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CNN Reports Diaspora's Ilya Zhitomirskiy Committed Suicide
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- VonGuard 15y agoYeah. Customer services makes you want to kill them, not yourself.
- Omnipresent 15y agoIt is so important to realize where you stand in life. I'm sure many of us would have loved to be in place of Ilya; In news all over at the age of 21. Perhaps he did not realize this. A great loss.
- steve-howard 15y ago"Where you stand" and being in the news tend not to mean much to suicidal people. I deeply sympathize with all involved, Ilya included.
- VonGuard 15y agoAgreed. The Internet can be a harsh mistress. "In the news" can also mean "reading 1000's of mean-spirited comments."
- TillE 15y agoNot to comment on this specific case, but I really wish people didn't feel the need to listen to the kind of feedback you get from the general internet. It's such a waste of time and emotional energy. Listen to the people you respect, ignore the rest. And if you do want to interact with the community, for heaven's sake, don't respond to the assholes. They're just background noise.
- F_J_H 15y agoThat, and perhaps follow Andy Warhol`s advice: Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.
- VonGuard 15y agoDon't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in megabytes. (FTFY)
- billpatrianakos 15y agoYeah that's easy to say and it really should be practiced but we all want and crave validation. The web can be incredibly harsh and ignorant (just take a look at a few of the comments here that got downvoteed to hell, which they deserved by the way) but when you get that validation from total strangers there's nothing like it! It's a rush, it's addictive, and it feels so much better than the hate. I would say, if anything, you should do your best to filter out the total assholes but not disregard all negative feedback. There's a difference between "I hate x software because I'm a FOSS fanatic and your company sucks and destroys the earth", which is pretty harsh and "fuck you, you're queer" which is just safe to ignore.
- Joakal 15y agoExample: Justin Bieber hate. Those people make Internet look like a massive hate machine. At least Bieber acknowledges that there's people who don't like him.
- corin_ 15y agoSometimes suicide is driven by analytically looking at your life and deciding it really is awful... but a huge amount of the time it is a psychological problem of depression, which isn't going to be instantly cured by thinking "I'm in the news", or even "I have great friends/family".
- kstenerud 15y agoThe facts are the facts, but one's "analysis" is always based on opinion. When you suffer from depression, that opinion is always biased towards the negative, and it's nearly impossible to get out of the vicious cycle, especially if your serotonin receptors or secretors are malfunctioning. Worse, you simply accept that opinion as established, cold, hard fact, which means that in your own mind it won't ever change (the world will always be a shithole. I'll always be a loser, Anything I try to do to fix things is futile because everything's so horrible, etc). "Great friends/family" just means more people to disappoint or fail in some way. "In the news" just means a bigger humiliation once you inevitably screw everything up and piss everyone off and let everyone down. Essentially, anything good in your life receives a negative spin, and anything bad gets amplified in your warped opinion. And that only leads to more despair, lower opinion, more despair, etc until it feels like the only logical choice is to off yourself. After all, you'd be doing the world a favor if you ceased to exist. All those people you wouldn't be there to hurt or let down. All the outrage you won't cause. It's a net gain, really. Does that sound fucked up? It is, but for the depressed, that IS their reality.
- ahoyhere 15y agoWhen you're depressed, fame, money, opportunities can be all the more depressing because they don't help you feel better. Unless you've been well-off, famous, respected, you can't understand just how big a gulf there can be between what people see when they look at you, and what you feel inside. The bigger the gulf, the worse it feels.
- thomasgerbe 15y agoCouldn't have put it better myself. You could even cut it to "you can't understand just how big a gulf there can be between what people see when they look at you, and what you feel inside."
- fennecfoxen 15y agoSo, I made a fair amount of money off my last job (the company's stock plummeted, they repriced all the options, the price recovered), and I ended up with a six-figure retirement account at age 26. I'm certainly fortunate and it makes my life a bit less stressful, but it doesn't keep me warm at night. It doesn't care about whether or not I had a good day at work. I can't have an intellectually stimulating conversation with it. And that's just a little bit of money. Fame would be even worse.
