美记者“自杀网站”成模板 21世纪绝命书令人堪忧_时事

美记者“自杀网站”成模板 21世纪绝命书令人堪忧

Martin Manley set up a website explaining every detail of his decision to kill himself. Then he killed himself. Image via martinmanleylifeanddeath.com

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.