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your CEO statement falls back on cut-and-paste boilerplate?
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You HAVE to fall on boilerplate or you will be crucified, by your lawyer if no one else. You just have to pick the right boilerplate:
If what you say has happened, that is a terrible tragedy. We will be conducting an internal investigation of the matter. Justin.tv in no way condones comments of the nature you have described. If we find that someone has breached our acceptable comment policies, we will deal with it as harshly as allowed to by law.
It's entirely possible, and should be second nature for any CEO, to draft a statement that's both legally prudent AND shows a modicum of empathy. What they shouldn't do is try to throw their own role into question until the facts are on the table.
Try this:
"Everyone at Justin.tv is deeply shocked and saddened by this news. In the upcoming days, we will conduct a thorough investigation of the events surrounding this incident, and will cooperate fully with local police and federal authorities. Once all the facts have been gathered and analyzed, we will release an additional statement. Until that time, we will refrain from further comment, except to say that our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Biggs's family and friends as they come to grips with a sudden, tragic loss."
I respect what you're trying to say here, but seriously: stop.
It's easy to be a critical asshat on the internet. How much different is your criticism from that of the forum members involved in this incident?
You can tell these guys all about how to respond when it's your business on the stump. Maybe they can't show empathy because it weakens their legal position. I just don't know.
It's natural to mourn, to be empathetic, and for some people it's natural to be assholes. Let's try to keep cool heads in this community and show support for both the family of Abraham K. Biggs, and for the startup involved. They will learn something from this. I hope we all do.
Then again, no one knows if you are shocked and saddened either since all you've posted are complaints about the CEO's response. That's the line of reasoning you are taking, isn't it?
I know the response isn't good PR, but I'm not sure why I or anyone else is supposed to be worried about what the CEO of Justin.tv thinks about the suicide. Maybe they could make it clear to their users to treat such incidents as serious where possible, but how are some kind words supposed to help the situation?
I think is that the CEO was asked for a response, and all he said was something about this being against terms of service. Nothing emotional whatsoever, which is understandable but a bit lame.
And I think we care because Justin.tv is a YCombinator site, and, more importantly, they all post here and they're good guys. (Bill in particular usually has got stuff worth saying. Maybe others and I don't realize it's them.) So people respond like they do because they know that J.tv people will read it.
Thats better. Act is supreme than statements given to press. All this press and legal are forcing everyone to lead a false life. one of their true self and one for the press and legal.
At which point his lawyer would phone up and tell him what a pillock he was, how open it left them and to please use the damn boilerplates that the qualified lawyers wrote :)
It seems like it was mostly the bodybuilding.com (currently down) forum members that were doing the egging. Justin.tv happened to be caught in the middle.
Watching someone dying and not doing anything about it is different than telling someone to kill himself on a forum. Also, read my comment again. I never said I hoped they get charged with something, I said it would be interesting to see if they do. There will be a public outcry and no doubt some prosecutor is going to try to pin some charges against them.
Watching someone dying and not doing anything about it is different than telling someone to kill himself on a forum.
Yeah, I hate it when consenting adults make their own decisions. I mean, the nerve!! Don't they know that dying is Really Bad?
There will be a public outcry and no doubt some prosecutor is going to try to pin some charges against them.
You do know that this is not the first time that someone has killed themselves on a webcam, right? No charges have ever stuck before, so I don't see why they would this time.
It would seem to me that they should have planned on this kind of scenario. It doesn't have to be specific they just have to be able to plug some words into a statement about something tragic, but uncomfirmed on their network.
It's basic risk management.
That said, people are always going to pick holes in whatever words you use. They are either not enough or too insincere.
Justin.tv staff would like to take a moment to recognize and reflect upon the tragedy that occurred within our community today. We respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this challenging time.
This seems like the last Seinfeld episode, where they were arrested under a Good Samaritan law for observing a crime but doing nothing to help the victim. If the account in this article is accurate, there were people watching the video feed for "hours" after he took the pills before calling the police. He might be alive if someone called earlier.
