I think it's time for a little real talk:
http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=11763784
This Rutgers kid that committed suicide by jumping off a bridge after his roommate spied on him - does anyone else read this and think "wait, he killed himself? Over THAT? Get the fuck out of here."
I'm not saying that what the roommate did is ok, it's deplorable and illegal. But, to kill oneself over it? Why not confront him or talk to an authority figure. Fuck it, just call the guy out and switch rooms. There are mechanisms in place to deal with this kind of shit via University authorities or law enforcement. Again, what the kid did was illegal, it can be dealt with through multiple channels. Furthermore, it's college, not prison. People swap rooms all the time for far less significant reasons.
If you can't handle the realities of life and choose suicide instead, it's hard to feel that bad about it.
In other words: If you kill yourself over a tweet, then I find it difficult to feel sympathetic.
That concludes today's real talk.
because the kid was gay and probably already feels ostracized by society and this just made it even more strong and embaressing.. because you literally knew that everyone on campus that looks at you knows.. or at least feels that way.. and its humiliating and embaressing and at its apex it might just be too much. you can apply the 'you can figure it out' to any suicide though
i dont know if your 'real talk' really comes close
You hit it right on the head here, I think when it comes to issues like this, people hit a threshold that makes them think that life could never get worse even if it is just for a moment, we all can say it will get better and ultimately it would have, but this kid was at the lowest point in his life.
it's still sad, yo...i don't see how you can't feel for the guy at least a little. and swap rooms? that wouldn't change the existence of the video. i'm not saying he should have killed himself though.
While of course there is no way to know what is going through another person's mind, I think the issue here was that he was a closeted homosexual and his roommate outed him to the world. At least that's the way I read it. None of his family knew he was gay (according to the reports so far) and I'm certain this wasn't the way he wanted them to find out.
Agreed on the lack of coping skills, though. Suicide is a very permanent solution to a temporary problem.
My heart goes out to the kid's family.
My understanding is that he didn't post video online, but rather would have shown it to someone live if they IM'd him via iChat (which has a video chat feature.) Yes, he's a fucking asshole who broke the law and should be reprimanded. But, killing oneself over that is bullshit. He didn't even face being 'out,' he chose suicide before even seeing what life would be like without having to hide his identity.
I'm sorry he killed himself, but come on now, we all have problems and fears but most of us choose to deal with them in more productive ways than that.
Very screwed up situation- this kid certainly had other options (switch dorms, switch universities, etc.) but couldn't cope with this outing in a very public way.
Very tragic, and yes he could have handled it differently (and if he did so then this story wouldn't have made it outside the kid's floor in his dorm), but he didn't and would be cautious in assigning too much blame on the kid...
king i think youre trying to relate it to something else in your mind or personal experience and saying its not that bad but im pretty sure its nowhere near the same.
No, i'm definitely not. I'm not belittling what the dumbass roommate did. I'm saying that there were many avenues to take to solve the problem. Many solutions that would've fixed things for the better.
Also, yes, he was outed, but the dipshit on Twitter had like 100 followers. It isn't like Bill Simmons was linking the shit. Suicide is not the answer.
Yeah, Suicide is not what should of happened. Murder-Suicide at the very least. Let some mother fucker try and pull a prank on me like this and see what happens. That kid would be breathing out of a straw.
You and I both know that is bullshit honeybun.
I don't know about anyone else, but if someone did that to me, I'd fucking castrate him. I mean shit, I know where the fucker sleeps. At the very least I could gut him in his sleep.
Sometimes revenge is the best dish served at any temperature.
Way to be insensitive. Forgetting the legal issues here, but your "real talk" realy doesn't come close to being real.
This is not about coping with the realities of life. This is about dealing with the ramifications of some intrusive scumbag who effectively ruined your entire life. Thanks to the intenret, this could have haunted the kid whereever he went. It's not that the guy who ran his iChat did it once (and I believe he did it intentionally the first time), he actively did it again and broadcasted that he would be doing it again over Twitter, negating any sense of accidental revelation. This is something that can scar someone and no amount of therapy could resolve the situation. The kid was outted by someone that had no right to make the decision for him and once you're out, you can't go back in.
