Last week I received an email, a forwarded mail from some concerned individual forwarded by a friend of a friend, things like that are common among the virtual world of internet, but not this message. It contains a URL of a post from multiply.com titled suicide@trinoma. Upon clicking the said link, I was appalled and sickened by what I saw. The site contains a post of 9 pictures apparently taken from a cell phone of a sick individual, brandishing a dead man who committed suicide by jumping from a building. Blood splattered all over the place. The picture is obviously in its amateur state, trying to capture the entire angle as possible with its limited depth and scope, yes it didn’t catch the full gory details of any splattering membranes, but it did catch my full sensibilities, my emotional response I feel I am being violated by this post.

I’m not trying to look and sounds like a whine-o-matic kind of thing, violence, apathy and suicide are a common thing like having a toasted bread for breakfast, but what hit my nerve is the question of where did the owner of the multiply blog gets her unnerving courage to take pictures of the splattered suicide victim’s body and post it (all 9 pictures) in the world wide web and have everyone commented on it?

I hit my keyboard at once and pound off comments on her blog. The owner of the site from what I’ve learned, is as dumb as she looks, from a profile which she admits that she’s a brat--in her youthful glory claiming that she’s just sharing what she saw, a noble intention? Well guess what, the road to hell is always paved with good intentions!

We took turns debating about it, I posted three or four replies and asking her to answer all my questions on how did she got the nerve to do it, none of my questions and challenges reciprocates decent answers, instead of answering intellectually and rising up to the challenge of proving the merits of her act, she resorted into trivial matters and bickering. What can you expect?

And to make matters worst, comments from her post says that they have copied the pictures and posted it too. Damn world we live in! Where these people do came from? What do these youth nowadays eat? What makes their skin so thick and their skull so hard enough that sensibility, awareness, and morality can’t pass through? what are these people made of? What if that guy lying on the floor oozing with blood is their dad? And somebody took pictures of it, post it in the net and have the world to pick and comment on it?

My point exactly is RESPECT. The dead body lying on the floor obviously committed suicide, you can’t commit suicide if you’re happy and contented in this world, logic tells the guy had enough of this world, thus ending his life by way of jumping few storey above. Isn’t that enough humiliation? Comments from that post tells how coward the guy is, as if adding more insult to the injury—I just can’t imagine if one of his (the dead guy) relatives or his daughter gets to read and saw the pictures of this post.

These people and the owner of the blog really don’t understand what moral responsibility is, I’m not trying to play hero, or moral guardian of the net—I’m just a father who tries to exercise my conscience a little bit everyday in a world where having a conscience is a luxury.

In relation with our debate, I happened to stumble upon an article from FORBES magazine, a leading business and financial publication in its October 15 issue titled ANONYMITY AND THE NET. It’s a cover story about how the net and the anonymity of the people behind it use the freedom of expression into a much sicker and evil doings.

Bear with me, the story goes like this:

An 18 year old girl, Nicole goes out of the house violating her father’s rule not to leave, taking the old man’s car and speeding away from where she intended to be, the girl met a freak accident—a gruesome one. One witness account says she was speeding at 100 mph.

Death was sudden and instantly, but it didn’t end there, gruesome police photos of the scene somehow made it to the internet, her mangled body still on the driver’s seat splattered all over blogs and forums around the world. It showed up on Google and Yahoo, even on Photobucket and Myspace and to 1,500 more outposts. Chat rooms had a great time talking about the scene and calling the dead young girl names such as “spoiled rich girl” who “deserve it.”

Some are not contented, even posting photos of the scene and adding mocking commentaries of some sort. Cropping the picture and making it look larger with a comment of: "What's left of my brain here: As you can see, there wasn't much."

Cruel world indeed.

If we could only try to be a little sensitive even just a minute a day, things will be a lot easier. The wide world web is not a license for anyone to do such cruelty to others, hiding behind the mask of anonymity, knowing that no one knows you while you recklessly wreck havoc in somebody's life intentionally or not happens all the time, and a lot of people get away with it. Yes they can get away with it at least in this world but knowing there’s somebody up there almighty, who sees all things happening, will someday have the final hand on all these matters, and be the judge of it all.

And as I quote the words of that young girl’s father, I deeply sympathize with his grief and the family’s:

"Have these people ever loved?"

as of this recent entry, the owner of the multiply.com blog suicide@trinoma barred everyone from entering and viewing her post a knock of conscience finally hit her hard head? or just maybe can't get to answer those barrage of questions this writer hurled against her pathetic skull?

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