Are You Sure You Want To Quit The World?

January 18, 2016 6:46 AM

If you were desperate and hopeless enough to log on to a suicide chat room in recent years, there was a good chance a mysterious woman named Li Dao would find you, befriend you, and gently urge you to take your own life. And, she'd promise, she would join you in that final journey. But then the bodies started adding up, and the promises didn't. Turned out, Li Dao was something even more sinister than anyone thought.
posted by veedubya (66 comments total)

This is why we have moderators, what a mess.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:53 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Link is not compatible with ad blocking.

The subject of the story is interesting though.
posted by yesster at 7:04 AM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I would love to read this but I am not disabling my ad blockers, sorry!
posted by Kitteh at 7:20 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had no problem with my adblocker; just had to enable GQ.com in NoScript.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:29 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Worked for me with uBlock.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:34 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not sure what you mean about ad blocking. I've got AdBlock and Ghostery, in Chrome, and the page loads fine for me.
posted by veedubya at 7:34 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I refreshed after cleaning the cache and it worked. Weird that.

Anyway, back to the FPP, this is the second time I've read about someone online creating life threatening challenges for people yet the police ignoring and diminishing the initial complaints. This needs to change.
posted by infini at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Every once in a while people will surprise you with completely unexpected acts of compassion and kindness. And then there's shit like this. In conclusion: humanity is a land of contrasts, I guess.

But I'm very glad that I am never likely to be in a position to decide the fate of the person whose actions are depicted in this article. Because as much as I prefer to favor compassion and kindness, after losing someone close to me I'm not sure that in this case I'd be able to resist making an exception.
posted by Nerd of the North at 7:54 AM on January 18, 2016

Thanks for posting. Christ, that was a chilling story. Let's take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the Miss Marples of the world.

That's really the best part to come out of this story, for me. It turns out that there are real live Jessica Fletchers among us, digging in and doing the hard grunt work of investigating in their spare time.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:54 AM on January 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

It's really difficult to get local police interested in this kind of thing, and I agree that it needs to change, but it's also relatively easy to understand why it is so hard.

I once had to call the police in Jackson, Mississippi to tell them that someone there was (somewhat credibly, hence the phone call) threatening to kill someone else there. They were mostly confused about why someone in Toronto was calling them from a San Francisco phone number (my work calls were made on a soft phone with my office number) to tell them about the possibility that something might happen in the future, based on postings they could no longer see (because obviously we removed them) on an internet site about food. It's just not "hey, someone just robbed my liquor store, send help!" or anything remotely close to that.

The FBI's internet crimes group is much better at at least accepting the initial complaint without being amazed that you're calling from the internet. I don't know how much more resources they're able to throw at the follow-up, though.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:56 AM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

“(alt.suicide.holiday) began as a Google discussion group...”

Jeez... does nobody learn any internet history from before about 1997 before writing articles about “online culture” these days? Next there will be actual paid journalists talking about LiveJournal as a Facebook page, MySpace as an iPhone selfie-sharing app, and discussions on “the Metafilter subreddit”.
posted by acb at 8:02 AM on January 18, 2016 [161 favorites]

""catch the bus," or CTB..."

cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT

a little irony there
posted by HuronBob at 8:05 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is chilling, the difficult fight for life thwarted by a possibly mentally ill man with nothing else to do.

I'm really pro people finding ways to talk to eachother about very difficult subjects, and i have my own dark past with similar sites when I was in trouble mentally.

The thought people would just sit around those sites for shits and giggles is appalling.

I mean I know this happens, and I've seen it. Some communities are more watchful than others and I'm really glad that people spent a ton the time and cared enough to stop this man.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:09 AM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

That was an absolutely horrific read, thank you for bringing it to my attention. It's left me with an immense feeling of gratitude for what I do have, especially my current mental state.
posted by diziet at 8:14 AM on January 18, 2016

Mentally ill in the way that all serial killers are mentally ill, sure. It seems super obvious to me that this dude is another Ted Bundy or whoever, the only difference is he got off on orchestrating the situation, not doing the killing himself.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