There are issues like sexuality, particularly at a large school like Rutgers, is a big deal for people to cope with. Dealing with your sexuality while at a large, public institution can't be the easiest thing to deal with. If someone decided to out you, people will know quickly, particularly on a hot button issue like this. Something like switching dorms or universities might not work for whatever reason. Switching dorms doesn't make the problem go away and you're assuming that the kid could pay for out of state tuition to Rutgers in full. He might have been there on scholarship or, something a bit more plausable, he was there because in-state tuition to Rutgers was reasonable.
Where I went to school, when something big happened, people knew well before it was broken by our local news. With that kind of a public revelation, the word can spread quickly and damage reputations no matter who you are. I could think of a few people I went to school with that if something like that happened, it would have destroyed them.
Once something's online, it's out there forever. You can't take that shit back. You can't hit a reset button. It's the nature of the beast.
First of all, where did you go to college? Bob Jones University? How was his entire life ruined? You are essentially implying that his actual identity (a gay man) in and of itself is life ruining. But, furthermore, he didn't even find out what his life would be like. He didn't even try and face life after it happened.
I fail to see how being out of the closet would ruin his life - it's something he will have to face eventually. And in this case, there were many more options than KILLING HIMSELF which is a shit way to handle life's hardships.
Neither of these kids should have done what they did. Its a shitty situation for everyone involved.
Remember that episode of south park where Cartman puts his dick in Butters mouth and takes a pic and then it gets flipped on him. hahah
Who the fuck tapes their gay roommate hooking up with dudes? The other kid is a freak. Could we please have his name and information? A little internet help is what is needed.
+1 on this, who the fuck thinks that's funny or cool?
Apparently there was a girl involved too, found a pic of them: http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/8926464-large.jpg
[quote=Jorgé] Apparently there was a girl involved too, found a pic of them: http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/8926464-large.jpg[/quote]
love the dual head tilts...
Prayers to the kid's family. Wake up call to the rest of us about being too sensitive.
I don't know about most of you, but from what I've seen any significantly large university most if not all of the students don't give a rat's ass anymore if you're gay or not.
And from the New York Times version of the article apparently he was already somewhat out of the closet so there's really no reason to take such extreme actions.
People in the US are so caught up with all the legal matters...it was simply a prank by the roommate, people I know do much worse things as pranks but it's all for shits and giggles and everybody just plans more elaborate pranks the next time around.
Althought the kid made a bad decision, R.I.P
No one gave a flying FUCK about whether or not you were straight or gay at my school. If you were a tranny, you might get a look (I think we might have had one of them), but otherwise, no one gave a shit. It's college, not prison. People are spinning this in such a way that you'd think the dumbass prank-artist threw the kid off the GW bridge.
the kid who taped it will hopefully go to jail
Yup. Bob Jones University.Mmhm....
I went to a state school with a student body of ~35,000 on the campus I was at. When 10% of the student body is involved in one organization in some way shape or form, the univeristy becomes a much smaller place. My school was a veritable case of 6 degrees of seperation, where you tended to have a Kevin Bacon number of 4 with most other classmates. Things spread even if it is only a small group of people within the initial group. Humans are social beings by nature and discression is not always kept.
I am not implying nor ever actually stated that his actual identify as a gay man ruined his life. I am implying, however, that because of what his roommate did, he was forced to confront a private issue in a very public way. He was forced to confront his sexuality in such a massive way, that even if he was privately open about this, his private life was now thrown out for the world to see and comment on regardless of whether he was cool with it or not. The kid may have been open within a small group of people, but the fact is, he had to confront the situation of his roomate, his roomate's 100 twitter followers and another girl on his floor/building/on campus now knowing something personal about him. There is a certain degree of comfort that needs to be there if you don't know someone. The same degree of comfort needs to be there even if it's someone you've worked with for the last 10 years. People don't openly discuss sexuality because, as a society, we view an open discussion of it as taboo. What is said in private does not always need to be revealed in public. How many people do you know where you work that are openly gay? What about those in the closet? How can you be certain they are? This guy could have kept his sexuality under wraps and lived a perfectly normal life without having to confront the fear of more than his closest friends and family knowing.
