Mas made me do it!

† Mäs †

I know I did.
Check This Out. Poor Guy.

Teenager Posts Suicide Note on Myspace.com

New America Media, News Feature/Commentary, Milan Gagnon, Dec 01, 2005

Editor's Note: Suicide notes are usually written to intimates. In the case of one young man who just killed himself in Orange County, Calif., the suicide note was posted on a popular social networking Web site. PNS contributor Milan Gagnon reports as one of millions of people who followed the suicide online. Gagnon is a writer based in Prague.

Czech Republic--At 8:14 a.m. on Nov. 29, Joshua Anson Ballard posted his final bulletin on the Internet social-networking site MySpace.com. Ballard, who took the online identity "you BROKE my LIFE," followed his subject line, "do me a favore ....", with a body that read:

"call the police.
Address ... Abadejo, Mission Viejo, CA 92692.
tell them to go down the hall to the bathrooom.
im soo sorry<3"

About 15 minutes later, according to the Orange County coroner's office, Josh, 17, killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Within minutes, MySpace, which promotes social interaction among young people and is popular with teenagers, was alight with messages about the suicide. Here in Prague, I saw a note about Josh on MySpace and checked it out.

By 10 p.m. the night of his death, Josh was being eulogized.

He killed himself over a girl "and other things," writes Flower King Of Flies on MySpace, who says the death was preventable. "This could of ben stoped," he says via a Myspace comment page that has become Josh's memorial. "All the people that knew didnt do shit. i had a good time with u in ceramics. f--- all your friends that did nothing."

So it goes, Josh's life splayed out on the black backdrop he'd created as his space.

According to his words, Josh loved "girls who cry"; was married; was 8 feet, 11 inches tall and made $250,000 a year or more. Josh was a smartass. He posted self-portraits that featured him at his emo-kid best: shaggy hair, pouting lips, intentionally blank expression. He posted an ad for a clothing company called Emo Police that featured a man hanging from the P.

Emo, a 20-year-old sub-genre of punk rock, didn't kill Josh, even if emo songs are mostly un-ironic paeans to self-pity. Kids kill themselves whether they listen to country or classical. The death-trip soundtrack can easily be Snoop Dogg or Slayer; on Josh's page, it's Senses Fail.

Josh wanted. He sought attention by posting surveys in his blog with categories like "Would you ..." and questions like "stick up for me if I was being put down?" In another, he queried friends as to whether they loved him, had crushes on him, etc. The surveys, common among Myspace teenagers, mean little more than that the kid dug compliments. Craved 'em.

Sixty-two times he was eulogized -- sometimes with just one line, sometimes with just a word -- in the first 17 hours. "i'm speechless," wrote Kelsey, a 17-year-old from San Juan Capistrano who enjoys "good times." "Rest in peace, Josh." Rach, who posted seven farewells in those hours, told him, "It says you broke my life - well you broke ours."

I didn't know Josh, should never have. Wouldn't have, had a former source in Idaho not posted a bulletin from her Myspace account. "this is the most horrible thing i've ever seen," Tori'd headlined it, using haphazard Myspace capitalization. "Honestly," wrote the former Orange County teen who'd received it as a forward from a friend. "It will make you sick to your stomach." I read it, braced for some banal but benign forwarded joke.

Now I know Josh, know that his friend YOUR KISSES MAKE MY HEART STOP says he was the happiest guy around. He protected her from mean guys at school, protected her from spiders, always told her to smile. "unfortunatly we had a scary about 4 days ago he atemted suicid and failed we were all on his back ever since but this mornig right before school he posted this on a bulliton ..." she wrote me. "as soon as my friend rach saw that she told mimi and mimis mom call the police and drove up to his house (they live 1 street up from each other) she found it was to late. if i could telll josh one thing is that i love you and i wish that you could have send the people that hold you dear to there hearts. you always seid that nothing is as bad as it seem."

Kids type quicker than they think. They bleed words, don't contrive them, and, even if I disdain Net-speak, I have the luxury of never needing to type so frantically. Immersed in his requiem, not 30 hours after he did what he did, I know Joshua Anson Ballard. With his suicide announced on an Internet bulletin, his life remembered in a series of hastily typed prose that comes in blurbs and missives, and his loved ones handling their grieving through instant messages and blogs, will forever words be left on his Web page rather than coins or roses on his grave? We'll have to visit every Nov. 29.