Woman Takes Life While Chatting on Facebook

On Monday, March 19th, Claire Lin of Taipei, Taiwan was found dead by her boyfriend after intentionally inhaling poisonous gases. Claire Lin's boyfriend, however, was not the first person to hear about Claire Lin's suicide; the nine friends she was chatting with while inhaling the fumes found out first. "Too late. My room is filled with fumes." Lin put up as her final post, continuing, "I just posted another picture. Even while I'm dying I still want FB [Facebook]. Must be FB poison. Haha." The friends who were reading pleaded with Lin to stop, or tried to track Lin down, but none called the police or alerted anyone close to Lin. This isn't the first time Facebook friends have failed to take action. A similar event occurred in Brighton, England when Simone Back posted "Took all my pills be dead soon bye bye everyone." While the post gathered 148 comments, no one thought inform those close to Back until 17 hours after he post. When questioned why people are so reluctant to respond, sociology experts cite the veil of unreality over the Internet, and that often times, people do not realize that what's happening online could be happening in real life. Readers can learn a lot from this story, but two things are: 1. Don't post false status updates about serious situations like suicide, that way when real things occur, people know it's real and 2. Don't hesitate. If someone posts a serious life-threatening post, take action and contact someone close to them.