Not everyone is extremely cool with people knowing whether or not you are openly gay or not. I can think of one of my coworkers who is open about his homosexuality yet when I first met him he was more afraid about me knowing because of my religion and than was the case. It took us six months until he became comfortable enough to openly say he was gay around me without fearing me being an insensitive prick. Look at Hollywood. How many actors in Hollywood are not necessarily open about their sexuality because, despite being privately open about it, it is something they don't want the entire world to know.
Of course you don't see how being out of the closet would ruin his life. You are, as I presume, looking at this like I am, through the eyes of a heterosexual male; an outsider looking in. This is the kind of decision that you need to mentally and emotionally be able to accept and handle before you can be open about your sexuality. Some people are never able to handle it and others have no qualms about being completely open with their sexuality. American culture still has not fully accepted the idea of a gay man. Yes, there are extremely visable figures, such as NPH and Sir Ian McKellen, and bastions of gay pride in major cities across the world, but for the most part, most people cannot deal with it. It's a byproduct of our society. They cannot deal with the knowledge that the world knows they are gay. Unless your one of the select few who is open about it and have found full on mainstream success, no one in Hollywood is gay. Being public about being out of the closet is not something he would have had to eventually face, as you put it. It's not something he would necessesarily need to be open about. If you don't want the world to know your gay and all of a sudden the bombshell is dropped without your knowledge, how would you actually react to the inital shock?
King, you said it best that no one gives a rats ass, but that's also because no one goes out of their way to make the world aware of it. You assume that everyone is rational and level headed, but people are not. We are, by nature, irrational, emotional and human. We have egos like everyone else, and when someone is subjected to a state of emotional flux, like having your sexuality revealed to a bunch of random strangers, any rationality you have is thrown out the window. People freak out at change, and prank or not, there are just some things that cross the from a prank to a reprehensible action. The moment the roommate realized what was goind on and continued to both record and post on twitter about this he crossed that line and forced this kid to confront a change that he may have never needed to confront publicly.
Someone should Scott Tenorman that roommate. This whole thing is awful, which doesn't mean I can condone suicide, but let's show some sensitivity here.
I am sure this is no condolence, but I am pretty sure the fucker who did this prank is suffering a lot of misery right now. Having your photo poster in papers as basically a anti gay asshole who pushed a kid to the point of suicide cannot bode well for ones career.
Nobody gives a shit if you're gay or not anymore, what are we in the 80s or early 90s? Yea it was invasion of privacy, yea it's illegal and yea he might have faced a sudden shock for the whole school knowing he was outted. It wasn't such a big secret to begin with, the kid was in an orchestra playing the violin or whatever, I mean come on! It's sad that he chose that path, and I can't imagine what it must feel like for his parents to lose him... i feel worst for them especially. The kid that posted it was an idiot and unfortunately pulled a prank on a very insecure, unstable kid so his reward is his own public outting as someone who is insensitive and anti-gay... although it makes you wonder why he'd want to see his roommate make out with another dude.
If you read up on this, the kids face wasn't even on the video. Abovethelaw.com has a good write up on the situation.
You're right. Very eye-opening. The kid was aware his roommate did it and wasn't all that upset about it. Even said (and I quote), "I mean aside from being an asshole from time to time, he’s a pretty decent roommate…"
Check it out:
http://abovethelaw.com/2010/09/invasion-of-privacy-or-college-prank-gon…
Not excusing the behavior by any means, but I have to agree with the author that if the kid hadn't chosen to throw himself off a bridge, this wouldn't even be news.
Just read the AboveTheLaw article. Glad to see someone looking at this with the right state of mind.
I'm curious, since the kid who was video-taped wasn't going at it with himself, what about the other guy involved? I've heard nothing of him. Surely he has the same claims to invasion of privacy as the kid who jumped off the bridge.
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