A similar thing happened in the Joel on Software Offtopic forum. Idiosyncratic, self described AI researcher Chris McKinstry kept talking about suicide, was mocked, then eventually took some pills and started a thread describing his final time on Earth in periodic posts. No video, and he didn't say where he was, but some people in the thread got close to tracking him down but not in time.
(I used to contribute there, but had stopped before this happened. I found out about it later and dug up the transcript in the archives when I read about it in Wired:
If you call the cops every time someone on the net says they're going to do something harmful to themselves or another, law enforcement would never get anything useful done.
While I can't imagine egging someone on in that case, it's not our collective responsibility to prevent strangers from harming themselves.
I think before one can make comments like that you need ot have the FULL story.
Unless people here are parto f the community and new the guy (it seems he cried wolf several times) you cant really pass judgement on what was said (except in some of the cases...).
I also see (in the threads cache) people telling him it was a bad idea. I really doubt he was listening to any of them anyway....
Although the events were pretty horrific (if you've read the original bodybuilding thread - now removed), it is worth keeping in mind that this particular individual had attempted this several other times in the same community. After the first many times, it appeared to almost be a running joke- until, of course, it wasn't.
I do agree with the overall theme of your post but its not a "wash your hands of it and move on" situation.
The fact is we're in such a rush to launch our websites and start being businessmen who actually talks this kind of thing through? Who's asking themselves how best to moderate comments and chat as they scale to protect children. What's your response to someone posting obscene or inappropriate content? and how quick do you act?
There's definitely an inherent danger here, often we build and engineer so quickly and cheaply that we sacrifice having the kind of staff numbers we need to live up to our ethical responsibilities.
All the best to the guys at justin.tv and anyone involved, I'm not judging you for your statement sure you have the best intentions.
Like most things in life, it's not so cut and dry.
I don't have the answers, but some would argue that by providing the forum and doing nothing - or not enough - to curtail the activities of the people on that forum, there is an element of fault with justin.tv.
If someone hangs themselves from the tree in my front yard, is there an element of fault with me for supplying the tree?
Any effort to shift blame onto j.tv for this is little more than an over-reaction caused by a state of grief...while it is certainly understandable, it is equally indefensible.
But we're not talking about some tiny community where everyone can be watching for this sort of thing from everyone else. What we're talking about is approximately the moral equivalent of blaming the mayor of New York for someone hanging themselves in Central Park.
But we're not talking about some tiny community where everyone can be watching for this sort of thing from everyone else.
Well I know, but a lawyer can easily argue that community website operators have a duty to monitor their community for suicides the same way that they monitor for all sorts of other things. (I'm sure if I posted a racist rant it would be dealt with harshly.)
What we're talking about is approximately the moral equivalent of blaming the mayor of New York for someone hanging themselves in Central Park.
I tend to agree with you, but you should also realize that many cities have invested a great deal of money in anti-suicide devices - precisely because they recognize that they could be held liable, and because it's just a nice thing to do.
I'm playing devil's advocate here, so don't take this as my particular viewpoint.
Community website operators do have a duty to monitor for suicides to some extent, just as they have a duty to monitor for other things. But failure to meet perfection in the pursuit of a virtue is not morally the same as a vice. Online communities have moderators in much the same way as real communities have police--they're society's protection against something going wrong with the social contract. When they individually fail, they may (individually or collectively) bear some level of moral responsibility for the matter, but the buck stops there. The only way moral responsibility can find its way to the top is if it is clear that the community in vastly under-equipped to deal with such problems to begin with, and there is an expectation that such things will be actively prevented within the social contract. When a murder or suicide takes place in a physical town, neither the city (as a political unit) nor the mayor is personally morally responsible; a virtual town is no different.
I understand that you aren't necessarily saying that you entirely believe the views you're espousing; any debate in a public forum should be as much (if not more so) of a benefit for the observers as it is for the participants. Clearly stating both sides of an argument helps everyone involved understand the precise nature of the issue.