- tibbon 15y agoThis whole thing makes me feel terrible. I didn't know Ilya well, but I did know him. I wish I had known that he was in a bad situation personally that led to this. I wish I could have helped. My last trip to SF in September was really busy and I didn't get to hang out with him. He even offerred me his couch to crash on, but I didn't take him up on the offer. We meant to do some pair programming back in July, but things got busy and I didn't followup on the invitation. He invited me to an awesome party in April, but I didn't end up going as I'd needed to fly from Ohio there, but I can't help wishing that I'd done it anyway. So I just feel terrible frankly that I mistakenly turned down interacting with him. Would have we had some conversation that would have changed his opinion on things? Given him some new hope? Clearly, I know this isn't anyone's fault, but in retrospect its hard not to wish that anyone was able to do more. I suppose the only thing to do in the future is to always prioritize time with people as the #1 thing. In retrospect, nothing else I could have been doing was more important.
- mortenjorck 15y agoSo I just feel terrible frankly that I mistakenly turned down interacting with him. Would have we had some conversation that would have changed his opinion on things? Given him some new hope? This is a very human reaction, but please don't let yourself get hung up on this line of thinking. Heroic intervention is something we tend to overestimate. What you can do is to be there for the people you know well. When someone's hurting, be generous with your time; be someone they can turn to. If you ever think someone's at risk, know what to look for and know where to turn.
- maeon3 15y agoI disagree, suicide is selected into the genome to get useless parts to self destruct. Like how skin cells have to shift around to service the whole. He was reaching out to everywhere he could looking for validation and found none. Mixed with a stiff upper lip and a lack of desire to show weakness is a recipe for a feedback loop of perceived irrelevance. When all around you use actions to indicate that you are a burden, not an asset. Freeing up resources is good for the hive. he loved the collective, too much. Your no's were part of the feedback loop, you couldnt have known the magnitude of what was happening, but your actions are part of his decision. Healing from this will take honesty, you can delude others but not yourself. You are a part of it, but it wasn't your responsibility.
- viggity 15y agoPlease, if suicide has crossed your mind, please, please, please find help. I had a fraternity brother commit suicide and you have no idea how much you'll be missed. Help is out there and it is free. http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
- VladRussian 15y agoso, we create hell on earth for other people and when these people decide to leave the hell, we caringly, with all the good emotions in in the voice, say "please don't do it". You must be kidding. How about just looking around and honestly answering simple question - whose hell today i'm part of ? One don't need to be an active or the most painful part, being just a part, a silent brick in the wall, is enough. And may be, if one has enough brains and courage, to refuse to be the part of the hell, just for one person, just for one day. And, yes, two decades ago during student years, 3 persons i personally knew very well made the decision, and i respect it. They made the biggest decision in their life, and i'd not disrespect it with "what if"s or "they should have reach for the help" or with any other trash like this...
- Cushman 15y agoGet out of here with that. Maybe there are circumstances, in times of horrible war or famine or terminal illness, where suicide is the necessary step to end suffering. Maybe that's hell; I wouldn't know. I hope not to. But I know depression. Depression feels like hell, but it's not. It's a treatable disease. Killing yourself to escape depression is like killing yourself to escape pneumonia instead of going to the hospital. You should not respect that decision. You should help that person to get better.
- VladRussian 15y agowhat depression has to do with it? this is exactly kind of disrespect i was talking about. To immediately declare the person to be psychologically ill just because of our deepest fear of what may happen if we accept that ending your own life may be a rational well-thought off decision. It is easy to blame the person's imaginary illness instead of accepting responsibility that human society normally creates conditions when such a decision can be a rational well-thought off one.
- theshiva 15y agoIt seems that Ilya left behind a detailed suicide note. http://oobly.com/?p=530/ http://oobly.com/?p=530/ I spoke to a person who was there when his mother called to check on him. Tragic.
- shalmanese 15y agoThis is false.
- lwat 15y agoWhy
- rottencupcakes 15y agoDo you have any evidence of this?
- 21echoes 15y agoyes, i was one of his three roommates who found his body, and the only one who read the note before the police took it as evidence. it was short, and simply said "thank you to everyone who was kind to me, this decision is purely my own".
- ghotli 15y agomy heart goes out to you and all of his family and friends
- theshiva 15y agoMy source was there, in the house, in that bedroom.
- shalmanese 15y agoYou don't have any contact information listed in your profile and I don't want to get into it in a public discussion but there was no long, detailed suicide note.
