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"Sad news comes out of England today that yet another suicide is being attributed the deadly combination of Bebo and cyber-bullying. I first saw the news pop across the wire at News.com.au:\n\nSam Leeson, a 13 year old student from Tredworth, Gloucestershire, hanged himself in his bedroom apparently after suffering months of bullying online.\nSam's mother Sally Cope, 45, said the family only learnt of the cyberbullying when they checked his Bebo page after his death.\nShe has blamed Bebo, a teenage social network similar to MySpace, for her son's death, and demanded a crackdown on websites that allow cyberbullies to target other users.\n[...]\nAccording to The Daily Mail, Bebo users who taunted Sam on the site have since left messages apologising for their conduct. It is not known if they went to his school\n\nSam was apparently an emo, which they go on to describe as fashion defined by its asymmetry.\u00A0 It was this very lack of symmetry causing the ridicule that upset Sam so very much, and is what is being attributed to the cause of his depression and eventual suicide.\nOf course, this new suicide is being used as a vehicle by British politicians to once again demonize Bebo in specific and social networks in general, and will undoubtedly fuel new legislation aimed at stopping cyber-bullying. I've discussed in depth the problems with these types of laws, and it's unfortunate that some teens fall prety to suicide, it is indicative of deeper seated problems than can be remedied by simple and dangerous anti-cyber-bullying laws.\nMoreover, as someone who graduated from the punk scene as a youth, I'm well aware of the taunting and bullying (online or off) that goes on with kids, and given the (I'm sorry, but I have to use this word) wimpy reputation of the emo culture, they are a frequent target for derision.\u00A0 Generally it is used in jest, and a well-adjusted emo kid will typically laugh it off or respond in kind (just as the Greasers did with the Socs).\nThe twist here, in this particular suicide case, is that British MPs are attempting to further demonize social networks over the online memorials erected after the fact:\n\nBridgend's Labour MP Madeleine Moon said memorial pages on Bebo and other websites showed \"some sort of romanticism of death\".\n\"What is concerning is that you're getting internet bereavement walls. That's not going to help anyone,\" she told The Times.\n\"What people need is not to go into a virtual world of the internet to deal with emotional problems.\"\n\"They need to stay very much in this real world and talk to real people.\"\n\nWhat it all comes down to, as we discussed the last time MP Moon issued a statement along these lines, is that the politicians are morbidly fascinated by technology related suicides, as it offers them an opportunity to prey on the grief of the families as well as the fears of the electorate. Any time a youngster ends their life, it is a deep tragedy. The fact that public opinion tends to favor politicians for their sadistic opportunism, though, is insult on top of injury."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/06/13/bebo-suicide/>