It's an all too common story in Internet chatrooms. Boy B falls in love with Boy A, but Boy A doesn't realize Boy B is a boy! Lies and deception abound until Boy A learns the truth and breaks it off. Unless, of course, Boy B is a 14 year old male in Manchester, England. Then Boy B organizes his own suicide by convincing Boy A he needs to stab another person:
A teenager created an "elaborate matrix of deceit" on the internet to persuade another boy he had fallen in love with to murder him, a court has heard.
The 14-year-old boy, dubbed Boy B in court, created a series of fictional characters in chatrooms, one of which ordered Boy A to murder him.
Boy A, a 15-year-old, stabbed Boy B twice, but he did not die, Manchester Crown Court heard.
As far as plots to commit suicide go, I find this rather elaborate. It has almost the feeling of a Greek tragedy in its symbolism and execution. I suppose that if you are in love with someone you can never have, and won't commit suicide directly, this is as good of way as any... except it didn't work.
I don't know if anything can really be blamed here. On one hand I'm tempted to blame the Internet for allowing such anti-social people to further retreat into worlds of their own creation. But in most cases if it wasn't for the Internet in the first place these people would have almost no human interaction. Perhaps virtual worlds have as much, but different, validity as "real life".
Probably nothing can be blamed except the individual himself. Tell that to his parents though...
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