Good Bye. The End
- Thread starter Yoda
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I have something to share in light of this, I don't remember where I got this story, but it is recent. Sorry for any spelling errors, having to re-type it from a clipping.
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By Matha Irvine - Associated Press
His mother found Shawn Woolley's body in a rocking chair in front of his computer. His head was slumped to one side - still facing a screen of the online game that she says had become his obsession.
"That damn game," Liz Woolley said to herself as she broke into tears.
At Shawn's side was the .22-caliber rifle he'd used to end his life.
Scattered around him, police reports say, were dirty clothes, fast-foodwrappers, dozens of empty pizza boxes and chicken bones thrown haphazardly to the floor. His mother had pounded on his apartment's door and windows for two days before finally cutting through the chain lock to break in last Thanksgiving morning.
The 21-year-old, who'd hastily quit his job mor than a week earlier, left no suicide not in the one-bedroom apartment in Hudson, Wis., a small town about 30 miles east of Minneapolis. The only signs of what had been on his mind were a few scribbled names and terms related to EverQuest, the online virtual reality game he'd been playing for well over a year.
Based on those and other clues, Liz Woolley suspects her son killed himself after being jilted online. But she place the blam for his death squarely on the game and its maker -- Sony Online Entertainment.
"Shawn was waorse than any junkie I've ever seen," Liz Woolley says. "AFter he starting playing the game, he just didn't enjoy life anymore."
She believes Sony intentionally added features to EverQuest to keep players online for hours at a time.
Officials at Sony Online declined to comment on the Woolley case or the possiblity raised by Liz Woolley that she may sue. Scott McDaniel, the company's vice president of marketing, says the game should be vied like any other form of entertainment.
"Theres a duty on the consumer to use it responsibly" McDaniel says of EverQuest.
Whether online gaming -- or Internet surfing for that matter -- can truly be addictive is still a matter of much debate among computer and mental health experts.
But whatever they name it -- addiction, obsession or compusion -- those experts say a growing number of people are spending huge chunks of time on their computers at the expense of their everyday lives.
The average EverQuest subscriber plays about 20 hours a week.
Increasingly, mental health professionals say they are getting calls from family members and online junkies themselves who find themselves neglecting friends and family, skilling school, work, and even a daily shower to get more time on the computer.
"I dont know if we're talking about 1 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent. But my sense is that this is a significant problem thats just really starting to show up on the radar screen," says psychologist David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The Minneapolis based nonprofit focuses on the effects of media, including the Internet, on young people and families.
Experts say pornography websites appear to be the biggest draw. Others spend hours chatting via computer with friends or people they meet online.
Still others - often teen-age boys looking for an escape from the stress and awkwardness of adolescence -- are pulled in by games.
"It's extremely difficult to go against the tide of what, for these kids, has become pop-culture," says Hilarie Cash, a licensed mental health counselor who co-founded Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Washingnton, in 1999.
She is among a small number of therapists nationwide specializing in patients who have trouble limiting their computer time.
David Greenfield, a psychologist in Hartford, Conn., is another. When it comes to games, he and others say EverQuest seems particularly difficult to resist.
A sort of computer-driven Dungeons and Dragons, hte online game has more than 430,000 registered players worldwide who for teams, or "guilds" in a never-ending journey to earn points and slay monsters.
And while most people keep their playing time in check, expers say some can't.
Pre-existing depression and anxiety may be one reason, says Alan Marlatt, directior of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the Univerity of Washington.
Experts say peer pressure also seems to be a factor in EverQuest, because logging off may hurt a guild's chances of advancing.
And even when a player does want to quit a session, they say it can take hours to sash extra protective gear and weapons earned in the game and find a hiding spot in which to "safely" log off.
Sony's McDaniel says, however, that in some cases, it takes as few as 45 seconds for a player to quit.
His family says the camaraderie with online friends was a part of the allure for Shawn Woolley, a shy, overweight yooung man known for his wry sense of humor but who never had much luck dating.
A longtime epileptic, Shawn also struggled with seizures, which his mother says computer time only aggravated.
After graduation from high school, Shawn spent a semester studying graphic design, then dropped out. He then took a job as assistant manager at a pizza chain but left that, too, in July 200 and moved back home.
By that time, he'd started playing EverQuest -- and his younger brother says its effects were aready noticeable.
Tony Woolley, Shawn's 14-year-old brother , says the two used to do all sorts of fun things together -- "bowling, go-carts, anything." Then Shawn all but stopped haging out with him.