It was pretty horrific. We spent about a week being interviewed by the media and trying to limit the damage both to the site and to the perception of AS.
Just curious - did you contemplate not even responding to the media? Or were you pretty much forced to? What sort of long-term impact did it have on your site?
The problem was that the Will Freund incident, and the exposure it received, threatened to cast all people with Aspergers as deranged homicidal maniacs.
A few media outlets were sensitive towards the issues involved and wrote thoughtfully. Others, however, were sensationalist and did the opposite of what we hoped (e.g. Geraldo's show on FOX).
You know that actually is pretty sad. I've heard a lot of rumors about Aspergers and violence being linked, but a cursory internet search seems to show that there's little or no evidence.
As if sufferers didn't have enough problems to deal with.
From what I've seen, any link between Aspergers and violence is largely irrelevant. When people who are already socially isolated are mocked and ridiculed by 'normal' people throughout their lives, then it isn't a case of Aspergers being linked to violence it's a case of victims getting revenge and if human history tells us anything it's that victims often go for revenge.
If I was repeatedly mocked and ridiculed, it would only be a matter of time before I went on a killing spree.
I'm sorry to the family and friends of the kid, suicide is the only kind of death that never makes sense no matter how much time passes...
As for justin.tv this could cut both ways. The family could sue, their traffic could go nuclear or both could happen. I don't think justin.tv did anything wrong but if you can sue McDonalds for making coffee too hot you definitely have a shot at this. This could also make national news and justin.tv will attract millions of viewers. I think that they need to be really careful to play down any real or perceived financial benefit that comes from this. They got a lot of attention when the cops banged down his door and this will be a much bigger deal. Being "the place to go" for shocking live videos is a double edged sword. Maybe they should donate to charity in the kid's name?
While a confused teenager's suicide is a tragedy, j.tv is also a victim here. The kid unwittingly put a bunch of other young guys he's never met who are just trying to make a startup in the middle of what may become a major witch hunt.
This is one of those critical moments that may well define how people think about this company in the future. As mentioned before, the CEO needs to do better, right away.
Just to clarify, I am referring to the response, not to the actual event.
This also might be a critical moment when people have to decide what rights and responsibilities a site has to the content it distributes, whether that be HD-DVD keys or a video stream of one's suicide.
I don't really see how this would define how people see the company behind Justin.tv at all. You would have to find a pretty delusional person to claim that IRC had its reputation sullied by Brandon Vedas when he did the same thing a few years ago.
"A poster has said he was going to OD on JTV in the link here: http://www.justin.tv/feels_like_ecstacy. It seems like he is not breathing by the looks of the stream. Please track his IP and alert someone."
And in response, a bodybuilder.com forum moderator said:
"he's an attention whore, you should see all the threads he starts, then deletes"
This might've all turned out differently had the moderators acted on the information available. I'm not saying that it should be illegal for the moderators to not care, just that I personally would have at least looked at the information the poster provided before dismissing it as "just another attempt at attention whoring".
Life's hard. I don't know if that many of us here on HN have had suicidal thoughts, but i have. I wasn't serious though, i was more like an attention whore. There is this thing that keeps us going, and that thing is very deeep, and is older that our species, and when that thing conflicts with our modern brain, we get confused. What is the meaning of life? Why should i go on? The answer to these questions can't be "our instincts tell us to", it doesn't make sense, but it does, actually life is worth just for the living, and we should just go on, because our instincts tell us, they know better, they had billions(not millions) of years to evolve and refine them selfs, our minds have been around for only a few million years, which one should you trust? I have more to live for than what my instincts tell me, but many don't, and they have the power to ignore them, and we have no right to judge them, they overcame the most important of all our instincts with their minds, that takes will, even if its a stupid decision, its a valid one(not always of course).
I think for a lot of people there's a huge disconnect between internet and reality. On the internet it's often just words on a page, with no association to real people.
