Create a tool, and someone will weaponise it. This is the core message of British producer Charlie Brooker's current Netflix hit Black Mirror. Basically, the speculative anthology series exposes the dark side of technology and how it can bring out the worst in humans.
How heartless is too heartless, by the way? Committing suicide and livestreaming it? Killing others and livestreaming it? Or filming others attempting suicide and livestreaming it?
Last week, an 18-year-old girl named Nittaya was seen on Facebook Live intoxicated as she jumped off Bangkok's Rama VIII Bridge in an apparent suicide attempt after a reported argument with her boyfriend. The person who filmed her was a random motortaxi driver she'd hailed from the other side of the city. After dropping her off at the bridge, the driver was paid 500 baht extra to stay with her to shoot the clip and broadcast it to the world.
After the incident, the driver reported to the police that Nittaya looked upset. She'd gotten drunk and listened to a heartbreaking song while on her way to the bridge. According to the news, the man saw her fall down and struggle in the water before sinking. The video he filmed later went viral. Her body was later found 500m away.
An innocent man who just wants to earn his living by servicing his passengers could end up in jail or being fined in violation of the Criminal Code for failing to help a person in danger. He defended himself, saying he wasn't aware the girl was committing suicide. Police didn't buy it.
Is all this the dark side of technology? Definitely. The dark side of human beings? Perhaps. The driver could have turned off the livestream and saved her way before she jumped. The deputy national police chief, Pol Gen Wirachai Songmetta, said that when you see an intoxicated person, looking sad and doing things like he or she is jumping off a bridge, you know right away it's dangerous and should stop it.
Livestreaming suicide has become more common, if not quite popular, among a generation where people let others know almost everything they do -- what they eat, what they watch, what they listen to, who they go out with, where they sleep, where they vacation, where they make merit, where they exercise, what they take to cure the flu, which leg is sprained, what tooth is removed. Now it goes far beyond that. People let others know they are ending their lives.
This is only the latest example, not at all unprecedented. Last year, a man in Phuket filmed himself killing his girlfriend's child and then killing himself on Facebook Live. Police were alerted by the killer's friends, and when they arrived at the crime scene, what they saw were two dead bodies and a smartphone.
Last October in Turkey, a 54-year-old father who was upset that his daughter got engaged without his permission, committed suicide on Facebook Live. He was speaking directly into the camera before he suddenly pulled a handgun with his left hand and fired a single shot into his temple, after which he fell out of the frame and collapsed to the floor.
And just last week, a man in Indiana, in the United States, livestreamed himself making a decision on a bridge about whether to jump. Some of his audience talked him out of it, others encouraged him to jump. Luckily, police officers successfully rescued him while his attention was on his phone. The man was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
Of course, not everyone dies after livestreaming their suicide attempts. But not everyone lives, either. There's something similar at work with technology: It doesn't necessarily kill, but it's not always saintly.
Black Mirror might depict a future where technology turns sinister, somehow transforming a human into a demon. But admit it: the future we are talking about might not be so distant. Or maybe the future is now.
A woman is sentenced to undergo daily psychological torture in the White Bear Justice Park (in the episode White Bear), where visitors are allowed to record her daily suffering to avenge what she once did to a young girl whom she kidnapped, killed and then recorded.
In other episodes, people are blackmailed by unseen hackers to follow a set of weird directives lest their secret data leak to the world; a society exists where people are entitled to do things based on their online social rating; new technology that allows a mother to track her child eventually turns her teen girl into a villain, as she feels locked under the eyes of her overprotective mum.
Create a tool, and someone will weaponise it. Which one is more evil -- the tool or those who weaponise it? Now take your pick.
Arusa Pisuthipan is the deputy editor of the Life section of the Bangkok Post.