Frustrated, hjis mother took his computer keyboard to work. But he bought another one. When she tried to limit shis comuter time, he played at night when she was sleeping.
She later discovered he'd stolen her credit card number to pay is EverQuest bill, then about $60 for his six months of playing time. (Sony recently raised its EverQuest rates to $12.95 per month)
There was a glimmer of hope early last year when the conty social services agency assigned Shawn a caseworker, after his mother booted him out to try and force him to get a job, He got a room in a local group home, started seeing a therapist and began regularly taking medication for seizures and depression.
In May 2001, he got a job at another pizza parlor. But once he started earning money, he left the group home, got his own one-bed-room apartment and, by August, had enough money to buy a second-hand computer.
As his EverQuest play increased, she says Shawn started skipping counseling appointemnts and medication doses and rarely answered his telephone.
On Nov. 11, he quit work and holed up in his apartemnt, refusing visitors and phone calls. A computer log shows that he played almost constantly until Nov. 20, the day police think he shot himself.
His mother found his body on Thanksgiving.
Shortly after; she dug into his comuter files and found a list of the last few EverQuest names he'd used. Among them was the name "ILUVYOU," which he stopped using in late October. I was one of a few clues that led to her theory that he'd been hurt by an online love.
Among his things, she also found a letter from a new caseworker who told him she planned to visit he Monday after Thanksgiving.
Liz Woolley just started setting up an organization called ONline Gamers Anonymous and a Web site to help people like shawn -- with plans to use any money she might get from a lawsuit to help fund the oganization.
"I can't just sit here," she says. "I cannot let him die in vain."
__________________________________________________________
By Matha Irvine - Associated Press
His mother found Shawn Woolley's body in a rocking chair in front of his computer. His head was slumped to one side - still facing a screen of the online game that she says had become his obsession.
"That damn game," Liz Woolley said to herself as she broke into tears.
At Shawn's side was the .22-caliber rifle he'd used to end his life.
Scattered around him, police reports say, were dirty clothes, fast-foodwrappers, dozens of empty pizza boxes and chicken bones thrown haphazardly to the floor. His mother had pounded on his apartment's door and windows for two days before finally cutting through the chain lock to break in last Thanksgiving morning.
The 21-year-old, who'd hastily quit his job mor than a week earlier, left no suicide not in the one-bedroom apartment in Hudson, Wis., a small town about 30 miles east of Minneapolis. The only signs of what had been on his mind were a few scribbled names and terms related to EverQuest, the online virtual reality game he'd been playing for well over a year.
Based on those and other clues, Liz Woolley suspects her son killed himself after being jilted online. But she place the blam for his death squarely on the game and its maker -- Sony Online Entertainment.
"Shawn was waorse than any junkie I've ever seen," Liz Woolley says. "AFter he starting playing the game, he just didn't enjoy life anymore."
She believes Sony intentionally added features to EverQuest to keep players online for hours at a time.
Officials at Sony Online declined to comment on the Woolley case or the possiblity raised by Liz Woolley that she may sue. Scott McDaniel, the company's vice president of marketing, says the game should be vied like any other form of entertainment.
"Theres a duty on the consumer to use it responsibly" McDaniel says of EverQuest.
Whether online gaming -- or Internet surfing for that matter -- can truly be addictive is still a matter of much debate among computer and mental health experts.
But whatever they name it -- addiction, obsession or compusion -- those experts say a growing number of people are spending huge chunks of time on their computers at the expense of their everyday lives.
The average EverQuest subscriber plays about 20 hours a week.
Increasingly, mental health professionals say they are getting calls from family members and online junkies themselves who find themselves neglecting friends and family, skilling school, work, and even a daily shower to get more time on the computer.
"I dont know if we're talking about 1 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent. But my sense is that this is a significant problem thats just really starting to show up on the radar screen," says psychologist David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The Minneapolis based nonprofit focuses on the effects of media, including the Internet, on young people and families.
Experts say pornography websites appear to be the biggest draw. Others spend hours chatting via computer with friends or people they meet online.
Still others - often teen-age boys looking for an escape from the stress and awkwardness of adolescence -- are pulled in by games.
"It's extremely difficult to go against the tide of what, for these kids, has become pop-culture," says Hilarie Cash, a licensed mental health counselor who co-founded Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Washingnton, in 1999.
She is among a small number of therapists nationwide specializing in patients who have trouble limiting their computer time.
David Greenfield, a psychologist in Hartford, Conn., is another. When it comes to games, he and others say EverQuest seems particularly difficult to resist.