- codybrown 15y agoI know this is an open forum but these threads are getting hard to read. Copycat suicides are a real phenomenon and some responses, however genuine and well intentioned, can make them more likely to occur. Department of Health Recommendations for Covering Suicide. Do not apportion blame. Do not give simple reasons. Do not glorify. Read more here: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/resource_media.pdf http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/resource... http://www.scribd.com/doc/126241/WHO-Media-Guide-for-Suicide-Reporting http://www.scribd.com/doc/126241/WHO-Media-Guide-for-Suicide...
- invisiblefunnel 15y agoDiaspora commit: "Image for Ilya" https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/0c337910690108699dbe8fa7b3a481b06737cd96 https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/0c33791069010869...
- maxklein 15y agoInternet criticism can be very hurtful. A simple way to prevent further startup suicides is that when you see someone being heavily criticized, or when you see a startup that is being criticized a lot, send them an email supporting them and offering to listen to their side of the story. Even if the people are not suicidal, it can help them through a difficult time and motivate them to continue to do good stuff. The reality of the situation right now in the startup world is that when people hear you are making x amount/month, you get 500 emails, but when the tables turn and you are suddenly on the receiving end of heavy criticism, you get zero emails.
- goatforce5 15y agoIs it just speculation that his suicide relates to his work life? (And not, say, girl/health/money problems...)
- vaksel 15y agomoney problems would definitely fall under work life for startups. Girl/health problems might fall as well, since the work/life balance is so crappy
- davidhansen 15y agoA little bit of a derailment from what this threat "ought to be" about, but... The reality of the situation right now in the startup world is that when people hear you are making x amount/month, you get 500 emails, but when the tables turn and you are suddenly on the receiving end of heavy criticism, you get zero emails. Is this a serious observation? It is my experience that literally nobody cares how much money you're making. Your popularity as a "startup celebrity" is entirely associated with how cool your project is perceived to be, and who is backing it. There are legions of founders making plenty of money on perceived-to-be-boring projects that nobody cares about.
- prawn 15y agoCriticism is one thing, but a threat seems a bit much!
- subpixel 15y agoI hope Ilya is at peace. I'd like to speak to anyone who might feel, now or in the future, as desperate as Ilya must have. Please consider this: by nature our own pain and suffering strikes us as intensely personal and private, but the truth is the experience is universal. For different reasons, at different times in our lives, we all get served heaping helpings of grief, desperation, regret, shame, disappointment - sometimes all at once. And, in the case of people with depression, sometimes for no discernible reason. The most crushing aspect of depression and its cohorts is the false perception that your pain is so diabolically personal that it cannot be shared or understood, to say nothing of being addressed or overcome. tl;dr you're never alone, in fact more people love and respect you than you know - try to never forget that.
- vaksel 15y agowhat a waste, at 21 and with Diaspora on his resume, he could have gone on to work at Google or Facebook, making $100K-$200K/yr. The skillset was there. Sure it's not as much as owning the next Facebook...but it's plenty of money to live a comfortable life...and nothing was stopping him from trying again in a few years.
- clarkevans 15y agoI think you completely misunderstand Ilya. He emphatically did not want to work at Facebook for $100-$200K/year.
- vaksel 15y agoNot everyone gets to be a dotcom millionaire...plenty of people have to work for a living. And with his skillset, at least he didn't have to settle for a $20K/yr job flipping burgers.
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- untog 15y agoI think you're still missing the point by focusing on how much he would be earning a year. He may have been perfectly happy with $20k a year making Diaspora- it certainly seems like money was of little concern in his career choices.
- SwellJoe 15y agoYou're still missing the point. Making millions was obviously not his driving desire. You simply don't build Open Source software if your primary motivation is to make a lot of money.
- cma 15y agoHe didn't mean he wouldn't want to work at Facebook for 200k because it wouldn't be enough money. He wouldn't want to work there because he was working on replacing Facebook with something more open and morally better.
- shareme 15y agoA question, I do not mean to be dramatic. But, is there some type of out-reach program for start-up founders to prevent this sort of thing? Let us admit that founding or working in a start-up is extremely stress-full compared to other work or professional activities. I know each one of us has a circle of friends that they have cultivated to provide unconditional support so that when they need that its there. But even when you do that you might hit obstacles that even overwhelm that.
