Driven To Suicide

The suicide of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, the super bright Rutgers student, who's private gay sex romp in his own dorm room was secretly filmed and displayed on the Internet by a roommate and another twisted soul is a sad commentary on technological excess and moral emptiness. His suicide is the latest in a series of incidents in which a young person appears to have been driven to kill him/herself by online humiliation.

The internet is not the problem here so much as that technology has provided an avenue for some to lose sight of common decency. We have movies (American Pie) that glorify these types of behaviors, reality TV, where people are constantly filmed doing and saying things that no "real," decent person would want on television. But for 15 seconds of fame many will do anything. It's why when asked why reality TV participants are asked their reason for humiliating themselves. Most answer "To be famous. For them, being famous for "nothing" seems better than keeping dignity.

In some twisted way the roommate who secretly filmed the sex romp felt showing it world-wide on the net was acceptable, even amusing. Destroying a life became secondary to the acting out of the "reality" mode of behavior. They call it "cyberbullying" but by any name it is a vacuous moral state and I wonder if our increasingly savvy technology is making it easier to act as badly as the two who "outed Clementi. We have four ruined lives, one dead student, two who outed him and will forever live with the scares (and I hope, a long prison term) and the "other" man in the film that was shown on the net.

When society lowers its standards and gives personal freedom to the extent it has been given it spirals downward. For today the technology has been given without a code of etiquette and ethics to accompany it. We have huge cookie jars filled with goodies and no mommy to regulate how much we eat.

This always brings to question whether or not some believe technology excuses us from some of the long treasured social mores. Is it ok to behave differently (less respectful of others) when using a phone, behind a computer, or with camera in hand? And why would any decent person watch such a video that the two showed? Do we have less obligation to act morally if only spectator? Surely, the millions of idiots who adore the reality TV genre would have to think long and hard to answer "No".. for their behavior seems to indicate the opposite.

The sad aspect to the story of the suicide is that fault lies not in our technology, but in ourselves. And it's a whole lot harder to improve humans.