Social Suicide #2

I decided to look for follow-up on yesterdays blog post, and Twitter top trend - #RIPMaryDirectioner ...

I found that she was alive. 

Yesterday Twitter filled with love (mostly) and kind words for the teenager who had committed suicide, and now it has come to light that her sister did whatever the Twitter version of 'frape' is, and made her followers believe that she had killed herself - look to my previous post for those tweets. Which is probably the worst form of hacking by a friend that I have ever seen. From what I can piece together, Mary was travelling to Spain whilst her sister had control of her Twitter account and was oblivious to what was happening. 

Today I looked at her Twitter and found that she had recently tweeted! which is fairness I thought may always be a possibility, as I mentioned in the post, but the blog post yesterday was not just about what happened to her - but just the act of real-time suicide itself. 

Her sisters confession tweets. 

The reason why I was so unsure yesterday was the fact that her sister supposedly tweeted a friend of Mary's and confirmed her death - an unlikely action of a grieving sibling - but even still I found it even more unlikely that a sister would pretend her sibling had died. I find it outrageous. I grew up as one of four children (that has since expanded) and we fought a lot - but whenever I was being bullied my siblings were always there for me - something like this is just unimaginable to me. I know also that Mary isn't just pretending that her sister did it - I checked her sisters account, she tweeted that she was sorry. 

Mary has now reportedly been unfollowed and had people send her insults and say that she is 'bullshitting' - bit harsh for an innocent girl. The people of Twitter should learn the phrase 'nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all.' and apply it to situations like these. Yesterday Twitter wished that she was alive, and today upon finding out that she is not dead - they insult her? the fact that she is alive is a good thing! Utterly short-sighted and uncalled for backlash, but tomorrow Twitter will have moved on. 

Social Suicide

Exactly 2 hours ago, a Twitter user and One Direction fan-girl committed suicide and broadcast it across the world. The teenage girl who went by the username @iMaryTomlinson tweeted a goodbye to her followers, a twitter friend, and her celebrity crush Louis Tomlinson. The use of twitter was unable to save Mary as it did for a 47-year old transsexual who attempted 'real-time suicide' but it did gain her a top trend. This 'real-time' suicide is becoming a new twitter trend with these two cases not being the first I have seen. 

Mary is however the first case I have seen with the suicide actually occurring - her death was apparently confirmed by her sister to a twitter friend (though this is not certain as I struggle to believe her sisters first concern would be to tweet). 
This story is tragic and despite the majority remarking how sad it is and trending the phrase #RIPMaryDirectioner there were still those who insulted the girl and the trend. If only it was easier to locate her - all that is known from her twitter is that her first name is Mary and that she lives in Canterbury, but with only an hour between her first stating that she planned to end her life and the final tweet it would have been a difficult yet worthy mission. 


I admit myself that I think such a public suicide in any form - whether on a building top or via Twitter - is attention seeking, but there is a reason for it and it shows that they perhaps thought they had hope for themselves, whether minute or not, there was a chance - perhaps she could have been persuaded but she was reaching out to the wrong crowd it is very difficult to save a life via the 140 character world of Twitter. Though saving a life using Twitter has been achieved by Amanda Westwood (who had never met the man) - she had a longer period of time in which to find out his address and alert authorities.


Though the facts surrounding the death of Mary are so far unknown it is a tragedy, but it is also just as tragic when people speak ill of the dead and criticized the fact that it was trending - if only it trended sooner, a life could have been saved.






#RIPMaryDirectioner

Her final tweet. 

I have since written a follow up to this story which you can find here.