CNN Reports Diaspora's Ilya Zhitomirskiy Committed Suicide

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/14/technology/diaspora_cofounder_died/

by bproper • 15 years ago

138 111 15 years ago

money.cnn.com

It is so important to realize where you stand in life. I'm sure many of us would have loved to be in place of Ilya; In news all over at the age of 21. Perhaps he did not realize this. A great loss.

steve-howard• 15 years ago

"Where you stand" and being in the news tend not to mean much to suicidal people. I deeply sympathize with all involved, Ilya included.

VonGuard2• 15 years ago

Agreed. The Internet can be a harsh mistress. "In the news" can also mean "reading 1000's of mean-spirited comments."

corin_• 15 years ago

Sometimes suicide is driven by analytically looking at your life and deciding it really is awful... but a huge amount of the time it is a psychological problem of depression, which isn't going to be instantly cured by thinking "I'm in the news", or even "I have great friends/family".

kstenerud• 15 years ago

The facts are the facts, but one's "analysis" is always based on opinion. When you suffer from depression, that opinion is always biased towards the negative, and it's nearly impossible to get out of the vicious cycle, especially if your serotonin receptors or secretors are malfunctioning.

Worse, you simply accept that opinion as established, cold, hard fact, which means that in your own mind it won't ever change (the world will always be a shithole. I'll always be a loser, Anything I try to do to fix things is futile because everything's so horrible, etc).

"Great friends/family" just means more people to disappoint or fail in some way. "In the news" just means a bigger humiliation once you inevitably screw everything up and piss everyone off and let everyone down.

Essentially, anything good in your life receives a negative spin, and anything bad gets amplified in your warped opinion. And that only leads to more despair, lower opinion, more despair, etc until it feels like the only logical choice is to off yourself. After all, you'd be doing the world a favor if you ceased to exist. All those people you wouldn't be there to hurt or let down. All the outrage you won't cause. It's a net gain, really.

Does that sound fucked up? It is, but for the depressed, that IS their reality.

ahoyhere• 15 years ago

When you're depressed, fame, money, opportunities can be all the more depressing because they don't help you feel better.

Unless you've been well-off, famous, respected, you can't understand just how big a gulf there can be between what people see when they look at you, and what you feel inside.

The bigger the gulf, the worse it feels.

thomasgerbe4• 15 years ago

Couldn't have put it better myself.

You could even cut it to "you can't understand just how big a gulf there can be between what people see when they look at you, and what you feel inside."

fennecfoxen2• 15 years ago

So, I made a fair amount of money off my last job (the company's stock plummeted, they repriced all the options, the price recovered), and I ended up with a six-figure retirement account at age 26.

I'm certainly fortunate and it makes my life a bit less stressful, but it doesn't keep me warm at night. It doesn't care about whether or not I had a good day at work. I can't have an intellectually stimulating conversation with it. And that's just a little bit of money. Fame would be even worse.

tibbon• 15 years ago

This whole thing makes me feel terrible.

I didn't know Ilya well, but I did know him. I wish I had known that he was in a bad situation personally that led to this. I wish I could have helped. My last trip to SF in September was really busy and I didn't get to hang out with him. He even offerred me his couch to crash on, but I didn't take him up on the offer.

We meant to do some pair programming back in July, but things got busy and I didn't followup on the invitation. He invited me to an awesome party in April, but I didn't end up going as I'd needed to fly from Ohio there, but I can't help wishing that I'd done it anyway.

So I just feel terrible frankly that I mistakenly turned down interacting with him. Would have we had some conversation that would have changed his opinion on things? Given him some new hope?

Clearly, I know this isn't anyone's fault, but in retrospect its hard not to wish that anyone was able to do more.

I suppose the only thing to do in the future is to always prioritize time with people as the #1 thing. In retrospect, nothing else I could have been doing was more important.

mortenjorck• 15 years ago

So I just feel terrible frankly that I mistakenly turned down interacting with him. Would have we had some conversation that would have changed his opinion on things? Given him some new hope?

This is a very human reaction, but please don't let yourself get hung up on this line of thinking. Heroic intervention is something we tend to overestimate. What you can do is to be there for the people you know well. When someone's hurting, be generous with your time; be someone they can turn to. If you ever think someone's at risk, know what to look for and know where to turn.

maeon3• 15 years ago

I disagree, suicide is selected into the genome to get useless parts to self destruct. Like how skin cells have to shift around to service the whole. He was reaching out to everywhere he could looking for validation and found none. Mixed with a stiff upper lip and a lack of desire to show weakness is a recipe for a feedback loop of perceived irrelevance. When all around you use actions to indicate that you are a burden, not an asset. Freeing up resources is good for the hive. he loved the collective, too much.

