Ex Gawker love bunnies aside, blogs are saving people’s lives. Take, for example, the mysterious case of 90 Day Jane. Though taken seriously by some, it seems a little online countdown clock knocked the suicidal tendencies right out of her.
Or, she was never really in death’s asphyxiating grip at all.
First there were the clues that commenters posted on her site, pointing to Void, a site authored by a young woman who was startlingly similar to 90 Day Jane. (Void’s author is reporting on a lump in her breast, leaving one to wonder if she’s off suicide and onto cancer now). Back on 90 Day Jane, she wrote this on day 87: “I also wanted to use this blog to help answer the question of ‘why’ for anyone who knew me and also for myself. Your comments are certainly helping me do that—many of them in a good way.”
The site, explained its author a few hours before taking it down, was meant to pay tribute to Christine Chubbuck, a newscaster who shot herself in the head live on-air in 1974. “She was very vocal about her depression to those around her and gave every indication of her exact intentions leading up to the event,” wrote 90 Day Jane. “Her story both inspired and terrified me because I can truly empathize with her rage and even her isolation. I wondered how Christine’s life and subsequent suicide would play out in our time. Would the internet be yet another place of isolation to her or an escape?”
In fact, it was a place where, even as readers watched the countdown to what they were lead to believe would be an online suicide, they requested, “…before you die, can you post pix of your clam?”