14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday morning, Paul Zolezzi, an aspiring male model, committed suicide in the Brooklyn Park in New York, after leaving a suicide note on Facebook, the latest event in a growing trend of announcing one's death via social network websites. The 30-year-old was found hanging on the monkey bars of a playground, in the Mount Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Several hours before taking his own life, he wrote a post on popular website Facebook, hinting at his intentions.
“Born in San Francisco, became a shooting star over everywhere, and ended his life in Brooklyn… And couldn't have asked for more,” his final words said. Instead of writing a regular suicide note, addressed to his family and friends, he just updated his status on the site, on which, according to some of his friends, he had in the past posted several depressed messages of the same nature. Stephanie Zolezzi, Paul's mother, told The Pose newspaper that her son had some success in his desired career, but that he missed his chance at “fame and fortune,” and turned to heroin a while back.
“Paul is wondering, what unspeakable act did I do in a previous life to deserve this one?” or “Paul is going to be the first person ever to hang himself on the way out of Portland! Everything here sucks!” are just two examples of posts the man previously posted on Facebook. Yesterday morning, after he had posted his note, hinting at suicide, one of his friends replied “Are you dying? or just staying brooklyn? I hope it's the latter.” But, by that time, Zolezzi had already left the house and was on his way to the park.
Over the past couple of years, social media websites have become a very congested place, where people from all around the globe meet to discuss various problems, to exchange information, pictures, video clips and whatnot. But because some depressive people on them spend so much time in front of their computers, they lose touch with reality and find it hard to talk about their problems with real people. Thus, they turn to their online friends, which may not be the brightest idea.
Hiding behind anonymity, those browsing various social media sites can at times give cruel advice, or even enjoy the sufferings of others, as proven by a case we reported on earlier, of the Florida teen who committed suicide in front of his webcam, while people were encouraging him to take more pills.