Also, there's so much shocking material and people joking around on the Internet sometimes it's hard to realize what's "real" and what's not. People like guy who pranked Zed Shaw a couple weeks ago certainly don't help: http://zedshaw.com/blog/2008-10-30.html
This shows why Zed acted appropriately. It just as easily could have been someone like this kid who killed himself. Better to find yourself pranked than to not investigate and find out someone died and wondering if you could have done something to alter the outcome.
Can't be done. What we need to do (and should have before the internet) is have a better support system for people with mental health issues. Once you're broadcasting the fact that you're thinking about suicide on the net, it's only a matter of time. It's a shame that people seem to have spurred him on, but there's a really high chance people in his life saw something coming (or would have if they knew what to look for) and didn't act, and that even if he hadn't done it yesterday, he'd do it at some point in the future.
"Once you're broadcasting the fact that you're thinking about suicide on the net, it's only a matter of time."
Do you really think that every time someone talks about suicide on the internet that they are actually serious? Or even most of the time? Certainly I agree that a better support structure is needed, but talking about suicide on the internet may not necessarily be as much of a warning sign as you seem to think (a study on this would probably be reasonably insightful to the matter).
Yeah, I do. Suicide is a cry for attention, and as such usually begins with other (often directly related) cries. I'd say that most people who start talking about it live on webcam are going to attempt it at some point if they're not helped. Just conjecture on my part.
I guess in many cases the problem is that it is not obvious how to react to mental health issues. There are only theories on how to cure someone, but few certain measurements. Still, at least attempts at cures should be made (or at prevention).
As their family member it's obvious how to react: tell them to get help, and ride them about it until they do. I've done this. The second part is probably the more important.
There's no guarantee that help will be successful of course, but you've at least done what you can.
Reddit recently had a discussion about this. Here is the top rated comment in the thread.
Sysiphuslove:
"I don't think it's so much the anonymity of the poster as the anonymity of the victim. There's obviously a 'real person' on the other end of the conversation, but there's no face, no voice...a victim online is stripped of his humanity just enough to salve the conscience, but not enough to make an unsatisfying target.
An online victim is a perfect blank slate for projection: he is represented only by the narrowest of opinions or acts, with no other definable characteristic besides an avatar and/or screen name. It is satisfying to shoot down these faceless assertions. It isn't really personal, just a private exercise of retaliation.
Look at it this way: when someone pisses you off on the highway, are you mad at the person? Or is it, in some abstract way, the car?"
Hmm, I certainly think the point that the post you quote is getting at does have some relevance.
However, I personally feel that it is the anonymity of the poster more so than that of the victim which contributes to this "astonishing cruelty" that is sometimes evident online. I agree that it's not personal on the part of the poster. In 99.9% of cases, really how could it be? I believe the "private exercise of retaliation" is performed due to stressors in the posters life that he feels frustrated about and powerless to solve. Be those stressors related to work, family, friends, finances or whatever. They get some degree of relief by taking out their frustrations online where they can do so with this effective anonymity.
I think aside from the previously discussed anonymity, it also has a lot to do with what is acceptable for a given social group. People are capable of truly sadistic and terrible acts when they have been made to feel that those acts are acceptable by their peers. When one is not alone in their cruelty, even ostensibly "reasonable" or "normal" people can become monsters.
But well, when someone pisses me off on the road I am squarely pissed at them, not the car they're in, neither in an abstract way or otherwise. I'm not really sure what that analogy is trying to say. Were I a member of an Amazon tribe who had never seen a car before and didn't know what a car was, and one day a car shoots by, nearly running me down, then yeah, I imagine I'd be super pissed at that car.
Yeah the analogy is a bit flawed, I think of it more as, "Are you really mad at the person driving the car for that event or are you projecting your other frustrations and hatred onto that person because they are a safe target."
The anonymity of the poster certainly has a lot to do with it too. I just liked the comment because it gave me a different perspective on the issue.
"Are you really mad at the person driving the car for that event or are you projecting your other frustrations and hatred onto that person because they are a safe target."