Well, and what's up with his serial incompetence when he was a nurse? Is the implication that he turned to remote-control murder because he felt bad about being a loser or that he had previously been orchestrating suffering and death more directly?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:16 AM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Even back in Usenet days, alt.suicide.holiday struck me as a repository of evil motherfuckers, ghouls who got their kicks out of encouraging others to do what they themselves wouldn't. I tend to believe that wishing misfortune on others is a karma boomerang, but as far as I'm concerned Melchert-Dinkel can get the ass cancer any old day now.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:17 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am not a big fan of the death penalty, but man, someone who takes advantage of suicidal people to get themselves off? I just can't even.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:22 AM on January 18, 2016

How was he only sentenced to one year.
posted by prefpara at 8:24 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh my god, he's like a bad serial killer movie villain.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:26 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Right. I don't believe in the death penalty ever, for anyone. But this guy got off with a slap on the wrist. He entered jail (not prison) in October and got out in February. You can believe that this is a crime that should be taken much more seriously without wanting to resort to killing anybody.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:26 AM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

How was he only sentenced to one year.

Law hasn't caught up to society yet. He belongs in jail for life on two first degree murder charges.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

acb, at least the grandma in the story knew it was usenet.

I think the story is from ~2007

This stuff goes back a long way. Here's Andy Tannenbaum (possibly; under a pseudonym) on net.suicide in 1983. http://article.olduse.net/[e-mail]
posted by joeyh at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think part of the reason for the low sentence is it's really hard to make laws that are specifically focused around one guy. I mean, clearly fuck this guy, right? But the same time I'm sure there were a lot of other people on this forum might've seemed to be encouraging others, but who were mentally ill and suicidally depressed themself. How do you create law that allows you to punish one, without the other? People who get their jollies from it, rather than the people who are in need of help themselves?
posted by corb at 8:43 AM on January 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

The law already takes into account mental illness. End result: you get locked up anyway because the problem is the behaviour. With mental illness defences you are treated and periodically reassessed to see if you're either fit to stand trial or re-enter society. So it's already taken care of, the only rewriting the law needs is to equate inciting suicide like this with murder.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:48 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thinking of whether or not this sort of behaviour is tantamount to the usual conception of murder, there does seem to be an important sort of equivalence between mental and physical vulnerability. It might not be as easy to determine the exploitation of a mental vulnerability as it is a physical one, but it seems to come out to the same thing.

The exploitation of the weakness of your windpipe with my hands and the exploitation of the weakness of your mind with my words--given, importantly, a certain mental state/health on the part of the victim--seem equally culpable.

(Sorry if this seems obvious; just working through it for myself, tbh. Also, apply slippery slope caveats where needed.)
posted by tummy_rub at 9:00 AM on January 18, 2016

I do wish writers would not use slang like "CTB" other than in quoted speech, in this type of story. I get that it adds journalistic color or whatever, but it also glamorizes the subculture it's covering in a way that seems potentially harmful. It's not called "CTB", it's called "committing suicide" or "killing one's self".
posted by threeants at 9:05 AM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

There is nothing wrong with suicide. There is nothing wrong with advising a person on the best way to do the deed correctly. Even Mefi thinks so.
posted by telstar at 9:07 AM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

There's a huge difference between "how to" and "go now, now, go kill yourself while I watch."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:11 AM on January 18, 2016 [30 favorites]

They were mostly confused

This is the thing. To people who read MetaFilter, the social and technical workings of the Internet are second nature—but to people in general, they're remote and inscrutable and hence less actionable and (seemingly) less real. And when the police do get involved in cases that require an understanding of these things, they very often screw it up.

The cops' ability to respond effectively to new technological realities evolves slowly, it seems—more slowly than the technology itself evolves. Given that technological evolution is only accelerating, this does not bode well for the future of law enforcement.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:17 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

It seems super obvious to me that this dude is another Ted Bundy or whoever, the only difference is he got off on orchestrating the situation, not doing the killing himself.

Ted Bundy volunteered at a suicide hotline for a while. (That's where he met Ann Rule, who wrote the book on him.) I don't know if he ever hurt anybody that way but it's really chilling to think how easy it is for any old psychopath to get access to people in their most vulnerable moments -- especially now, online. At least Ted Bundy had to go outside. I guess it's a reminder to reach out more and harder to people we know who are struggling, because who knows what else they're hearing.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:18 AM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Usenet showed up in the early 80s . It's been 30 years.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2016

There is nothing wrong with suicide. There is nothing wrong with advising a person on the best way to do the deed correctly. Even Mefi thinks so.

