60 yr old dude makes website about himself, then suicides

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:16 PM, goDel said:

 

  On 8/16/2013 at 10:58 PM, SR4 said:

i do find it interesting that this man dedicated a lot of time towards explaining his reasoning, and was unashamed to post it for posterity.

 

whether you agree or not, i would think you would at least commend the guy for thinking it out that thoroughly.

 

 

Shit I can only imagine the horrors of memory loss and sluggish physique. Hopefully I wont make it to be that age naturally.

 

i dunno.

 

why not settle with a simple thank you letter for the people he left behind?

 

this feels like a lot of over-rationalising something which is, imo, more emotional than anything. and again, this combination of being rational and analytical about just about anything, which is what i get from this all, is at complete odds with his religious beliefs. sticking to belief in a god is so emotional, it feels out of character.

 

despite all this rationalising, i don't believe he actually knew his demons. especially seeing he was convinced he wasn't depressed. perhaps he didn't connect with that emotional aspect of it all?

 

he said part of the reasoning is to leave an artifact of why he did it, in far greater detail than a "thank you" note. It wasn't to garner sympathy, but to leave a glimpse into the mind of someone suicidal from a developed vantage point. Having had a good friend commit suicide, I can say with great certainty that I wanted to know more about what drove him to it than a "Goodbye Cruel World" letter.

  Quote

 

 

I thought I should find a place on this site to mention Fedoras.

oh jesus christ

ahah

at least he suits them, and isn't 17

I appreciate his sense of humour in his writing too. RIP

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:25 PM, SR4 said:

 

 

 

he said part of the reasoning is to leave an artifact of why he did it, in far greater detail than a "thank you" note. It wasn't to garner sympathy, but to leave a glimpse into the mind of someone suicidal from a developed vantage point. Having had a good friend commit suicide, I can say with great certainty that I wanted to know more about what drove him to it than a "Goodbye Cruel World" letter.

 

Sure. But I hope I'm not too big of a dick when I think what he said didn't really matter that much. Or at least, the "rational" part of it.

He did say he was extremely selfish. So these past months writing about himself would have been a pure ego trip of sorts. There's a darker side suggested underneath his story which he hardly seems to touch, even though his analytical mind.

Perhaps this is better than a thank you note, but i don't think it helps coping the loss any better, imo. It's not that there aren't any questions for the people he knew now that they have this site.

Suddenly they have become part of a story as well. One which is on the internet for everyone to watch. And they have to live with that legacy. Thanks for this "thank you note", I guess...

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:34 PM, isaki said:

 

 

 

RIP (though the internet won't let you do that)

*

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:38 PM, goDel said:

 

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:25 PM, SR4 said:

 

 

 

he said part of the reasoning is to leave an artifact of why he did it, in far greater detail than a "thank you" note. It wasn't to garner sympathy, but to leave a glimpse into the mind of someone suicidal from a developed vantage point. Having had a good friend commit suicide, I can say with great certainty that I wanted to know more about what drove him to it than a "Goodbye Cruel World" letter.

 

 

Sure. But I hope I'm not too big of a dick when I think what he said didn't really matter that much. Or at least, the "rational" part of it.

 

He did say he was extremely selfish. So these past months writing about himself would have been a pure ego trip of sorts. There's a darker side suggested underneath his story which he hardly seems to touch, even though his analytical mind.

 

Perhaps this is better than a thank you note, but i don't think it helps coping the loss any better, imo. It's not that there aren't any questions for the people he knew now that they have this site.

 

Suddenly they have become part of a story as well. One which is on the internet for everyone to watch. And they have to live with that legacy. Thanks for this "thank you note", I guess...

 

Maybe its important. Maybe its not. But I would hope that any extended artifact or source first-hand from a person that actually followed through with their suicide would be of some importance to family members, friends,or even researchers. Who knows. It's certainly too early to determine the overall importance of the website.

You use the word "rational" a hell of a lot for a number of disputable statements. Maybe it's lost in translation, but what exactly is in dispute with the "rationality" of the website?

I can't speak for the family or friends of the deceased. But I can say from my personal experience coping with a friend's suicide that anything more than a letter is useful. When other friends tell me stories or conversations they had with my friend before he died, it helps clear the air a little, and reveals a little more about his overall mental makeup, what he was dealing with at that time, and so on.

It's an interesting bit of cultural history IMO.

Uhhhh, i think the link's dead, it aint working for me....

Server is probably overloaded...

damn!

i was reading some of it this morning and was potentially looking forward to reading tads more.

go on Reddit, I think someone saved the images on imagur.

re: zaphod saying it's pathetic or something along those lines, I basically agree, but it is very interesting. Or maybe zaphod was just commenting on his taste of movies (if he was a watmmer, and not suicidal, he might still have offed himself after the derision he would have received from our neighborhood film gestapo!)

Read the food section, if you can find images of the site. It's quite sad and he does seem a bit ocd/ulillillia

He claims he committed suicide because he felt himself slipping into senile dementia. Which is a pretty damn good reason, but I wonder if he was, truly, or if he was being a bit of a hypochondriac. After all, the symmetry of the 60 yr. old date seems more important to him than completing his organ donership (which tells you a lot about how seductive the black pit of death was to him, and how narcissistic/hungry-for-acknowledgement he was under all of it)

Btw in the comments on the reddit thread, the cop who took his 911 call sounds off, angrily, saying the dude was fucked up for shooting himself while on the phone, so that he heard everything. I gotta agree.

i mean, dude can do what he wants, it just seems kind of delusional to put up this site like he's this rational, organized guy when it seems like he's rationalizing his way out of something completely irrational and emotional. and it's just kind of pathetic and attention seeking in a way. i guess it's also kind of interesting, but i didn't bother reading most of the site. boo hoo lol

where was the page on reddit ?

also, i find it weird that so much time was devoted into doing this.

and then he says how weird it is to finally have the gun, have to organise calling the police, etc.

i imagine it have been like, once he had the idea in his head to do it, and started executing the idea, and was so involved and invested with the idea and writing the website and organising it, it was a means of justifying and rationalising the decision.

it's hard to tell if there was confusion and doubt in his thinking. like, i imagine there was doubt in his thinking, but he's edited the text to seem concise and thought out.

or if he was simply this decided and confident on the idea, and i find it uncomfortable to accept.

