That man knows how to flounce. Much respect. I should note that the concern isn't without merit. If you read Howard Rheingold's "The Virtual Community" which i

That man knows how to flounce. Much respect. I should note that the concern isn't without merit. If you read Howard Rheingold's "The Virtual Community" which is one of the earliest discourses on Internet and online community, the concept of "virtual suicide" isn't new. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/1.html http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/1.html In this case, someone created a tool to eradicate their online identity, then did the same in real life. I've had this issue twice in my 16 years of running Murmurs.com. In one case, the person was in chat on a Sunday and threatened suicide before deleting all her posts. We had to track down her university police department and they found her on the lawn outside her dorm overdosing on sleeping pills. The other was more sad. The guy disappeared and posts were removed. Only later did we find that he had left his suicide note on Flickr. He was Norwegian and we had to do a lot of digging to find more info. In the end his mom emailed me a very poorly translated English message, and it was heartbreaking. The moral is: I don't think there was any over reaction. This pattern has precedent and not a good one. I've never felt that in my 16 years of doing online community work I've ever over-reacted when I saw this behavior transpire. In one case we saved someone's life, and in the other we didn't.