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Suicide is, generally speaking, a tragic and hideously hurtful act. Martin Manley, a 60-year-old former sports writer and statistician for theKansas City Star, seems to have been at least vaguely aware of that. But he did it anyway—and left behind a meticulously detailed website explaining virtually every aspect of his decision. The case is noteworthy not so much because Manley was a semi-public figure—though he was credited with popularizing the NBA’s standard efficiency rating—but because he used technology to intentionally blow open the wall of privacy that typically surrounds suicides. More than 100 people die by suicide on an average day in the United States, and a significant portion of them leave notes for their stricken friends and relatives. Some are vengeful, some apologetic, some maddeningly cryptic. Regardless, most are read only by a small circle of authorities and loved ones. For Manley, confronting friends and family with his death wasn’t enough. He wanted to confront the public at large. He wanted desperately to justify his own life and death—to the world, but perhaps above all to himself. So, according to his website, Manley prepaid Yahoo for five years’ worth of Web hosting, built a sprawling suicide website, and put up one final post on his sports blog Thursday morning linking to it. Then, according to theKansas City Star, he killed himself in front of an Overland Park police station. It was his 60thbirthday. On the website, which quickly began to circulate widely via social media, Manley wrote that he intended to create “the most detailed example of a suicide letter in history.” He explained: After you die, you can be remembered by a few-line obituary for one day in a newspaper when you're too old to matter to anyone anyway... OR you can be remembered for years by a site such as this. That was my choice and I chose the obvious. Next he began to explain the reasons for his suicide, seeking—at least initially—to portray it as the highly rational decision of a man who lived his life “content up to the last minute” and simply wanted to leave the world in his own way. “The major reasons adults commit suicide—health, legal, financial, loss of loved ones, loneliness or depression… none of those issues are relevant to me and, for the most part of my life, have never been,” he wrote. His No. 1 reason for killing himself: He was terrified to face old age. In dozens of separate essays on the site, Manley went on to reflect on everything from religion to gun control to his romantic history to his affinity for fedoras. Some of his thoughts are profound, others mundane. I haven’t read them all. It would take hours. But I read enough to see that he was lonelier and less secure in his decision than he wanted to let on. His parents were dead, he had no children, and he didn’t want to “die alone.” A bizarre passage in which he posted what looked like GPS coordinates to a stash of gold and silver coins—setting off a macabre and ultimately fruitless treasure hunt on Thursday—reinforces the impression of a man starving for importance. Many of the pictures on his website appear to be selfies. I won’t pass judgment on Manley’s decision to kill himself, except to say that no one should romanticize it. An evidently thoughtful and intelligent man is dead, those who knew him are almost certainly stricken with grief, and the fact that he published a website rationalizing it isn’t going to change either of those things. But I will say that his elaborate self-memorial raises a disturbing specter in the social-media age: the transformation of the suicide note from a private document into a public sensation. Without Twitter, Facebook, and a Web full of page-view-driven blogs, Manley’s writings might well have remained obscure. Manley’s desire to say all that he wanted to say to the world before he died is understandable. But it seems clear that his ability to do so—the