Suicide Club

The internet is still evil! Not only does it corrupt your children by serving them up porn, and allow paedophiles into their bedrooms via instant messengers and social networking sites, but now it is actually killing them, too! At least this is what the media would have you believe. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever (other than that the victims might have been members of mySpace), the press decided that a spate of teenage suicides in Wales were linked to the net. Online suicide pacts! Internet suicide communities! Hysterical headlines and ludicrous speculation followed. Apparently, in addition to those chatrooms full of child molesters waiting to groom kiddies unfortunate enough to stray into them, the message boards devoted to recruiting terrorists and sites promoting eating disorders, there are also whole online communities geared up to help young people top themselves. Even worse, they actually encourage them to take their own lives.

Now, quite why anybody would conspire to do such a thing, and, in particular target the young people of a specific small town, is beyond me. But hey, this is the wonderful paranoid world of the British tabloids we're talking about. Having said all that, I do recall that in You Only Live Twice (the novel, not the film), Blofeld has gone totally bonkers and has set up a 'suicide garden' on a Japanese island, to which all manner of morbid types flock in order to take their own lives. So, I suppose there could be some super-rich, completely insane super-villain out there with a grudge against Bridgend. Nevertheless, on balance I find these stories ludicrous. Quite frankly, it would be more credible if the papers were to suggest that the teens of Bridgend were being targeted by a Freddie Kruger-style demon, who is driving them all to suicide. (Perhaps he's the vengeful ghost of some poor bugger driven to take his own life by the anti-social behaviour of local youths).

OK, so if not the work of an evil web genius, could there be online 'suicide societies' created on social networking sites by like minded souls? It's possible, but unlikely. From a purely practical point of view, it would be pretty difficult to keep such groups going - membership would be in rapid and permanent decline. (Perhaps that explains the reported decline in Facebook memberships?) All of this media speculation ignores the simple fact that all the victims of this so-called 'suicide cluster' lived in Wales. Not surprisingly, Wales has a higher than average suicide rate. Having been there, I can fully understand that. Even worse, they didn't live just anywhere in Wales, they lived in Bridgend. For God's sake - have you ever been there? So there you are, these tragic events most likely have cock-all to do with that evil internet. Frankly, I don't know why all those online evil-doers don't just get together to create a really effective threat - they could groom kiddies to become a new force of very thin suicide bombers...