[UA] Suicide countdown

[Wade Lahoda]

On 8/18/06, Doctor Jest <doctorjest at darkdungeons.net> wrote:
> Obvious hoax.

  What makes it an obvious hoax?  Just the fact the "No one would do
such a thing?"  If that's the case...you know, I have several
acquiantances who'd probably prove you wrong.  Whether or not the
original girl /actually/ intends on commiting suicide is the debate at
the core of half of this thread...  But whether someone, upon hearing
a girl make a remark like that on her blog, would go to the trouble of
setting up a webpage just to mock her?  That sound pretty believable.
I am curious why you say it must be a hoax.

  Hoaxes on the internet make me think of a whole host of paradoxes
associated with the internet in general - it's this completely
anonymous place, where people can be completely untrustworthy - and
yet, at the same time, people are /quicker/ to trust than anywhere
else.  It creates a feeling of interconnectedness and community - and
yet these communities are composed largely of people who will never
even meet.

  Makes me wonder if I can come up with something based around the
/whole/ of the internet being a hoax...  Maybe there isn't any
internet out there at all, but just a computer program run by the
government(or someone else?) that takes in what you type - searches,
URLs, e-mails, chat messages - and performs an algorithm that spits
back at you what you expect to see, maybe with a bit of twist of what
you /want/ to see added on top("I want to be enraged","I want to be
comforted", etc).

  Unfortunately, I know in real life some of the people I talk online
with, so there goes that idea.

  Although I bet that finding out your longtime e-mail chat buddy whom
you have confided all your secrets in over the years is /actually/ a
Dr. Laura type program spitting things back at you would be worth an
Isolation check, eh?

-- 
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are
always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell