Randy Stair: My e-Book in progress - a little drop of something personal.

 

I first heard about Randy Stair from a Youtuber "Mister Metokur" whose videos I used to watch religiously a few years ago. At first, I laughed along with everyone else at how this seemingly confused young adult became so obsessed with being a part of a squad of girl-ghosts in the afterlife. On the surface, it is quite amusing, if it wasn't for the fact that this banal obsession ended up turning him to perform a murder-suicide. 

 I didn't think about Randy again until a year ago today when the "Murder Minute" app I subscribed too did a special story on him and I found that there was a lot more to him than perhaps the short mocking video showed. I also learned that he had a fairly extensive collection of media which he had left behind for his fans as well as a written diary for an insight into his mind. As someone who is inquisitive by nature and with a growing passion for criminology and psychology I decided to do a little of my own digging into his "legacy." 

 The amount of media left behind is STAGGERING. There is hours worth of suicide-tapes, the journal itself and a mammoth hive of videos and digital content which would take up days if played back to back. They show a lot of his life, beginning with his early days recording with his friend Matthew when he was about eleven, up until the recent E.G.S. videos, and those of him talking to the camera to his fans with updates on his plans. 

 The thing that drew me to write about this particular story is not the shock-value of it (if anything it is almost comedic if it wasn't for the sad outcome) nor the popularity of it (if it wasn't for Mister Metokur it may have wandered into obscurity with the rest of the world forever) but really for its place in the developing timeline of crime as a reflection of our history and science itself. 

 For one of the first times, we have someone who was a fairly successful Youtuber, succumb to depression, to body dysmorphia and deeply troubling suicidal thoughts being as openly honest about them as he could be to his audience through his art. I know what you are going to say, "art is merely the representation of truth and not truth itself." This is true in part, but that is just it, in part because there will always be a slither of truth among the theatre, which should not always be downplayed. 

 The psychological effects of social media platforms, popularity based reward incentives and pressure to make more and more content are incredibly new to our history as human beings. These influences have not yet really been studied enough by sciences to understand how online mass suicide forums are so influential, how online bullying cultures cause paranoia and mental enslavement to inappropriate behaviours and how comparing ourselves to other people's online "personas" cause a sense of worthlessness and inadequacy.

 If this is still an area needing further investigation then Randy Stair is one of the people at the apex of it. He had shown to thousands of subscribers a breakdown in his mental stability, a spiral down into the darkness with his content changing dramatically, his irrational thoughts and irritable outbursts at his fellow content creators and yet no one took any initiative, no one thought to themselves that this person is capable of doing harm not only to himself but to others.

 If you take the time to really think about it, it is like something out of a sadistic "Black Mirror" episode, Randy in the centre stage clearly damaged, clearly on a spiral of destruction, posting videos of him training himself, shooting guns, while thousands of faceless silhouettes just look down and say and do nothing. This is not the first time this has happened, of course, look at the case of Kitty Genovese where there were 36 witnesses to her murder and no one phoned the police, but this wasn't 36 people staring at a killer this was thousands of people sat behind a computer screen that could have intervened, who had been swallowing up his content for years, who knew him as a person and knew this was abnormal.

 Another very controversial aspect of this case is the fact that you can trace a significant change in Randy after the Columbine shooters journals got published online. After reading them he was more prone to the idea of murder-suicide than just suicide, it was then he began planning on killing other people along with himself. It could be argued, and I merely dangle a mouse on this only, that if the sensitive journals were not published to the public, whether he would have shot his co-workers. I am against censorship so it is very hard for me to type that, but facts are facts, and there was more deviant deterioration after he was exposed to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris's thoughts. 

 I don't pretend to be an expert on any of this, but I chose to sift through his content in its entirety to summarize it all in an e-Book where eventually people interested in these areas can use it as a reference rather than have to go through the countless days of media themselves.

I have been working on this for an entire year and there is still media left for me to go through, as I only watch bits here and there when I have time. I am also not casting any shade on anyone, I am merely interested in the workings of what actually happened and tracing it back for an answer as to why.