Yes, that makes more sense and is along the lines of my own thinking above.
This german article gives some good reasons: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,591783,00.html (in german, unfortunately). Maybe some people really are cruel, but there are other reasons (as with the shoutings of "jump already" if somebody jumps off the roof). People resent being manipulated, which a suicide does (just look at the pushy comments here, about what justin.tv HAS to do now). And by saying "so what" they make the suicide seem meaningless, which might help in some cases to prevent it - if the suicide candidate wants the attention but doesn't get it.
Hopefully it gives the Justin.tv community a reality check. They were egging him on?!? As someone who volunteers on a suicide helpline, I'm amazed that people won't condemn that kind of behavior before it causes real harm.
I understand your sentiment, but if you think that this wouldn't occur in many communities that have a large base of users, you are off base. I don't just mean places like 4chan- have you ever read comments on Youtube videos?
1) They weren't egging him on, apparently, just letting him get on with it without interfering.
2) This is a very well known psychological effect called "diffusion of responsibility". It's the same effect that allows hundreds of people to walk by while someone is being beaten up in the street, when almost none of them would just ignore the event if they were alone or in a very small group with no one else around. It's neither surprising, nor "wrong" per se - it's just human nature.
This has happened before and will happen again. The first internet-based 'televised' event I know of is the 'ripper' event on IRC channel #shroomery. Logs are stilla vailable online, one instance at http://b00mb0x.org/blog/pic/chattrans.html
God the media is going to try to blame Justin.tv for this. While the CEO's statement was bad, he was probably caught off guard and didn't know what to say. At least I hope that's what happened.
I think the statement is probably technically true. Some percentage of the population is a pedophile, some percentage of the population uses justin.tv. It is likely that there is an overlap.
I'm sure Slashdot, news.yc, and Reddit are all "riddled with pedophiles" also. Who cares?
Sad for his family and friends. Nothing to add about the legal/corporate aspects, as you have already addressed those. Human tragedy. Here's a helpful resource for the prevention of teen suicide you can share if you wish...
You know, people would do this less often if they generated less public attention. Ultimately, it's up to the person to save themselves, and if they choose not to, that's their choice.
Plus, we should start calling suicide for what it is: cowardice and selfishness, instead of fawning over the poor souls who didn't receive enough love and attention.
> The contention that filming and uploading (and even hosting video of) a crime is a crime as well might not be valid, but given the very nature of live broadcasts, the issue becomes more complicated.
Reminds me of that James Woods film, "Videodrome", an existential musing on reality, specifically, television being more "real" than real life. While dated, one could update the "Videodrome" movie concept for the internet age. Obviously, Justin.tv did nothing wrong, in terms of the fact one cannot edit live video. It does bring up questions about the need for sensationalism, that somehow there is a collective need for it, almost like an archtype.
I'm suggesting that joking about a person's death needs to be considered against the nature of that death and the current environment.
It's very likely that the family of that kid will happen upon this forum and that post in the next little while, and I think as a community it would be nice if they weren't met with the same idiotic comments that they'll find on the bodybuilding site.
It's the same thing as making jokes about 9/11 victims on 9/12, but there's no hard and fast rule. Such is the case with pretty much every social nicety.
Seriously people? I didn't expect this to be taken well by most here (in fact it was an experiment to see if there was a limit to down-voting), but some of you seem to be on a war path now.
It doesn't really matter what the Justin.tv CEO said. He pasted some boiler plate because there's nothing more to be said; the deed had been done. What do you want? An apology for not finding the video? For not policing the Internet? Prosecution of anybody "egging him on?" Come on.
Someone broadcast their suicide. That fact doesn't make it any more tragic than any other suicide. It also doesn't mean anybody more than usual was responsible. There's really no story here which is why I chose to make a comment that didn't acknowledge there was.
You may return to being irrationally sanctimonious now.
