14th October, 2013
Injecting suicide into social media, a Chilean chemist left his country stunned Monday after programming a Twitter message to announce his own darkly choreographed death.
Pablo Ramdohr, 33, in effect tweeted his own suicide note, telling family around noon on Sunday “I love you,” on the microblogging service, which included a link to a web page where he outlined how he had killed himself.
“The tweet was programmed. This happened a while ago. Sure it’s bad form to let you know on Twitter but it was the only way to program the message for much later,” said the message filed on Saturday.
Ramdohr said he “did not want to keep living like this,” outlining that he suffered from mental illness and that he had taken a lethal mix of alcohol and prescription medications.
After seeing the tweet, the victim’s father rushed to his apartment in downtown Santiago, hoping it wasn’t too late.
Inside was the chemist’s body. Coroners on Monday were working on an autopsy.
The tragic Ramdohr case has stunned Twitter users in Chile, prompting an outpouring of coverage in local media about social media use and mental health care.