TECHSPLOITATION: Ripper is a gangster!!!

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15883

 

TECHSPLOITATION: Ripper is a gangster!!!

 

Annalee Newitz, AlterNet

May 13, 2003Viewed on May 13, 2003

 

I'm probably the last person on the Net to pick up on the horrific and sad

Ripper meme. Ripper was the online moniker of 21-year-old Brandon Vedas, a tech

support geek at the University of Phoenix in Arizona. On the evening of Jan. 12

Vedas logged onto an Internet Relay Chat channel called " #shroomery, " turned on

his Web cam, and proceeded to ingest a lethal dose of prescription drugs as the

people in the chat room watched and talked to him.

 

Somebody saved the logs of Ripper's final chat session, during which the people

on #shroomery debated whether to intervene when they realized Ripper was

overdosing. You can view these logs yourself on the Brandon Carl Vedas Web site

(www.brandonvedas.com/internet.html).

 

All of the articles I've read about Ripper's death have registered shocked

disgust at the apathy of the people in the chat room with him. We hear how

terrible it was that the denizens of #shroomery egged him on ( " Eat more you

pussy! " one person taunted Ripper after he'd taken a huge number of pills). But

this behavior shouldn't be the point. It's not surprising; it's just part of the

colloquial landscape of IRC.

 

Imagine, for a moment, what it was really like to be on that IRC channel when

Ripper logged on. He's on his Web cam with a bag of pills that could be

anything. They could be Pez or sugar capsules. He's trying hard to impress: " I

got a grip of drugs, " he announces. " Tune in. Watch. " People start hassling him.

They don't believe the drugs are genuine, or they think he's just playing when

he tells them how many he's already taken. New people are jumping onto the

channel all of the time, and they have no idea whether this Ripper guy is for

real or not. That's why you get Grphish joking, " Ripper, if you puke? can i eat

it? i'll get so high of [sic] that puke. "

 

Meanwhile, Ripper is being tailed by a bot named Pnutbot, a program that

pretends to be a person but is really just a chunk of code that tries to spit

out semirelevant comments addressed to the #shroomery community. Pnutbot picks

up phrases that other people are saying and then repeats them in a different

context. Every time someone says, " Ripper, " which begins to be quite frequent as

the #shroomery folks get scared that he's ODing, Pnutbot shrieks, " Ripper is a

gangster!!! "

 

In between frantic requests from Grphish that people try to find Ripper's real

name and address or phone number, Pnutbot keeps surrealistically shouting

" Ripper is a gangster!!! " over and over. Finally, Ripper begins to nod out.

Grphish is trying to get somebody to call 911 or poison control. Eventually

Ripper types his dying words: " ~~~~~~~~~shoa I'm fukcin. " Somebody named TheKat,

who tells Grphish not to call 911, comments, " You will never know if he died

unless he get [sic] back on here. " The worst part is that as Ripper wolfed down

his " grip " of drugs, he told the group how to find his real address in case

anything bad happened.

 

So why didn't Ripper's online pals call 911 when they knew he was dying? Two

reasons: they didn't believe it was really happening, and they didn't trust the

authorities. I think the latter problem is the more tragic of the two. Given the

terrifying crackdowns on people who take recreational drugs in the United

States, it's not surprising the #shroomery community was too scared to call 911

when its friend seemed to be ODing. And because it was taking place on the

Internet, visible only via stuttering Web cam images, people couldn't physically

intervene.

 

Sure, they should have overcome their fear and called 911 anyway. Neither should

Ripper have been acting like he wanted to win a Darwin Award. But Ripper's death

isn't about stupidity or apathy or " peer pressure. " Rather, it underscores one

of the most dangerous side effects of the war on drugs: people who need help

won't get it. The people on #shroomery really did want to save Ripper. They just

couldn't imagine that anything good would come of calling the authorities.

 

Now their anguish and indecision are written out for everyone to see. Reading

the logs, you can see clearly what happens when people live in so much terror of

the authorities that they'd rather watch a friend die than call 911. Ripper

wasn't just a victim of drugs. He was also a victim of the war on drugs.

 

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who hopes that next time you'll call 911.

Her column also appears in Metro, Silicon Valley's weekly newspaper.

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

« Go Back

 

 

 

 

Gettingwell- / Vitamins, Herbs, Aminos, etc.

 

To , e-mail to: Gettingwell-

Or, go to our group site: Gettingwell

 

 

 

The New Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.