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:16 PM, goDel said:

 

  On 8/16/2013 at 10:58 PM, SR4 said:

 

i do find it interesting that this man dedicated a lot of time towards explaining his reasoning, and was unashamed to post it for posterity.

 

whether you agree or not, i would think you would at least commend the guy for thinking it out that thoroughly.

 

 

Shit I can only imagine the horrors of memory loss and sluggish physique. Hopefully I wont make it to be that age naturally.

i dunno.

 

why not settle with a simple thank you letter for the people he left behind?

 

this feels like a lot of over-rationalising something which is, imo, more emotional than anything. and again, this combination of being rational and analytical about just about anything, which is what i get from this all, is at complete odds with his religious beliefs. sticking to belief in a god is so emotional, it feels out of character.

 

despite all this rationalising, i don't believe he actually knew his demons. especially seeing he was convinced he wasn't depressed. perhaps he didn't connect with that emotional aspect of it all?

This last bit to me is the sad part. He went to his death either in denial of or not really understanding himself.

here's another link to it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130815235756/http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com/suicide_-_how_2

and the reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1kgze9/a_60_year_old_committed_suicide_today_but_before/

and proof it's not a hoax:

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/08/16/4414929/former-star-sports-statistics.html

as some watmmers know, I had someone close to me commit suicide as well.

of course there are different kinds of suicide. This guy's I think being the more selfish kind. Still interesting tho

He seemed like such an honest, straight forward kind of guy. I don't really get why he'd troll the world with this fake $200,000 treasure he claimed to leave behind. I have a feeling his family found it and just don't want to tell anyone they have it.

  On 8/17/2013 at 12:43 AM, SR4 said:

  On 8/16/2013 at 11:38 PM, goDel said:

You use the word "rational" a hell of a lot for a number of disputable statements. Maybe it's lost in translation, but what exactly is in dispute with the "rationality" of the website?

 

 

I mean a couple of things. As already said, I think he never got into real contact with his emotions, or his demons. He was absolutely certain, with a sense of aggression, that he wasn't depressive. His suicide was supposedly a rational choice. He almost brings it as some triumph of rationality over irrationality. Well, I basically dispute that. He used his rationality to justify his actions, but that doesn't mean there's emotions involved. More than he'd like to admit, or was able to admit.

 

He said he would be completely open, but he doesn't really touch his dark side. Hardly anything other than some general statements of being extremely selfish, being in his own world and probably having learned those things in his youth. And that's about it.

 

Apart from this dark side, there's another obvious omission: his sex life. Taken from what he has written, from what i read, i can only assume he was sexless. He was married for 21 years of his life... I don't think you can be completely sexless. Perhaps it wasn't something to write about. But for someone writing his life story it seems like some cherry picking is going on here. He said he would be completely open. But in the end, imo, he was only completely open to his own imagination, and his rationality.

 

So, from reading his life story I get the impression his rationality was more a defense mechanism than anything else. He himself blames a lot on how he was brought up. And with two parents continuously working and being poor nevertheless, I can see where he's coming from, but that's no excuse to take responsibility over your own emotional life. His siblings did.

 

Even though I suspect he wasn't completely open here as well. He described his parents both as being smart and successful in their own ways. So how come all this success and their hard work, they were poor anyway? We haven't been told.

 

Again, there's a side to the story which he just didn't address, imo. In the end, I think this is a story of a selfish man who wished to have a certain part of his story to live beyond him. He cherry picked (fabricated) this story, and the thing(s) he didn't pick is probably the thing which killed him in the end. Despite this rational mumbo jumbo.

 

Sorry, I just don't take his story.

very sharp post

this whole thing just makes me really sad.

one thing that jumped out at me was his life-long problem with sleeping and he says straight up that he has been sleep deprived most of his life, almost never getting the typical 7-8 hours of sleep. that is something that has been clinically shown to lead to depression, especially over such a long period of time.

er...this link works, sort of:

http://www.zeroshare.info/my_religion

this link also works...so many sites taken down, lol

http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com.nyud.net/january_1_2012

Thanks. You've made some sharp observations yourself as well. The importance of his 60 years symmetry over his completion of his organ donor ship, for instance.

Thinking about it a bit more, the story he presents is mostly about everything within his control. His demons, or his dark side, which I am looking for, is basically anything outside of his control. In his story everything has a sense of control and certainty. The uncertainties? He was good at keeping away from that part of his life perhaps. Hiding from it, even.

Dunno. I might be over speculating. And I actually do think that people should be allowed to end their lives if they want to. And more importantly, that their decision deserves some respect. But my gut feeling tells me this story just doesn't add up. And that this isn't actually helpful for the people who were close to him. On the contrary.

I can see how it might help people with similar experiences. And to that extent, I'm happy for them.

Personally, i think that stash of gold he supposedly hid just smells like trolling and bronies, and almost completely overshadows the good intentions he might have had.