Woman commits suicide on Facebook
A depressed charity worker killed herself as Facebook users mocked a suicide note she left on the social networking website.
The Daily Mail reports that so-called Facebook ‘friends’ of Simone Back responded with cruel messages after she posted a message that read: ‘Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one.’
One user replied calling her a liar who ‘overdoses all the time’ while another said it was ‘her choice’.
Miss Back, 42, is thought to have been dying of an overdose as the messages were posted on Christmas Day.
Miss Back’s friend, Samantha Owen, said: ‘Everyone just carried on arguing with each other on Facebook like it wasn’t happening. Some of those people lived within walking distance of Simone.’
Yesterday Miss Back’s mother demanded to know why none of her daughter’s 1,082 Facebook friends tried to save her. Jennifer Langridge, 60, said: ‘Nobody told me anything about it until the following day when I was sent a text saying “Get help”.’
After the discovery of Miss Back’s body on Boxing Day, Mrs Langridge posted a message on her daughter’s page: ‘My daughter Simone passed away today so please leave her alone now.’
Miss Back, from Brighton, is thought to have had relationship troubles.
A spokesman for the site insisted the safety of its users was of ‘paramount importance’.
Just shows the value of friendship in modern Britain. A Chinese woman I know said the British aren’t really friends with anyone in the traditional sense of the word. Her experience was they hang out with people but at the first sign of anyone needing help, they’re otherwise engaged. It was certainly a very marked attitude amongst the ex pats when I lived in Spain, particularly to an abandoned wife and child in the community who they were absolutely horrible to. I get the feeling that a lot of ‘friends’ think its a relationship based on going out together to fun things, but family is meant to deal with the support side … which is a bit shit for anyone that doesn’t have family …
Sounds like you ought to get some better friends. Mine were extremely supportive to me when my mother died: far more so than my own family in some cases. There’s also been many cases of people getting help through social networking, so it depends on the person.
Sounds like this charity worker needed better friends. I need better friends, the abandoned wife in Spain needed better friends … I don’t think it depends on the person but on their friends, and my point was that there are an awful lot of people in UK who masquerade as ‘friends’ only to abandon a person when they have any real needs, I suspect with the mental ephitaph of loser floating somewhere in the background …
That’s a very interesting insight in to different cultures. I think people’s lives are so much ‘online’ these days we do lose touch with real human connections and bonding.
There’s something very sad about the loss of a life when suicide is involved. Perhaps it was Simone Back’s cry for help; deep down she really didn’t mean to take her own life, who knows.
What is utterly shocking about this story is the live commentary and replies from people on her Facebook page, most it seems did not take her pain seriously. And that for me is so shocking. Has society become so desensitized that we cannot sense another person’s pain?
Friendships to me are the ‘ones’ we invite into our real lives and people I can actually see face to face. But I do believe ‘bonds’ can be formed online but they have their limits. Perhaps we should not confuse these with real friendships and support network. I think our society is in danger of doing so, especially as we start to social network more. We have to know the difference on an emotional level.
I have helped many people I’ve met online, and I do this from a place of being ‘human’ and networking. Tanya, I imagine the experiences you mention are from people who also came from a place of being ‘human’ – help being offered with good solid intention. There are some lovely people online, and evolved enough to know it’s not ok to be posting comments about killing ourselves. It seems that wasn’t case for Simone, and perhaps what she really needed was professional or experienced help. My heart really goes out to her mum.
For the record, there is so much help out there for people who are feeling suicidal. Up and down the country there are many drop in NHS mental health units that are open 24 hours a day – 7 days a week. Also the Samaritans http://www.samaritans.org/ who are again available 24 hours a day. The can be emailed or called directly.
I think the institutionalised notion of care is another part of the problem in the UK – according to a number of surveys over the past couple of years, we are the least likely nation in Europe to help someone in distress in the street – I suspect because we have been told not to get involved by the police and some ‘institution’ will deal with cleaning the mess up, neighbours don’t know one another’s names anymore, it’s not their job to help one another out, young people don’t help the elderly anymore, it’s not their job to help an elderly neighbour with their shopping or similar, fathers don’t help bring up their children – it’s not their job to look after children – the list is endless … and makes up what DCam calls broken Britain. Caring is unfashionable in the UK and the more you live abroad and then return to the UK, the more obvious and shocking it is. Care of a friend, like this poor woman needed, cannot be given by a stranger or via the internet – what I suspect she needed was a pair of warm arms round her and a cuddle from someone she knew and that really genuinely cared about her. As you get into middle age and beyond as this woman was, I think most people over 40 in this country and particularly women would say genuinely caring people are very thin on the ground.