It was really bothering me that the person who commits suicide in this video is nameless in every post I’ve seen warning about the video, so I decided to look him up.
The man’s name is Ronnie McNutt, he was a 33 years old Iraq war veteran from Mississippi who had just lost his job at a Toyota plant, and the video did not originate on Tiktok.
McNutt killed himself during a Facebook live video for his friends, friends who were trying to talk him down. Then some unknown person took that video and put it on other platforms.
I feel this information is important because:
Ronnie McNutt was a real human being and his name was not “man with a beard”
He deserves the same level of dignity and respect that should be afforded to all people. He had a name, he had a story, he is not a nameless unknowable entity who existed solely in the context of a snuff film.
Treating him as a nameless unknowable entity who only existed in the context of a snuff film is exactly the sort of attitude that results in the further propagation of this video
The video was not created for mass public consumption
If you think this video is traumatic for you, imagine how it felt for its actual intended audience, the people who loved and knew him. Now imagine experiencing that trauma only for someone to treat this horrific act like shareable content.
It is unnerving that in every post I’ve seen warning people about this video I haven’t seen any consideration for how his loved ones must feel about McNutt’s death going viral
Someone decided to circulate this across platforms. McNutt did not stream this for TikTok, he did not post it to Twitter…. someone saw this horrific death on Facebook and then decided to cross platform it.
McNutt’s friends and family have been speaking out about the trauma of witnessing his death in this manner and how Facebook did not do everything they could have to stop this.
This was and continues to be a deeply malicious act that, every step of the way, reveals just how fucked up social media culture is.
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