Co-render.com

When Malcolm Gladwell penned that gripping chapter on teenage suicide epidemics in The Tipping Point, we doubt he had this in mind.  Facebook users are beginning to realize the benefits of “killing” their online doppelgangers in today’s hyper-connected world. 

The reasons for committing virtual suicide are pretty predictable; issues of privacy, the uncanny parallels to stalking, as well as the very real possibility of committing professional suicide.  However tame the ostensible reason may be, the emotional build up to a Facebook suicide is fairly intense, as exhibited in a recent article on the phenomenon;

“For Holme, the last straw came when he logged on at the start of January and noticed that one of his friends had changed their profile on Christmas Day. “That was it; I shot myself on the spot.”  (via The Times)

Surprisingly juicy stuff for what essentially amounts to terminating a user account, though it is nice to see that they’re still teaching Hedda Gabler at the university level.  Perhaps the best aspect of a Facebook suicide (aside from the fact that it is after all, virtual) is the highly appropriate use of the Notes application to compose a heartfelt suicide note.  It’s precisely the kind of sardonic gesture one would expect from a Facebook user. 

If some smarmy college student with VC funding hasn’t done so already, there is huge viral potential for the Obituary application, where the deceased’s network activity could be aggregated in loving memory.  We can see it now; “John Doe was an officer of the “When this group reaches 10,000 members I will donate $1 to Darfur” group.  He is survived by his 96 friends in the Stanford University Network.”