REGINA—In yet another instance of social networking sites taking a toll on human life, Scott Thomas, a 27-year old student at the University of Regina, committed suicide last night after spending 8 futile hours trying to understand the latest update of Twitter’s app. His last tweet sent late night from his laptop is being considered his suicide note. The tweet indicates the mental turmoil this young man had to go through while trying to keep up with his Twitter interactions after updating the app on his phone which led him to take this drastic step.
His friends at the university revealed that he was an Internet freak with an unmatched fascination for social networking tools like Twitter, Instagram, Kik and Snapchat, even though he loathed Facebook and Google+.
His close friend, Simon Katich, recalls with a heavy heart, “I remember yesterday morning when Scottie received the alert to update his Twitter app. He was so happy. He instantly updated the app and even tweeted about it and posted 7 Instagram pics which the update was downloading and installing. He was in such a good mood he even bought Timbits for the dorm.”
Probing further, Mooseclean’s learnt that the new Twitter update which was released yesterday sends notifications not only when someone retweets your tweet, but also when someone retweets a tweet that you had originally retweeted, besides sending notifications every time someone stars a tweet in which you were mentioned. Being an avid retweeter, with a boggling 72 retweets a day, Scott wasn’t able to keep up with all the notifications he was receiving on Twitter.
“He looked suffocated, choked and distraught as soon as he launched the Twitter app after updating it. He was finding it hard to reply to every single thread, and was getting more and more worried about losing a mention. It didn’t help that he had asked a girl from nursing on a Twitter date the previous night and he was extra curious to check if she had replied to his tweet yet. Around midnight, he locked himself in his room with his laptop, turned off his phone, and promised to come out with some answers”, explained his roommate, Don Dawson.
RCMP is currently probing whether people retweeting and starring his last tweet could have also led him to take such a drastic step.
Scott’s inconsolable parents are planning to sue Twitter for the death of their son, with their lawyer going through the terms and conditions of Twitter to prepare a legal course of action.