By Jason Lim
Everyone has heard about how the explosive popularity of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in 1774 triggered a wave of copycat suicides by young men throughout Europe who fancied themselves forlorn over an unrequited love.
Thank God Young Werther killed himself in an age without social media. Can you imagine the lethal impact that he would have had if he were twitting about his tortured love for Lotte instead of writing long-hand letters to his friend? He would have set a record for the deadliest tweet in history, rivaling the body count of the Black Plague.
Forgive me if I am being facetious with something as serious as suicide by young people. But there is something seriously wrong when you are forced to witness a suicide unfolding over the twitter airwaves, which is basically what happened with the suicide by Song Jee-seon, the best-known female sports announcer in Korea. You feel sad over the pain that someone like her must have felt. But you also feel angry. At what, I am not really sure, but I am certain that I am angry as I write this column.
Perhaps the anger comes from the simple fact that another promising, beautiful young entertainer decided to kill herself; this time by wrapping herself with a blanket and throwing herself from a high-rise apartment.
Sure, she must have been humiliated when a mini-homepage blog post about her intimate relationship with an up-and-coming baseball star went viral. She must have been devastated when her company, MBC Sports Plus, decided to suspend her from her dream job and deliberate penalties for unprofessional conduct. And she must have been shattered when her supposed boyfriend publicly denied her claim that they had been dating, painting her as a liar or delusional.
Perhaps the anger also comes from the fact that her personal life unraveled before the world through twitter feeds. There is a reason that we distinguish between personal and professional life. Personal is just that, personal. In other words, it should be private. Your personal life shouldn’t unfurl like a team banner in a baseball stadium.
Her story, as personally difficult as it must have been, is not an uncommon one. It’s actually one of the most clichéd stories in the world. Boy and girl are attracted to each other. They sleep together. Girl thinks that’s amore. But boy thinks that’s it. Girl is hurt and suffers but bounces back better than ever. And lives happily ever after.
But it’s difficult to bounce back when the whole world has been following your personal devastation and humiliation on social media. Not just following, but chiming in with their own judgments and opinions. It’s a reality show played out over twitter feeds. Who knew that 140 characters could be so deadly?
Ultimately, I think my anger comes from the fact that there is no one here to blame except for the dead. She was the one who authored her own death by inviting the public to share in her personal hell as they were happening. No, not share. But rather become a collective peeping Tom into her life. She exposed herself until there was no more personal space for her to hide away and heal.
Why would she do this? Why would a vibrant, beautiful, and intelligent woman do this to herself? What is it about Twitter that would compel her to strip naked in all her suffering?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not blaming Twitter for her suicide. But I am profoundly confused why our young people would feel the need to share details of their intimate, personal life with total strangers. Worse, it’s impulse sharing, thoughtless and shallow by definition.
What’s in play here? Is this about recognition? An attempt to stake out our own place in the world? Or, is this more about validation ― do we want strangers’ agreement and sympathy that what we do is right?
All I know is that I am still angry. And frustrated. Song should be alive today. Perhaps she would have cut her hair short, as scorned women are supposed to do in Korea. But no one else outside her family and friends should know that she had been scorned. And she certainly shouldn’t be dead.
I know that social media has been critical in driving sociopolitical change in the Middle East. I know that it has created a huge multinational platform for cross-cultural communication on an unprecedented scale. But I can’t help suspecting that social media has also undermined our sense of what’s private and proper in our social dealings. It has made us a bit less ripe as human beings.
Maybe I am just being too worrying. It could just mean that I am finally and officially “old” when I find the tortured deliberations of Young Werther more foolish than heartrending and feel anger at the criminal waste of a promising life overwhelmed by tweets. But maybe being old isn’t so bad after all.
Here is to wishing that Song may rest in peace in a place where only the birds tweet. You died too young.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant in organizational leadership, culture, and change management. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com and on Facebook.com/jasonlim2000.