Did you read the article?
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

> There is nothing wrong with suicide. There is nothing wrong with advising a person on the best way to do the deed correctly. Even Mefi thinks so.

You've jumped from "sometimes the best remaining course someone can take" to "nothing wrong with". That's incredibly low-quality arguing.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:41 AM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Assholes like this give assisted suicide a bad name.
posted by tickingclock at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

There is nothing wrong with suicide. There is nothing wrong with advising a person on the best way to do the deed correctly. Even Mefi thinks so.

Compassion and Choices, (formerly the Hemlock Society), published this response in 2010 in which they tried to explain the distinction between the right to die and assisting suicide:

The contrast between aid in dying, in which a knowledgeable, merciful physician gives his elderly, dying patient the means to halt end-of-life suffering — and assisted suicide, in which a malicious predator seeks out and victimizes physically healthy, mentally ill teens — could not be more clear.

Consider the stark opposites outlined by Dr. James Lieberman in Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association:

• The suicidal patient has no terminal illness but wants to die; the aid in dying patient has a terminal illness and wants to live.
• Suicides bring shock and tragedy to families and friends; Aid in dying deaths are peaceful and supported by loved ones.
• Suicides are secretive and often impulsive and violent. Aid in Dying is planned; it changes only the timing of imminent death in a minor way, but adds control in a major and socially approved way.
• Suicide is an expression of despair and futility; Aid in dying is an affirmation of a person’s dignity and rational self-determination.

In short, suicide is the self destructive impulse of a person who has every reason and ability to live. Aid in dying is the self-affirming decision of a person who cannot choose to live, and can only choose the manner of an imminent death.

Whether you agree with their semantics, you can't ignore the behaviors that made Melchert-Dinkel a predator: seeking out vulnerable people, convincing them that they would form a pact, asking them if they could watch via webcam - this is not helping people commit suicide. It's encouraging them to do so because this asshole gets off (in some way) on it. He's a monster, and I wish for some sort of retribution in future lives since we're obviously not going to get any in this one.

Seriously, as someone who has been tempted by suicide numerous times in the past, if someone like Melchert-Dinkel had encouraged me to go through with it, I would have missed out on so much joy in my life, even with frequent returns to my dark days. I am going through a horrible, horrible depression right now, but I have enough support and experience to know that I don't want to miss out on what the next part of my life might bring. He robbed his victims of that perspective, and he stalked them expressly for the purpose of doing so.

Fuck that guy.
posted by bibliowench at 9:56 AM on January 18, 2016 [104 favorites]

Wonderfully said, bibliowench, much more thoroughly and clearly than my short comment.

/And I'm sorry to hear you're going through a bad period and glad you're sticking around.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:13 AM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

> There is nothing wrong with suicide. There is nothing wrong with advising a person
> on the best way to do the deed correctly. Even Mefi thinks so.

Did you read the article?


Regardless of the main topic, the article is rank with language implying that suicide is a tragedy to be avoided at all costs.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:18 AM on January 18, 2016

There is nothing wrong with suicide.
the article is rank with language implying that suicide is a tragedy to be avoided at all costs.

It's impossible for me to disagree with people harder than I disagree with anyone proposing suicide for anything. Calling it a disagreement is an insult to people that disagree. Suicide is a good option? I want to put you on a well-supplied, well-appointed island where you can live out the rest of your days in absolute splendor and never, ever speak to anyone with whom you can share your cockamamie opinion.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:45 AM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

How did that horrible nurse keep getting hired at places?!?! Yeah, I suspect he did get off on patients dying on him or something.

I can't believe he only got a year. Really?

