Are You Sure You Want to Quit the World? (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Are You Sure You Want to Quit the World? (2011)

gq.com

63 pointspmcpinto21 comments

Not a fan of these lengthy "storytelling" articles so I stopped reading and did a quick search.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Francis_Melchert-Dinke...

I've been suicidal on and off at various points in my life. Luckily I never got involved with these kinds of communities online, as I thought they might exacerbate the issue.

How is that these psychopathic people get lighter punishments for killing people for fun, than people get for taking drugs privately or stealing money to survive?

This is another reminder to be weary of strangers you meet online.

Indeed, and wary, too. On a more serious note, my sister found such a community and they helped her to commit suicide. It does happen.

Mathematically, it seems that 99% of peole in these communities must be snuff predators, since everyone who isn't is dead.

It's depressing that internet makes it so easy for a person with a mental disorder to give advice and lure confused teenagers and minors. I wonder if there's anything we can do, short of censoring internet itself.

I don't think there is anything "to do," just accept it as a casualty of life/the freedom of the internet.

From 2011. Perhaps title should reflect this.

Also, alt.suicide.holiday is a Google discussion group? Sigh.

Indeed! If you think alt.suicide.holiday is a Google group, please, don't quit the world --- but do quit Usenet. Thanks!

Thanks, year added.

Update is from 2014 that his conviction was overturned.

"ASH [alt.suicide.holiday] began as a Google discussion group"

... stopped reading at this. Do your damn research. Also, get off my lawn.

I think you'd be surprised at the number of people who have no idea about what usenet is. Dejanews still lives on in google discussion groups, and that may be the reason why it is mentioned as such, the reporter may very well realize this is not factual but does not want to spend 3 paragraphs explaining what usenet is, what it's rather complex ancestry is and where it ended up today.

It's a white lie. I read the article to the end, and it is actually a lot better than you'd think from that one basic mistake in the beginning.

it doesn't take three paragraphs. here, watch this: "ASH began as an internet discussion group about why suicide rates increase over the holidays,"

To view this, pick your poison: pay them or subject yourself to a security risk (i.e. disable adblocking).

I had no problem accessing the article. I'm using uBlock Origin.

Works fine with uBlock Origin (I use some filters in addition to the default ones such as "Anti-Adblock killer, that could play a role).

For this site, you can simply load with Javascript disabled and then disable CSS.

Just disable/delete this element: <div id="abnm" class="abnm-modal show">

This article was a morbid piece of shock journalism, the kind of thing you'd read for the same reasons that you can't stop looking at a gruesome car crash. So I'm actually pretty happy that I was able to remove the nag message in Firebug and read the article with my ad blocker turned on. I would regret it if GQ made money off of my visit and used that money to write more articles like this.

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