Happy Halloween 2007 – Deaths Caused by The Internet
Here’s the Halloween themed, off-topic post for all the RLSLOG readers from the hard working staff. The internet is a cool place – it enables people like you and me to download stuff, and get connected to the whole world. But to some people it has been frightening, and even fatal. Here’s an overview of deaths that the evil internet has caused and references to prove their worth. With many thanks to wikipedia.
- 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
- 2001: Armin Meiwes chops off Bernd Jürgen Brandes’s penis, and sautéed the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, and garlic. After stabbing Bernd Jürgen Brandes to death in the throat, he hung the body on a meathook and tore hunks of flesh from it, he even tried to grind the bones to use as flour. Bernd Jürgen Brandes responded to an internet ad posted by Meiwes and was a willing participant. The whole incident was videotaped.
- 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.
- 2005: 28-year-old South Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing Starcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.
- 2005: 17-year-old teenager, Joshua Anson commits suicide after posting a suicide notice on his myspace page.
- 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 “The End” radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating. She placed second in the contest.
- 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an internet chat session.
- 2007: A 30 year old Chinese man died of exhaustion after playing online games for 3 days nonstop
Comments (44)
uhm… how has internet anything to do with a woman dying of a drinking contest on a radio show?
it’s the wii tho
wow thats hard core when i do ill let every one watch to hepefully neday now
well, wii != internet… and saying internet CAUSED some of those deaths is stretching it pretty far… i’m pretty sure that teenager didn’t kill himself BECAUSE of the internet
Yeah, the title is misleading.
Nice reading though, thanks.
the game the chinese guy who played a pc game for 3 days was world of warcraft, i really do need to play less myself
this is real puma
The internet didn’t kill these people – stupidity did.
Lets all pray for the kerean and the china farmer!
Brandon RIP
Mr X you have some ick hobbies but i love you and that was a great read!
A) “solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her”
B) “drug overdose”
C) “collapsed of fatigue and died”
D) “commits suicide”
E) “died of water intoxication”
F) “committed suicide”
G) “died of exhaustion”
Internet did what? Sounds kind of the same as right wing propaganda sounds; makes no sense and contradicts itself. Nice try though i guess.
I am waiting to see “killed in a high speed terrabit transfer crash” LOL. That Russian spammer story should have been included, because that one remains unsolved; the internet might REALLY have killed that dude……
Jennifer Strange. Died from drinking too much water at a Radio Station-sponsored contest.
Not a thing to do with the Internet. Not even a little bit.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/russian_spammer_murder/
remains unsolved ? you mean remains busted as a hoax.
I’m going to kill myself reading this site if the staff don’t start posting about metal music releases.
I told u I was hardcore
Uhm, if you post a suicide note in the mailbox and then kill yourself would that be considered a post related death?
@17
I think you could call that “going postal”
you BROKE my WAREZ
call the admin.
Address … http://www.rlslog.net.
tell them to go down to the bottom of the comments page.
im soo sorry
“Happy Halloween 2007 – Deaths Caused by The Internet.”
What’s the Rls Staff doing for Christmas? lol
@20 Whats Rls staff posting Christmas? Simpel really, Cake Mania 3!
Jennifer Strange I heard about on the news, but the others ones I didn’t know. It’s sad, very sad that people would do such things. May there souls find peace, and may there families find it also.
I’d want to die too if I looked like this…
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Sharon_Lopatka.jpg
What about the Meiwes/Brandes cannibal murder case?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes
That had a strong internet influence.
It was sweet of them attempting to share eating Brandes’ severed penis before he was killed. That’s net love for you!
How could this happen to meeeeeee i made my mistakeeeeeeeeeeeeee got no where to ruuuuuuuun…Ytmnd.
sick people :S
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! SCREW THE CAKE!!!!
ooohh the payyne….the payyne!
..the agony..oooo the agony!
updated, interesting one hibby (!)
There is a case currently in Sth Australia where a 16(?) yo girl was allegedly murdered after chatting with some guys on MySpace; it was her chatbuddies who allegedly killed her (when she met up with them f2f). Weird thing is that she was about 100km from her home (no car) and they were from interstate so the meeting had involved a lot of organising – not just a casual thing.
Myspace is evil. I was trying to tell people but you don’t listen
.
Title is way too misleading.
But it’s a good read.
Natural selection
Most of the things in this post is realy good reading. the only thing that im thinking about is that none of u other have posted anything that says: wikipedia isnt a good sorce of information.
I dont realy know any english pages that gives ur good information but a swedish one is http://www.ne.se with is the same as wikipeda but u cant post information urself and therefor it is good, with means u know that the information is more reliable. but I guess that u have ur own country Encyklopedi(dont know the spelling exactly)
it´s not the internet that kills people it´s WOW addiction.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=59697
Disturbingly i laughed at it all, i found it funny.
Asian Style c0 ck cook book, now with penis pictures
New Nintendo gamepad, with moisture sensing, bundled with a new game.
“WeeWii”
Also Star craft should rename themselves to “Starcollapse”
The cake is a lie!
‘internet dont kill people. google kills people’ – Al Gore 1992
OWNED!!!
Wow, thats brutal.
I was more thinking of the “Download 26 songs, get sued obscenely large amount of money, you and your 3 kids and husband die due to lack of food”, aka “Death by Download”…
Is there a copy of Meiwes/Brandes cannibal murder video available for DL??
I can understand how the web can kill…
I accidently ended up on the Mary Kate and Ashley site, it was a close thing, i just managed to hit the ‘home’ button just before i tried to impale myself on a chesse bagette……..