Go Celia, that lady rocks.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:53 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am way for assisted suicide in a medical sense, and even a generalized right to die, but an important thing that goes with that is that other people don't get to tell you that you should do it.
posted by atoxyl at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

so assisted suicide is basically coerced suicide

feels like there's quite a bit of semantic oomph missing from calling it 'assisted'
posted by runt at 11:19 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Social pressure is an incredibly powerful force in many people's lives, capable of recreating and distorting one's sense of personal identity to ridiculous degrees. Mark Twain was right about that, and how integral cultural customs and social convention are for shaping people's views of the world and themselves so I absolutely agree with atoxyl here: butt out of people's life or death decisions and give them the space and compassionate support to think for themselves. Some people don't have a well-defined enough sense of their own identity, or healthy enough self-esteem, not to be especially sensitive to social influences and peer pressure.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:25 AM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Suicide is a good option?

If I am diagnosed with terminal cancer, e.g., and my choices are a) 3 months of descent into pain and horrible death, b) 6 months, of which a large chunk is bedridden with ineffective chemo, or c) deciding on my own terms exactly what level of physical suffering to take and then swallowing a pill, you bet your bippy that c) is a good option. Best of a bad bunch, maybe, but that's just semantics.

It's not a good option when it's the depression head spiders whispering it, as they so frequently do with me.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:42 AM on January 18, 2016 [31 favorites]

I have always been for the most part pro- right to die, but I was incredibly chilled by a commenter in a recent MeFi thread who perceptively speculated that legalizing it in the US might lead to insurance companies aggressively nudging expensive patients towards considering euthanasia. #latecapitalism
posted by threeants at 12:05 PM on January 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

"depression head spiders whispering"

That is one of the best descriptions I've ever read of how I feel sometimes. Thank you.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:10 PM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Holy shit, it's horrifying to imagine exactly how much pain this guy has spread in his life. There were five suicides that he at least had a major hand in, probably others that he contributed to their despair but didn't know the outcome, _and he was a nurse_. He was fired for abusing two patients, and again for neglecting another to death. Given how much shit murder-nurses and doctors usually get away with before being caught, I'd like to know if anyone has checked the death rates for his shifts. I don't believe that his sadism was limited to those incidents and I bet he's killed people before.
posted by tavella at 12:12 PM on January 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

So many hurts. Ugh. I just. I wanna cry now.
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:15 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

And I admit, this is an aspect of assisted suicide laws that I hadn't thought of, and should have. I'm all in favor of discussion of suicide methods being legal, and for assisted suicide being legal, but how to rewrite the laws on suicide to legalize that while still making it illegal to try to fuck with a vulnerable person's head and try to convince them to commit suicide may be a little tricky.
posted by tavella at 12:16 PM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

As a very suicidal person who is in the process of trying to heal herself I have to say I don't want people nor laws of the state justifying me to do it in my times of suicidal distress. I don't know how I feel about choosing to die at the end stages of life but I think solving the deep psychological and physical distress that drives me to want to take my own life takes precedent over a proposal to give me the right to take my own life. I used to advocate for the right to end one's life at the time of one's choosing but as I've started to pull out of my darkness, I don't know how comfortable I feel advocating for that anymore.

Just my perspective as a person who struggles daily with intense suicide ideation and finding my will to live.
posted by Annika Cicada at 1:14 PM on January 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

RE: The adblock issue:

If you're using Chrome on Windows, when those full page overlays show up you can "Right click> Inspect Element", then delete the container that is blocking your view. In this case, delete the element that says "div id="abnm" class="abnm-modal show""

If you ever delete too much, you can always just refresh the page and try again.
posted by LiteS at 2:01 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Annika, you are right to keep fighting it. Keep reaching out to people who care. Many have been where you are, 48 years ago I did not care if I lived or died due to post-partum depression and losing my child to adoption, but now I am a grandma and so glad I lived through it.

This story is so horrifying, especially the light sentence this monster was given. I fear he will do it again, once his short jail term is over. These were not old sick people at the end of life anyhow, for whom an argument can be made for a right to die, but young people suffering depression and pushed over the edge in their most vulnerable moments. Death penalty is too good for the perpetrator, but life in prison with no access to internet would at least stop him from doing it again.
posted by mermayd at 2:26 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have always been for the most part pro- right to die, but I was incredibly chilled by a commenter in a recent MeFi thread who perceptively speculated that legalizing it in the US might lead to insurance companies aggressively nudging expensive patients towards considering euthanasia.

That commenter finished by saying people who needed it would find a way. Which is difficult from a hospital bed, a circumstance Pratchett was lucky not to have to deal with.

