Brandon Vedas
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Brandon Carl Vedas (April 21, 1981 – January 12, 2003), (also known by his nickname ripper on IRC) was a member of the Shroomery.org community who died of a massive overdose on mostly prescription drugs. His death led to considerable debate about the responsibilities and roles of online communities in life-threatening situations.
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[edit] Overview
The chat/webcam session apparently began by Vedas smoking cannabis in preparation, and then logging into the #shroomery IRC channel. Upon entering the channel he announced “I've got a grip of drugs” and indicated that his webcam was up, and that chatters were welcome to view his “grip of drugs” and his subsequent ingestion of them. While some of the substances were illicit drugs (e.g. cannabis), most of them had apparently been obtained through legitimate prescriptions for treatment of various illnesses that Vedas was said to have suffered.
Even in the early stages of the chat, Vedas was particularly quiet as he was likely preoccupied with his actions being captured by the webcam. He began by consuming Psilocybe mushrooms which had been stored in a prescription medication bottle. As the chat session progressed, one of the users in the channel, grphish, noted “that's a lot of klonopin” and this is thought to be when Vedas consumed 8 mg of clonazepam (Klonopin). Vedas continued by showing the webcam viewers what would be one of four bottles of methadone that he would consume over the course of the session, and, after noting this on the channel, proceeded to consume an entire bottle (reportedly 80 mg of methadone). After a brief respite, Vedas then consumed 110 mg of propranolol (Inderal), two Vicodin tablets, and 120 mg temazepam (Restoril), which seem to have been taken in-between descriptions given on the IRC channel.
During this process, Vedas maintained that this was "usual weekend behavior" for him and that he had consumed similar quantities of the same substances on previous occasions. The quote "i told u i was hardcore" was one of the last things Vedas ever said, and is often used sarcastically on internet message boards and discussion sites to refer to this incident.
Upon consuming the remainder of the original batch of drugs from the beginning of the webcam session, Vedas began to retrieve and prepare to consume even more drugs that he had stashed throughout the room. It was at this point that the users of the channel began to voice their concerns that Vedas was taking things too far. Some pleaded with him to stop while others recommended that he seek immediate medical attention. After taking another large quantity of the same drugs he had already ingested, Vedas gave instructions that if anything were to go wrong, that they should try to contact him by calling his cell phone, and if that didn't work, they should call the local authorities and give them the license plate number of his car, which was parked in his driveway and could easily be seen from the street.
When Vedas lost consciousness, users of the chatroom considered informing the police and asking that they trace Vedas's cellphone in order to locate him. However, the members of the channel were hesitant to contact the authorities for fear of involving Vedas and/or themselves in a police investigation. According to the chat logs, one user had even called 9-1-1 and asked the group if he was doing the right thing. After an emphatic "NO" response, the user said "I talked my way out of it."
During the chat, one user says they began to call the police, but talked their way out of the phone call after other users told them to hang up, claiming that the police told them that there was no way to find Vedas with the information available. However, according to Vedas's brother, who maintains the site brandonvedas.com, the information Brandon gave to the users in the chat, as well as the address in his domain name registration would have been enough for the police to locate Brandon, which he confirmed with local police. Later, Vedas's brother said about the incident, "It seems like the group mentality really contributed to it. These people treat it like somehow it's not the real world. They forget it's not just words on a screen."
His mother discovered the body in the afternoon of January 12, 2003.
[edit] Similar cases
- Scott "skOt" Millett was a 20-year-old Californian man, who announced on IRC that he would dismantle a street light with a pair of pliers, minutes before he got fatally electrocuted by it. [1]
- Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old British man, who hung himself after logging into a chatroom on PalTalk, and screening his proceedings through a webcam. [2]
- Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York City while dozens of her neighbors watched without intervening. Her case is often cited as an example of diffusion of responsibility; Brandon's experience with many 'witnesses' on IRC seems to be similar.
[edit] External links
- Memorial site created by his brother - includes transcript of the fateful chat
- NY Daily News - "He takes fatal OD as Internet pals watch"
- The Arizona Republic obituary
[edit] IRC logs of the incident
There are currently two versions of the logs available: The first version is available from the memorial site, while a second version is circulating around the internet. There is no notable difference between them, except for a line at 4:26, where ripper says "my mom is stupid thought" (after other users offered to call his mother in case he loses consciousness), which has been presumably removed by his family. The authenticity of either versions is unknown.
