Swedish Man Commits Suicide Live on the Internet

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.

This is one Hell of a strange video! This is one of the few videos available of people who have actually committed suicide live on the Internet. Not a lot is known about the victim. This incident occurred very recently, only in the past few weeks, but for some reason, not much has been heard about it. The live suicide occurred on October 13, 2010, only one month ago. The lack of information about the incident is mostly because not much has been written about it in English. Apparently the best write-ups on it were in Swedish.

This is what happened:

A young Swedish man, Marcus Janis, 21, a resident of Soldertaj, south of Stockholm, went to a presumably Swedish language social networking site which has not been named. He set up his video camera, then announced his intention to commit suicide, even listing the various reasons why he was going to do it. Janis lived alone, was lonely, had poor social skills, and suffered from sort of autistic disorder, possibly Aspergers.

Wearing a shirt creepily entitled "Just Do It," he sets up a rope from the ceiling, and then crouches on the floor next to a wall and puts his neck around the rope. Then he pulls on the rope until he dies. The whole thing is over very quickly, only in a few minutes. 100's of users were watching him commit suicide while he was doing it.

The suicide itself is surprisingly banal. The most important even in our lives other than our births is often so banal it is nearly boring. I had never seen someone die before until recently I watched someone die in front of me. I always thought I would be terrified to see such a thing, but when I saw it, it is surprisingly banal, almost boring. I pointed this out to the attended folks and they did not want to hear that.

So it is with this suicide. He puts the rope around his neck, pulls, and quickly his face becomes a very deep red. This is how he dies. There is no struggle or expression as he dies peacefully. After a while, his face changes from deep red to pale white. This means that he is dead. His face is changing to the ghostly paleness of death. The video ends with chaotic footage of police rushing in to the scene, only to find him dead.

Janis published his plans to kill himself on his Facebook site, creepily enough. He also called a friend and told him of his plans. The friend called Janis' sister, who called Janis' home, but there was no answer. They went to the apartment, but they could not get in as the door was locked. The called the authorities, and police came. Emergency services broke down the door and tried to save his life, but their efforts were futile.

Very sad story all around!