Voyeurs to tragedy
02/15/2003

By BILL MARVEL / The Dallas Morning News

It was a step beyond reality television, the ultimate live Webcam.

Thanks to the camera, we have watched people eat disgusting things and almost kill themselves in crazy stunts. We have witnessed couples fighting, breaking up, making love. We have seen a live birth via the Internet. And now the camera has offered the spectacle of a young man killing himself.

One evening in January, Brandon Vedas, 21, of Phoenix, calmly sat in front of his bedroom Webcam and ingested fistfuls of prescription drugs while dozens looked on via the Internet. Many who watched urged him on with messages of "takea thousant!" and "eat more."

Not one of them knew his real name – he went by the chat-group handle "Ripper." As Ripper gulped down fistfuls of pharmaceuticals – Klonopin, Methadone, Restoril and Inderal, most of them legally prescribed for depression – a few in the online chat group began to urge caution. As Ripper slipped into incoherence and finally unconsciousness, they frantically tried to learn where he lived and they argued over notifying authorities.

But there are no addresses or phone numbers in chat groups. And so he died.

His last clear message: "I told u I was hardcore."

As word slowly spread from the Internet to the mainstream media, Mr. Vedas' Webcam death-by-overdose and the reaction of those who watched seemed to set a new benchmark for voyeurism. Has the presence of the camera so dulled our moral sensibilities that we are willing not only to watch someone kill himself, but to encourage him? Was Mr. Vedas' audience like the crowd on the sidewalk who shout "Jump!" to the man on the rooftop?

There is a similarity, says Mark Prater, an Irving resident who maintains his own Webcam site. The presence of a live Web camera both encourages and rewards exhibitionism, he says.

"Webcams give a person inexpensive means of mass attention. Some are waiting to do their big production, that is, acting silly, provocative or just plain showy.

"People watch them mostly out of curiosity. Maybe it gives them a sense of the forbidden, of observing a private life." Webcams have gained a reputation as sometime purveyors of porn, he says, "but the majority are clean sites that invite you into their life."

But the sites can also encourage a destructive kind of group behavior, says Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, associate professor of psychiatry at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.

"When people in a group get animated about an issue, there's often a short-term suspension of normal qualities of morality," he says. "We have seen that sort of thing on college campuses after sporting events when there is looting and riots.

"When you're not in danger of being found out, there's even more tendency to engage in that sort of behavior."

"These chat rooms are like any other social setting as far as numbers," says "Clarenk," a frequenter of area chat groups. "It seems the larger the crowd gets the more 'ignorant' it becomes. It spreads like a disease. I think this kid was planning to wake up and be known."

A party atmosphere

For a few moments on the evening of Jan. 12, Ripper was like a binge-drinker at a fraternity party, surrounded by a crowd of admiring chums shouting their encouragement, "eat more," one chatter repeatedly messaged. "yay ripper," cheered another as ripper popped another pill. (The transcript, or log, of the chat group, widely circulated on the Internet and quoted in news stories, is available on a memorial Web site, www.brandon vedas.com.)
"The [memorial] Web site was created at the family's request," says Brandon's brother, Rich Vedas, who lives in Huntington Beach, Calif. "We're trying to increase awareness of drug use and bring some good out of his death."

Mr. Vedas says the family is not seeking legal action against the chatters who cheered Brandon on. "I do believe their actions were irresponsible," he says, "but I don't hold them liable or blame them for his death." And contrary to some news accounts, Mr. Vedas says, his brother's death was not suicide. "He was just essentially a kid showing off."

It was not the first time someone has used a Webcam to draw attention to themselves, sometimes with fatal results, says Dr. Timothy Burke, professor of cultural history at Swarthmore College and keen observer of online behavior.

"In another case, a young lady named Stacey set up Webcams in her bathroom after breaking up with her boyfriend, and posted her journal announcing she was going to commit suicide. Somebody intervened in time, and her life was saved."

Other people have gone on camera or online with suicide plans, sometimes carried out and sometimes not. And, Dr. Burke adds, there have been a number of hoaxes – staged suicides that, to the viewers, at least, seemed horrifyingly real.

Staged, threatened or carried out, he says, such events trap witnesses in terrible dilemma: "They don't know what to do."

The modern archetype for such dilemmas is the case of Kitty Genovese, he says. In 1964, dozens watched as a young woman was stabbed to death outside their Queens, N.Y., apartment building. None of those who watched had the presence of mind to phone police until it was too late.

Modern life gives us many opportunities to witness events from which we are distant, says Dr. Burke. "You can see things happening and not know what to do." Whom should I notify? Would I be interfering? Would I get dragged into the situation?

Dr. Burke says the so-called "reality" television shows, in which seemingly ordinary people do degrading or disgusting or dangerous things, partly resolve the dilemma.

"They make watching safe. Even when watching Jackass, we know we're not about to see somebody really get impaled on a stake. They use trickery, cuts. We know we will be insulated from anything authentically horrible. The show puts the danger of that voyeuristic moment in a safe place."

Not so for those who watched the death of Brandon Vedas.

'Moral horror'

Dr. Burke has read the Web log transcript. "At first there is moral horror, because they were egging them on," he says. "But as it goes on there's some panic, and they don't know what to do. The technical problem is: How do I tell somebody? Also, I'm not sure what am I required to do, what is my moral responsibility?"
As Ripper's messages became increasingly garbled, some expressed real concern. "You're not going to overdose on us are you?" one asked.

"Get your ... [expletive] to the hospital in an hour," someone else messaged. Increasingly, efforts were made to find out where Ripper lived. Members of the group argued over whether to call 911 or poison control or Ripper's mother, who, he had messaged earlier, was in the next room working "crosswordz."

"Most didn't have a ready answer," says Dr. Burke.

Mr. Prater suggests that members might have tried to contact Brandon Vedas' Internet service provider. But an ISP may not be able to come up with an address or even a phone number at short notice. Lacking that information, he says, it's hard to say what police could have done.

At one point, Ripper gave chatters clues to his location, should anything go wrong. "if you call police...and tell them...to look for a AE92GTS corlla GTS from 90...around that street block..." he messaged, an apparent reference to his car parked outside. At another point, one of those on the chat line came up with a Phoenix address, but the phone number listed was fake. Fear of arrest – either Ripper's or their own – kept others from intervening.

Brandon Vedas' body was found at 1:30 p.m. the next day by his mother, according to Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Randy Force. His computer had shut down. It wasn't until days later that police learned his death had been witnessed by perhaps dozens. Police filed no charges, and the case is closed.

According to news accounts, members of the family blamed the chat group at least partly for contributing to his death.

But Sgt. Force says, "The fact that it happened on the Internet is just anecdotal, as far as we're concerned. The Internet offers a very safe environment for some of these drug users, because it doesn't require them to have a close friendship, which some of them find a hard thing to do."

Dr. Burke is skeptical that the presence of cameras or of the media in general causes such incidents.

"It's a mode of expression not that much different in many ways from the adolescent writing a poem how he's going to kill himself or getting absolutely drunk and listening to somebody say, 'Why don't you jump off a cliff?' "

"The difference is the real-time character of it. The moral discourse is more about audience and less about kid."

Was Ripper's audience that January night responsible in some way for his death?

Dr. Burke suggests they were a little like the thrill-seekers who slow down at an accident scene, hoping perhaps to catch a glimpse of something. Once they've glimpsed it, he says, they often wish they hadn't.

"Many times you do slow down to see the corpse," he says. "But the day you do see it, voyeurism quickly turns into something else."