Some accidental deaths and some deliberate deaths are streamed but what surprises me is the number of viewers who are entertained by such incidences that should be respected. When did we lose respect for death? For most of us, the common gesture to do when someone loses someone is to say, "my condolences" or "I’m sorry," to say the least. Most don’t want to indulge in such an insensitive manner out of respect for the persons going through it. But in the deaths of Keiana Herndon, James M. Jeffrey and Jared McLemore that were streamed live, the views grew once people figured out what was going on.

They merely spectated and did not even try to help these souls.

Could something be done to stop a person already in the act of killing themselves? The answer is, not fast enough. A lot of times suicides are silently planned. That person has made up their mind as we’ve seen in "13 Reasons." However, cases like the young girl who slowly staged her hanging - no one watching thought to alert the authorities immediately. Did no one watching know her or where she lived or go and talk her out of it? I am just astounded as to how far we have come and how much respect we lack.

It honestly reminds me of the days when people would stand around to watch a lynching or beheading, which is primitive. Being an evolved human requires you to be able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

You wouldn’t want certain things done to you, so why allow it to happen to others?

Desensitization today

With all of the deaths in the media and in video games, most would say that we have become Desensitized to death. Hearing that there’s been another school shooting doesn’t shock us as a nation, nor do innocent people dying from police brutality, or hearing that someone is about to commit suicide on a live stream.

In fact, people tune in when they hear death has occurred.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is like the modern day viewing of executions when people would stand around and watch people being killed. It was disgusting then and it’s disgusting now. It’s not a game of truth or dare where you anxiously await the person to complete the insane dare; this is the reality of life and death.

I'm not saying that there aren’t people who recognize when to take charge or even know how to, so I don’t want to come off too cynical, but I want everyone to recognize that some sort of moral responsibility is being lost in efforts to become popular these days.

What we need to remember is to put ourselves in the hurting person’s shoes, whether it’s the person on camera believing that death is the only answer to life’s issues, or a loved one having to watch what happened after the fact. I can guarantee there are three things either party would want to happen:

  1. That someone would alert the platform (Facebook etc.) or the proper authorities.
  2. That anyone who catches it in time and recognizes the person makes an effort to go stop the incident.
  3. That it isn’t a spectacle and isn’t streamed during or after, to “see what happened.”

It’s going to take more than a hero

There are conscious viewers online who recognize when danger surfaces.

If there’s a blatant statement that someone is going to take their own life in a couple of minutes/seconds, now we know one thing to do is report the video to the platform, right?

The bigger picture is, with this being an issue today, are there preventative measures being taken? For example, if someone reports a video that is instantly flagged, could the closest authorities be alerted and sent to the location of the device recording through their IP address? Or is the video only flagged and blocked because of sensitive content? Technology has come far enough to be able to track devices, so is it not humane to track a device recording a fatal incident in progress?
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