A sort of computer-driven Dungeons and Dragons, hte online game has more than 430,000 registered players worldwide who for teams, or "guilds" in a never-ending journey to earn points and slay monsters.
And while most people keep their playing time in check, expers say some can't.
Pre-existing depression and anxiety may be one reason, says Alan Marlatt, directior of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the Univerity of Washington.
Experts say peer pressure also seems to be a factor in EverQuest, because logging off may hurt a guild's chances of advancing.
And even when a player does want to quit a session, they say it can take hours to sash extra protective gear and weapons earned in the game and find a hiding spot in which to "safely" log off.
Sony's McDaniel says, however, that in some cases, it takes as few as 45 seconds for a player to quit.
His family says the camaraderie with online friends was a part of the allure for Shawn Woolley, a shy, overweight yooung man known for his wry sense of humor but who never had much luck dating.
A longtime epileptic, Shawn also struggled with seizures, which his mother says computer time only aggravated.
After graduation from high school, Shawn spent a semester studying graphic design, then dropped out. He then took a job as assistant manager at a pizza chain but left that, too, in July 200 and moved back home.
By that time, he'd started playing EverQuest -- and his younger brother says its effects were aready noticeable.
Tony Woolley, Shawn's 14-year-old brother , says the two used to do all sorts of fun things together -- "bowling, go-carts, anything." Then Shawn all but stopped haging out with him.
Frustrated, hjis mother took his computer keyboard to work. But he bought another one. When she tried to limit shis comuter time, he played at night when she was sleeping.
She later discovered he'd stolen her credit card number to pay is EverQuest bill, then about $60 for his six months of playing time. (Sony recently raised its EverQuest rates to $12.95 per month)
There was a glimmer of hope early last year when the conty social services agency assigned Shawn a caseworker, after his mother booted him out to try and force him to get a job, He got a room in a local group home, started seeing a therapist and began regularly taking medication for seizures and depression.
In May 2001, he got a job at another pizza parlor. But once he started earning money, he left the group home, got his own one-bed-room apartment and, by August, had enough money to buy a second-hand computer.
As his EverQuest play increased, she says Shawn started skipping counseling appointemnts and medication doses and rarely answered his telephone.
On Nov. 11, he quit work and holed up in his apartemnt, refusing visitors and phone calls. A computer log shows that he played almost constantly until Nov. 20, the day police think he shot himself.
His mother found his body on Thanksgiving.
Shortly after; she dug into his comuter files and found a list of the last few EverQuest names he'd used. Among them was the name "ILUVYOU," which he stopped using in late October. I was one of a few clues that led to her theory that he'd been hurt by an online love.
Among his things, she also found a letter from a new caseworker who told him she planned to visit he Monday after Thanksgiving.
Liz Woolley just started setting up an organization called ONline Gamers Anonymous and a Web site to help people like shawn -- with plans to use any money she might get from a lawsuit to help fund the oganization.
"I can't just sit here," she says. "I cannot let him die in vain."
Yoda said:, I love how every single thing that you said is made up. (btw, ben why didn't you say hi when you were riding your bike down woodland today? I drove by you and almost ran you over, and you didn't see me)
HOLY FUCK, U'RE NOT DEAD !>!>@>#<!?@#><>!@?J!@#
BAN!!!!!!!!!!!
Yoda said:
tomas, u are a fucking homo.. u sit there and dont say any thing for 4 says of this thread... making people believe u ctrl ked.. and when i tell people what really happend. u respond.
and i didnt lie about anything... cept maybe the gf thing. and yeai was coming back from the weight training camp..
just grow up man... esp after jemery.. u dont joke abou this kinda shit.. I KNOW that u werent wasted or blazed or anything.... u just wanted attention... so please dont do this shit
Yoda said:
Yeah, read 15 pages about how people here, even though they prob have never liked you, basically beg you to not do anything stupid.....waste 3 hours doing so, only to find out you lied and never went through with it. would have been a waste of my time.
Some of the first few pages actually lead me to believe that you made some people sick (with worry/concern) you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.
\Ripper said:
no jeremy was this olympic skiier who was a senior at our school. he was a great student, athlete and person. He was overloaded with pressures and he ended up committing suicide, leaving the whole school in shambles....
this fucker (yoda) knows how many people that hurt and has no fuckign right to act like u committed suicide. grow the fuck up... i htink he should bebanned from every server and tw and irc.
hmm, shame you didn't do it. There are enough fucks in the world that need to die, the ones who do it themselves are doing the rest of us a favor. plz reconsider, find the nearest cliff or even better, go on a shooting rampage at your home and kill your entire family for raising an idiot like you.
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