Justin.tv viewers comment as Florida authorities recover the body of a teen who committed suicide live on the  internet.
 

A 19-year-old Florida teen's suicide death broadcast Wednesday on Justin.tv was a result of an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, the Broward County Medical Examiner & Trauma Services Division said Friday.

.....

About 185 people were viewing the feed on the San Francisco-based live-streaming service. The teen had announced his pending suicide on a bodybuilding.com chat forum, which linked to the broadcast. He left an online suicide note. Viewers were seen egging him on. The chat's moderator called the authorities, Baker said, and police broke into the residence.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/11/teen-kills-self.html

 For a 19-year-old community college student in Pembroke Pines, Fla., the message boards on BodyBuilding.com were a place to post messages, at least 2,300 of them, including more than one about his suicidal impulses. In a post last year, he wrote that online forums had “become like a family to me.”

....

“I know its kinda sad,” the student, Abraham Biggs, wrote in parenthesis, adding that he posted about his “troubles and doubts” online because he did not want to talk to anyone about them in person.

 

Last Wednesday, when Mr. Biggs posted a suicide note and listed the drug cocktail he intended to consume, the Web site hardly acted like a family. On BodyBuilding.com, which includes discussions of numerous topics besides bodybuilding, and on a live video Web site, Justin.tv, Mr. Biggs was “egged on” by strangers who, investigators say, encouraged him to swallow the antidepressant pills that eventually killed him.....

 

“The anonymous nature of these communities only emboldens the meanness or callousness of the people on these sites,” Mr. Cole said. “Rarely does it bring out greater compassion or consideration.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/us/25suicides.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1227625255-ZKF2Gzf5U328rBMBbyJlCQ