chance to go out with a splash and to make himself known far and wide—eased his decision to end his own life. The risk is that it will do the same for others, including many people who are not as sound of mind as Manley claimed to be. Manley notwithstanding, suicide is rarely a rational act. In a 2003New Yorkerarticle about people who commit suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge, writer Tad Friend interviewed several people who had survived the leap and found a heartbreaking commonality: Jumpers tend to regret their decision in midair. One of Manley’s goals in publishing a suicide website was to assure everyone that he didn’t regret his decision. Whether that changed at the moment he pulled the trigger, we’ll never know. But it’s safe to assume that at least one of his final wishes will go unfulfilled: “What I hope will happen in the long run is that my life is remembered and the suicide is just an asterisk, a footnote,” Manley wrote. Sadly, the reverse is far more likely. UPDATE, Saturday, Aug. 17, 11:55 a.m.:On Friday night, Yahoo took down Martin Manley's website. A spokesperson told me: "After careful review, our team determined that this site violated our Terms of Service and we took it down." Manley's site lives on, for the time being, on various mirror websites not hosted by Yahoo. |
通常來說,自殺是一個(gè)悲慘傷人的行為。60歲的馬丁·曼利(Martin Manley)是《堪薩斯城明星報(bào)》前體育新聞?dòng)浾吆徒y(tǒng)計(jì)員,他似乎對(duì)自殺的悲劇性有所了解,但還是選擇了走向悲劇——而且還留下一個(gè)網(wǎng)站詳盡解釋了這個(gè)決定的各方原因。 該案件沒有得到大力關(guān)注是因?yàn)槁莻€(gè)半公眾人物——他因普及NBA標(biāo)準(zhǔn)效率評(píng)級(jí)而大受贊譽(yù)——但是他用科技揭開了自殺背后的隱私。美國每天有逾100人自殺,而且大多數(shù)人會(huì)給受傷的朋友和親戚留下遺書。留下遺書的目的也不盡相同,有的為了報(bào)復(fù)、有的為了道歉、亦或是字里行間暗藏玄機(jī)。但不管怎樣,這些遺書只會(huì)被小范圍權(quán)利機(jī)關(guān)和親人看見。但對(duì)于曼利來說,只是讓家人和朋友來見證他的死亡并不夠。他希望將自己的死亡面向廣大群眾。他瘋狂地向世界為自己的生命和死亡辯護(hù),也或許只是向他自己辯護(hù)。 根據(jù)曼利的網(wǎng)站可知他向雅虎(Yahoo)預(yù)付了五年定金來做網(wǎng)站托管,隨后他建立了一個(gè)龐大的自殺網(wǎng)站。,曼利周四早晨在自己的運(yùn)動(dòng)博客上發(fā)布了最后一條博客。據(jù)《堪薩斯城明星報(bào)》報(bào)道,曼利在奧弗蘭帕克(Overland Park)一警察局前自殺,那天是他60歲生日。 通過社會(huì)媒體該網(wǎng)站開始廣泛傳播,曼利試圖創(chuàng)作出“史上最詳盡絕命書樣板”。他在網(wǎng)站上解釋稱: 年紀(jì)太大了會(huì)被所有人忘記,死后只有報(bào)紙上的幾行訃告總結(jié)一生……或者可以在多年以后通過像這樣的網(wǎng)站被人記住。這就是我選擇這樣做的原因。 隨后曼利開始解釋自殺原因——對(duì)于一個(gè)“生命最后一分鐘都充實(shí)”的人,曼利稱只是簡單地想用自己的方式來離開這個(gè)世界,而他也試圖將其描繪成一個(gè)高度理智的決定。曼利在網(wǎng)站中寫道:“成年人自殺的主要原因有健康、法律、經(jīng)濟(jì)、失去愛人、孤獨(dú)或絕望……但是這些因素和我的生活基本不相干?!甭詺⒌氖滓蚴菍?duì)變老感到恐懼。 在網(wǎng)站上10多篇獨(dú)立文章中,曼利紀(jì)錄了每一件事,從宗教到槍支控制再寫他的浪漫歷史最后又提及他對(duì)淺頂呢帽的喜愛。曼利的有些思想很具有深度,有些卻又十分單調(diào)乏味。我沒有全部讀完他的文章,因?yàn)檫@畢竟要花好幾個(gè)小時(shí)。不過從他的文章中我認(rèn)識(shí)到其實(shí)他比他想象中要更孤獨(dú)、更缺乏安全感。曼利的父母已經(jīng)過世,他沒有孩子,而且他不想“獨(dú)自死去”。在他發(fā)布的文章中有一篇很怪異。這篇文章就像是用GPS尋找金幣和銀幣的存放點(diǎn)——最終在周四進(jìn)行令人毛骨悚然無意義的尋寶活動(dòng)——這些表達(dá)都加強(qiáng)了曼利對(duì)個(gè)人重要性價(jià)值的渴求。曼利網(wǎng)站上的很多照片也都體現(xiàn)出自我的觀點(diǎn)。 我不會(huì)對(duì)曼利選擇自殺的決定作出判定,但是我想說任何人都不應(yīng)該將自殺浪漫化。這位有思想的智者去世后讓認(rèn)識(shí)他的人悲痛不已,而曼利建網(wǎng)站將自殺理性化的做法并不能改變逝者已去,生者嘗盡傷痛的事實(shí)。除此之外曼利個(gè)人的詳盡記敘仿若將一個(gè)令人不安的幽靈帶入了社會(huì)媒體時(shí)代:一份屬于私人文件的絕命書一夜之間在全社會(huì)流傳轟動(dòng)。如果沒有推特、臉書以及充滿個(gè)人評(píng)論博客的網(wǎng)站,曼利的自殺網(wǎng)站可能仍鮮為人知。 曼利想在死前向全世界述說知心話的欲望可以理解。而且顯然他通過成為關(guān)注點(diǎn),使自己廣為人知減輕了他自殺結(jié)束生命這一決定包含的傷痛。而這樣做的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)即可能會(huì)引起其他人的效仿,其中包括無法像曼利一樣擁有清醒頭腦的人。曼利并不了解自殺也很少是理智的行為。2003年《紐約客》(New Yorker)曾刊登過一篇文章,該篇文章作者泰德·弗瑞德(Tad Friend)采訪了幾個(gè)曾經(jīng)企圖從金門大橋(Golden Gate Bridge)跳下自殺但幸存的人,而這些人都有令人心碎的共性:即在半空中自殺者會(huì)后悔這個(gè)決定。 曼利建立這個(gè)網(wǎng)站的另一目標(biāo)是為了向世人保證他不會(huì)后悔自殺的決定。而他是否在扣動(dòng)扳機(jī)后后悔我們也無從得知。但是我們至少可以確定他最后幾個(gè)愿望中的一個(gè)是無法實(shí)現(xiàn)的:“我希望很久之后我仍會(huì)被人們記住,而且我的自殺可以被加注星號(hào)作為腳注?!笨杀氖?,他的這個(gè)愿望基本不會(huì)實(shí)現(xiàn)。 8月17日11:55更新報(bào)道:雅虎在周五晚關(guān)閉了曼利的網(wǎng)站。雅虎以發(fā)言人告訴我:“經(jīng)過慎重考慮,我們團(tuán)隊(duì)認(rèn)為這個(gè)網(wǎng)站違反了我們的服務(wù)條例,所以該網(wǎng)站會(huì)被關(guān)閉?!?/p> 曼利的網(wǎng)站暫時(shí)還會(huì)在各種網(wǎng)頁上流傳一段時(shí)間,當(dāng)然,這些網(wǎng)頁并不是雅虎旗下網(wǎng)站。 記者威爾·奧瑞姆斯(Oremus)2013年8月16日19:16報(bào)道 相關(guān)閱讀 (譯者 蹄蹄 編輯 齊磊) |
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