This reminds me of something that happened to me after 9/11. In my teenage immaturity, I made a comment insinuating that America got what was coming to it. I'm not sure why I did that (the mind is good at rationalizing behavior after the fact, so I can't trust my own memories on the matter), but I think it was a reaction to the complete unanimous sorrow going on in the forum. Everybody thought that the attacks were a horrible thing, that the deaths were such a tragedy. It might have been that I was struck by the complete irrationality of their reactions -- people don't feel so angered about annual traffic accident fatality numbers. After their angered reactions, I apologized and gave an excuse somewhat like the parent comment.
Having been in this situation, I'd say that tdavis probably posted that under the same state of mind as I did. And now that I look back, I can't help but conclude that taking that state of mind is the right thing to do. After events like these, certain ideas become treated like "correct viewpoints" that good-thinking people have to have. Such as that America is the good guys, or that this event here was so tragic and that you should be mournful. And now that somebody has come along with a different attitude on the matter, we get to witness a hailstorm of people who don't simply disagree on the matter, but who hate him because his reactions are different to theirs.
"America" did get what was coming to it. Its foreign policy of the last 50 years has been brutal.
However, the people in the towers weren't "America", they were people like you and me, and they were not guilty of "America"'s foreign policy any more than you and me are, and it is a tragedy that they ended up being the victims of this event.
I guess I'm the only other person who can't see why a pseudo-sentimental canned response is so much superior to any other canned response.
When Pepsi, or the Whitehouse, the police, or whoever else (aside from those who knew the person, weeping or outraged) gives the canned response about caring, does anybody actually believe them when they say "all of us are deeply saddened...", or whatever you're proposing?
By now, people are immune to any type of official response to anything tragic[1], and don't expect (and really wouldn't want) a candid response of any type.
I know it was broadcast live on the internet, which is why it made the news at all but no normal well-adjusted adult (or child, for that matter) will go from "happy go lucky" to killing themselves live on the internet over the course of an afternoon flame war on bodybuilding.com, of all places.
[1]except perhaps missing child, axe murderer on the loose type thing... and then only in Podunk, really.
I agree. The sentimentalists are denying it. The idea that site operators have to be responsible for the live-feed user-content on their sites is absurd. Yes, this kid killed himself, but if I was the CEO of justin.tv I wouldn't feel bad for the kid. I'd feel bad for the tarnished name of my company. Honestly, people commit suicide ALL THE TIME. And it sucks.... for their friends and family, but suddenly it's broadcast across the internet and I'm supposed to have an interest in this specific incident?
But this story is a sensationalized love-in because other people witnessed the 'suicide'. I'm certainly not calling 9-1-1 every time I read a post trolling some web forums. 99% of the internet is NOT serious business. Most of the internet is people trying to piss each other off and cause trouble.
Honestly, the best this CEO can hope for is if people forget his company was involved, and worse case is the family ends up on Opera bemoaning how horrible the internet is and calling the CEO out to get involved in suicide prevention and better moderate his company's web properties.
_This story shouldn't be about how the internet is a cruel place that forced someone to kill himself. It should be about the real world being so cruel that not a single person in this kid's life cared enough to notice his problems._
It matters if you're trying to build a good reputation for your startup in the public marketplace. As much as we like to think that it's all about the code, these public perception things matter. Ill-considered comments - and even well-meaning comments that have the tone-deaf dissonance of stock boilerplate - have a direct, adverse effect on the public's image of your company. If you run a company like Justin.tv, that should matter to you, regardless of your personal feelings about the suicide itself. That may seem calculated and political, but it's a reality in the unpure world of business.
Seriously people? I didn't expect this to be taken well by most here (in fact it was an experiment to see if there was a limit to down-voting), but some of you seem to be on a war path now.
Oh, so now I'm a guinea pig in a sociology experiment when I come to hacker news?
Nice. That makes it so much better. Don't think I'll be using ticket-bumbler either.
They say there's no such thing as bad press, but I'm not so sure anymore.
I came to this forum to escape the Reddit mentality. I'm glad to see that griefers are still being aggressively downmodded here. It gives me hope that the HN community can maintain its quality status.
