| Mark has every right to disappear, I said so.
And Mark has every right to delete all of his stuff. Sure. And Mark has every right to delete all of his stuff, stuff that has been widely linked to, stuff heralded as brilliant, and he has the right to delete all of his accounts, but what he has no right to do when he does that and leaves no explanation, is to be annoyed that people wonder what happened to him? This is an age passed the kids' faces on milk boxes. We have google that puts up a infobox for suicide prevention if you search for suicide. We have amber alerts. We have diggs/reddits/farks starting searches for missing people. We have had several famous net suicides including one in January 2011, where a woman posted her suicide intention, people read it, no one took her seriously, and she went through with it. Needless to say all of her Facebook friends were heavily criticized in the following days. We have a zillion different ways to connect in an age that stresses how wonderful the socially connected internet is, and Mark goes off and deletes all of his stuff and his accounts with no explanation whatsoever, And he's annoyed that people notice and take action? If he wants to delete his stuff, fine. Leave a nice page up saying he is fine but for reason X he is taking down his material for awhile. Wish everyone well, and thank them for their concern. And he's clearly smart enough to understand that. |
What did people notice? That his public side is gone? So they immediately assumed that he is dead? That looks like a leap of faith. There were other ways to reach him than police. They could have found out who knew him and told those people to make contact. Police calls are drastic actions and an embarrassment.