrity. I certainly feel huge sympathy for those who loved Abraham and perhaps didn't see this coming. The world now knows a still picture of this young man's death, but has no grasp of the moving picture that was his life. That's the danger of this sort of cruel celebrity--time collapses into one dramatic moment but leaves a one-dimensional after-image.

i do agree that the media is

Submitted by farouk on November 22, 2008 - 3:17am.

i do agree that the media is not 100% responsible but i still can never say that they don't carry a big part of the responsibility

responsibility

Submitted by Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on November 22, 2008 - 3:44pm.

Farouk, if you believe that is true would you please offer instances where that would be true. Outside of fashion, which is designed to change people's preferences so as to get them to keep changing their minds about what looks good so people will discard what they used to like for a new round of buying what they now should like, what evidence is there that the media cause people to kill themselves when they had no inclination to do such a thing prior to expsoure to a media message? The same for killing others. There are certainly a few basket cases who listen to an anger-arousing radio talk show personality who then wants to go out and assassinate Obama, but these people are already angry and hateful, with histories of violence and are just looking for an excuse to do what they've been thinking about doing. And alcohol or drugs usually are involved to grease the slide into violence. In other words, for these serious deeds -- suicide and murder -- media only plausibly factor into the equation of "causal connections when there is a fertile ground of predisposition or opportunism. I'm thinking, as examples, of the slaughter seen in religious or tribal genocidal acts in Africa,the Middle East or Eastern Europe, to name but a few more recent arenas where hate propaganda spills out of the popular media and blood runs in the streets.

He wasn't shown Taliban VS Russians decapitation vids.

Submitted by Charles-A. Rovira on April 27, 2009 - 6:13pm.

He would have been motivated to either strive for getting the most he could out of life or he would have shoved a dynamite stick up his *ss and went out with a messy, bloody bang, captured on his web cam.

You either compete in life or in death.

Or you say "Screw this" and don't bother to compete.

He was competing but didn't know who was winning.

He's just going to go into the ground like everybody else and he won't have made any difference to anybody.