Are you kidding? You don't even have to input your email to sign up. It's easier to be anonymous here than anywhere else, it's just that more people choose not to be.
An interesting, but rather unanticipated (I expect), side effect of your experiment is that even when you post something that's not too contentious, you're getting voted down to oblivion.
That shows there are plenty of HN users who do not understand HN policy. PG himself has said don't to crazy levels (such as under -10) unless it's obviously spam or the like..
This happens to people all the time... it almost never works to reply to massively downmodded posts to try and salvage them. I wouldn't even recommend he apologize as that will probably be downmodded.
Agreed. Besides, this post will blow over quickly (as they all do).
One thing I've noticed a lot in the past is that I'll post something I truly believe or feel but that's slightly contentious. I'll get downvoted to, say, -4 or so in the first few hours, but then voted up into positive territory over a day or two.
Perhaps those who aren't always trawling the site for new items are more realistic in their voting, whereas those who spend more time on the site are hastier and more damning.
You shouldn't have apologised. Shame on you for giving in to the righteous hordes, from a moral standpoint. From a business standpoint, it may have seemed the only practical action, but in my mind you compromised your personal integrity by apologising to these people, and I'm sorry that you did.
I believe in the end it was something that deserved an apology, but doing so certainly did compromise my personal integrity. I guess compromising it one time won't kill me.
That this comment got modded so high is downright shameful. Rather than disagree and state your reasons you would choose to escalate this into an attack on someone's livelihood. This is intended to be a community where we can speak freely among our peers, and you and your little cheerleading posse have perverted that.
I'm really trying to understand where you're coming from. I don't know if this is simply a last resort because you're unable to articulate exactly why you so vehemently disagree or if this is a threat you intend to follow through with. I can assure you that if you do, in fact, intend to avoid doing business or associating with those you have disagreed with at one time or another you are going to be living in a very lonely world.
There was an additional cheap comment from another ticketstumbler founder that has since been removed showing a similar sentiment, mocking the Justin.tv statement.
it really disappoints me to see users with very high karma levels making such obscene, unnecessary and completely non-hacker-news-esque comments. you are hurting this community: please stop.
Because I have a thing against sheep-like waves of self-righteousness colimating on a single hapless victim. It could have been me - hell, I made a comment just as caustic as tdavis, but somehow I got "lucky" and ignored by the masses of supposedly terribly offended users.
Honestly, I think your account should be revoked after that comment, unless you see it fit to properly apologize.
Also, when you have your (and your partner's) business linked in your profile, you should think twice about what you say. Your concern about your reputation may be little, but I'm sure your livelihood is a little more important.
I'm left questioning not only your maturity, but that of user fallentimes, also from ticketstumbler, and even PG and YCombinator itself. I certainly do not want to be associated with people that feel another individual's suicide is a joke. Your business will not see any revenue from me, ever.
You should think about your own maturity level before engaging in self-indulgent posts such as the one you just wrote.
The funny thing about the sentence I just wrote is that you could validly echo it back to me. At least the self-indulgence part. Unfortunately for you, I have been thinking about my maturity level while writing this post.
In all seriousness (and my first sentence was serious too), what we have here is that your comment's parent was written by a person who is comfortable with making light of human tragedy, something which you are uncomfortable with. I'm not sure what that has to do with maturity, and in fact I'm not sure what maturity is or why you think that attribute would be a sign of immaturity.
I'm not sure how my post is self-indulgent, to be honest.
Most people would consider black humour regarding a suicide that basically just happened as inappropriate and immature. After a certain period has elapsed, some venues will allow for such an expression. (The fact that the parent is a -50 in rating as I write this confirms this social norm.)
People who make inopportune remarks tend to be those that are either not able to properly grasp the magnitude of a situation and deal with it in a dignified and respectful way; or even worse, can't pick up on the general consensus of others as to the degree of magnitude.
How well a person can read social situations is by definition, maturity.
Do better. Fast.