There's a big difference between painful terminal conditions where you're on the way out one way or another and preying on the weak like this fellow did.

There's a bit of riverbank over here with flowers and a photo of Nadia Kajouji.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:32 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm so glad you're staying with us, Annika. It sounds like you've learned to navigate this sea of despair and ideation, learned to find the harbors, and I hope you find yourself safely on shore soon.
posted by thesmallmachine at 2:36 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Can't believe this wasn't posted. It was very popular on Longform back in the day, iirc.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:18 PM on January 18, 2016

Assholes like this give assisted suicide a bad name.

A family friend of mine was briefly involved in the Right to Die movement until he came to believe that the guy in charge of their local organization was into the movement for some pretty dark reasons that made him sound pretty similar to Melchert-Dinkel. I heard there was a documentary about that same guy that started out as a film about the importance of giving terminally ill people options for a dignified end to their lives and quickly turned into a very different one once they started interviewing this guy and saw that he wasn't exactly the paragon of advocacy that he advertised himself as.
posted by Copronymus at 4:25 PM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Can't believe this wasn't posted. It was very popular on Longform back in the day, iirc.

We've talked about this case before, but it doesn't seem like we've ever had an FPP on this particular article.


posted by palmcorder_yajna at 4:50 PM on January 18, 2016

Copronymous, I'd love to check out that documentary. Can you give us any info about it?
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 7:05 PM on January 18, 2016

Copronymous, I'd love to check out that documentary. Can you give us any info about it?

I put what I remembered about it through Google and I think I found it. I watched enough of it to be sure it's the guy I was talking about, but I didn't come close to finishing it, so apologies if it turns out it's actually awful.
posted by Copronymus at 7:41 PM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I really hope this guy is being monitored in some way. He sounds like someone who could escalate quite easily, since with all of his firings he still continued to abuse those under his care. On his wikipedia page it said he currently a truck driver. I sure hope that he is not an interstate long haul driver considering they have a degree of anonymity and access to at risk populations like homeless runaways and such.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 11:50 PM on January 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Very surprised at the comment implying that this kind of predatory behavior was any way related to right-to-die. I would say that I have a right-to-die attitude about my own mental illness-- i know it's an unpopular opinion and highly sensitive, but I do believe that if there came a time where I felt I couldn't be fixed and my life was going down the drain, I think I morally have that right the same as a cancer patient does. That's not a popular opinion, I'm well aware, but there's a very long painful road that led to that logic. So I have compassion for people in desperate situations. But even I would never *encourage* it. I would always try to save; I've been in online support groups and that's always the obvious goal. I'm completely flabbergasted that someone could miss that difference, that encouraging it is the same as not judging it.

It's pretty clear that the thrust of the article was about predatory behavior, not so much about the ethics of suicide but this sick voyeuristic fuck. The problem with being a masochist is that the sadists come at you like flies to shit.

Yeah, bring on the ass cancer for this guy.

And I was also really shocked that this guy was allowed to keep practicing; not just from 20/20 hindsight but he was accused of abusing elderly patients after all of his lethal incompetence.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:54 PM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I really hope this guy is being monitored in some way.

absolutely- he needs a special deluxe ankle-bracelet with a webcam or something. I'm ok with going Panopticon on this guy.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:55 PM on January 18, 2016

Very surprised at the comment implying that this kind of predatory behavior was any way related to right-to-die.

A meaningful right-to-die means a right to assist people committing suicide, which almost inevitably provides an opportunity for ghouls like Melchert-Dinkel. Whether we favor assisted suicide enough to tolerate the people who would abuse it is a question for society.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:27 AM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Check out Belgium if you're looking for a right-to-die discussion.

As for this case, with all the vehemence that goes past the emotional, fuck that guy. Preying on the vulnerable is already despicable, and he chose a particularly insidious and vile way to do it.
posted by gadge emeritus at 5:06 AM on January 19, 2016

noping out, too close to this to be any way objective or reasonable in this discussion. Hugs everyone.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:13 AM on January 19, 2016

People are horrible: Murder for a Quick Paycheck

China’s expanding, poorly supervised caregiver industry allowed at least one home caregiver to kill a string of elderly patients.

posted by Joe in Australia at 6:14 PM on January 19, 2016