Lifeblogging is insanity

In Florida, 19 year-old Abraham Biggs killed himself on a live webfeed in a forum while people watched and chatted about it. Apparently, he was bipolar and overdosed on drugs. He must have been in an incredibly tortured place mentally to think that killing himself was preferable to continuing to live, but the fact that he chose to do it online for a crowd of virtual voyeurs is really bizarre. It's such a nadir of web 2.0 postmodern life.

So I did some digging. Abraham Biggs had a profile on Justin.tv, a social networking site with channels of users and uploaded video content. The lifeblogging channels are actually addictive and it's curiously intimate to watch complete strangers stare blankly at a computer screen and respond to the adjacent chat window. The users chatting (giving orders) in the forum can be really funny too.

This is Trucker Cam. It's called Over The Road Truck Cam.

Trucker Cam is a live feed from the front dash of this trailer truck via a cellular modem. When I tuned in at 7:00pm on Friday, he was driving through Tulsa, Oklahoma going 60 mph and blasting DJ Tiesto. What's really terrifying is that as he's driving, he's talking back to the chatroom!

Wow, so are these the new cultural mutations from Web 2.0 into Web 3.0?