- ethank 15y agoSomething along the line of Nuçi's Space, in Athens, GA which provides these types of services for musicians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuçis_Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuçis_Space
- davidhansen 15y agoI know each one of us has a circle of friends that they have cultivated to provide unconditional support so that when they need that its there. This is a fairly strange assumption. Not everyone makes friends easily.
- thomasgerbe 15y agoEspecially in early startups where one works alone quite a lot of the time. Very different than getting a job at a company.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoYes, very true. I'm one of those you're talking about. I'm a lone founder, coder, sales team, accountant... I do it all. Alone. And it gets very very depressing even when you're kicking ass and taking names it can get depressing. I have little to no social life, my girlfriend couldn't handle my new lifestyle and left me and no amount of success is enough. It's draining. I'm not antisocial. I'm attractive, outgoing, and well liked but the job becomes you and there are sacrifices. I'm even on the board of a charity organization but that interaction isn't enough (everyone else is much older than me on that board). So you're right, man. Even when things are looking up it can sneak up on you. I can only imagine what this poor guy went through. He set out to raise $10,000 and exceeded it by far in under 2 weeks, gets thrown into the startup spotlight, the pressure gets intense, and all the while he probably had the mindset of someone doing something much smaller. Not to assume what his thoughts were but it seems like he was just trying to something small and cool and it grew far larger than anyone had anticipated so fast that wasn't enough time to adjust and them that depression snuck in there and now he's gone. It's so sad. I wonder if the lightning fast growth of Diaspora had anything to do with it. I wonder what effect being in the spotlight can have on someone unprepared for it.
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- orky56 15y agoThis is really sad news. It's ironic that in Silicon Valley, a place that embraces failure, someone has misconstrued something and taken it too personally. I hope Ilya has found peace.
- grusk 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Zhitomirskiy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Zhitomirskiy
- suivix 15y agoI find it appalling that much of his notability is the fact he committed suicide.
- politician 15y agoGiven the sensitive nature of this conversation, how is downvoting suivix's comment justified?
- pheaduch 15y agoInteresting, he went to the same high school as Kobe Bryant.
- imran 15y agoWhy did paypal mysteriously freezed donations to diaspora?
- theshiva 15y agoanyone knows how to delete a comment that has replies?
- kamaal 15y agoOne of the key things in dealing with failure really is not to worry too much about what the world thinks about you or your failure. Not to succumb to peer pressure. The society is ruthless in criticism towards people who take risks and fail. They are sort of used up as examples for other people. I have relatives, two of whom died out of extreme stress and tension(Heart attack and Cancer) because they took loans beyond their means, were unable to repay it back and put a huge burden on their dependents. This is one example of taking risks which people really can't sustain. None of which is needed. Although you must not worry about the world, at the same time you must not take unnecessary financial risks beyond your means. Because we are people and we go through emotions, and sometimes for things beyond our control we are responsible not just for our lives but for many other people around us. And when we take huge risks, we put both ourselves and people around us under that risk. Now when we can't deal with that risk and we fail, things go worse very quickly and we commit suicide or die out of a disease(fallout of stress). Nothing is more important than health, and being happy. Take calculated risks. And if you fail, forget about it and start over. Don't do things which put you in these situations at the first place. And if you are in that situation, seek help and deal with it with it patiently.
- beatpanda 15y agoI've been reading comments on Hacker News since this happened, and I have to say, you people sure have a funny definition of "failure". https://joindiaspora.com/tags/NewHere https://joindiaspora.com/tags/NewHere – New users every one or two minutes. https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/ https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/ – Multiple commits, sometimes dozens, every day, many from volunteers. Would that I were fortunate enough to "fail" this well. Attributing Ilya's suicide to "failure" is, to my eyes, condescending, and I wish you all would stop it.
- Achshar 15y agoWhen did you see the users and commits? did you account for the possibility that This is due to the (unfortunate) publicity disphora got after Zhitomirskiy passed away? i say wait a couple of weeks an then try again.
- beatpanda 15y agoSeriously? https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits?page=5 https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits?page=5
- joannemiller 15y agoFailure precedes success ... Ilya was too young to know he was almost there. RIP shooting star.