Your no's were part of the feedback loop, you couldnt have known the magnitude of what was happening, but your actions are part of his decision. Healing from this will take honesty, you can delude others but not yourself.

You are a part of it, but it wasn't your responsibility.

buss2• 15 years ago

Please take mortenjorck's advice to heart. There's very likely nothing you could have done that could have stopped this.

Remember that people's emotions are not trivial problems that you can solve if you just spend enough time working on them. The tech culture is particularly toxic, in my opinion, for people suffering from depression. Depression is not something you can sit down and hammer out a solution to over a weekend. It grabs hold of people and doesn't let go. It takes years of professional help (from people who actually understand human emotions and psychology) and the will to get better.

Please don't think about this too hard, because you can get caught up in all of the "If only I'd have called him" thoughts.

If you feel guilty, then talk to someone who understands how to deal with these kinds of events. Even a single visit to a psychologist can do a lot to break this feedback loop of guilt. Talking to someone who knows how to listen about real feelings of guilt or depression is the best thing you can do in your position.

essayist• 15 years ago

I'm in deep agreement here. Gregory Bateson put it well, many years ago, writing to someone who wondered whether she/he had a role in a friend's suicide:

Complete, in your imagination, this scenario:

Your friend has achieved her suicide and arrived at the Pearly Gates, where she is challenged by St. Peter, who notes that she has come too soon. She says that it was all --------------- 's fault.

There are many ways of completing the scenario, but one way or another, your friend has to demonstrate that she had no free will but you had. I suggest either that you both had free will or that neither of you had.

http://pages.citebite.com/d1u1k9v8e9gfq

viggity• 15 years ago

Please, if suicide has crossed your mind, please, please, please find help. I had a fraternity brother commit suicide and you have no idea how much you'll be missed.

Help is out there and it is free.

http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

VladRussian6• 15 years ago

so, we create hell on earth for other people and when these people decide to leave the hell, we caringly, with all the good emotions in in the voice, say "please don't do it". You must be kidding.

How about just looking around and honestly answering simple question - whose hell today i'm part of ? One don't need to be an active or the most painful part, being just a part, a silent brick in the wall, is enough. And may be, if one has enough brains and courage, to refuse to be the part of the hell, just for one person, just for one day.

And, yes, two decades ago during student years, 3 persons i personally knew very well made the decision, and i respect it. They made the biggest decision in their life, and i'd not disrespect it with "what if"s or "they should have reach for the help" or with any other trash like this...

Cushman2• 15 years ago

Get out of here with that. Maybe there are circumstances, in times of horrible war or famine or terminal illness, where suicide is the necessary step to end suffering. Maybe that's hell; I wouldn't know. I hope not to.

But I know depression. Depression feels like hell, but it's not. It's a treatable disease. Killing yourself to escape depression is like killing yourself to escape pneumonia instead of going to the hospital.

You should not respect that decision. You should help that person to get better.

rdtsc2• 15 years ago

It seems your reaction is also a not so uncommon. I think it is just a coping strategy. Anger and dismissal is common in such situations.

PakG12• 15 years ago

If you can give details about those 3 and their reasons, perhaps you have a slight chance of convincing others that people have valid reasons for suicide other than depression. But EVERY case I've ever heard/seen (and maybe my sample is too small to be reflective of reality) points to depression as the leading and possibly only cause. There may have been root causes of that depression that were hell on earth, but the "but for" test still says depression was the direct cause of suicide in every case I've ever seen/read about/etc.

While I don't know any personally, I know people who know others who had living hell (eg. rape by father, impregnated, abortion). Those people got support, were able to fight back, and regained their lives. What made them different from others was the depression factor, and it's easy to conclude that the support others gave to help them stand up again prevented depression from taking hold.

You're making a very difficult-to-believe claim (for me for sure, and probably for others, given your downvotes) that depression had no factors in those 3 suicides, and an additional difficult-to-believe claim that it's not reasonable to conclude that depression is a leading factor in suicide in general.

Some details would be appreciated if you're going to make such difficult-to-believe claims.

edit: And if you would make the clarification again that you never claimed that depression wasn't a leading cause, just that it's not necessarily a factor, I don't see how that's a profitable statement. People have to make decisions and judgments all the time with incomplete information. Until the picture is 100% known here, it is logical to conclude what the numbers say: depression was a factor, if not the leading factor.

partition2• 15 years ago

I completely agree with your general sentiment. I think everyone who is downvoting you has installed in themselves a despicable world-view: that professional psychiatric support along with medication is a necessary part of having a fulfilling life, for those of us who were unlucky enough to go through hell on earth. It's not getting real results in the real world, or having fulfilling relationships, no, these people are sub-human because of their mental illness, they have to sign up to see a _therapist_. As for all of you disagreers: No, don't support these people, or question how your actions day-to-day might affect the well-being of others! Fully buy into the notion of man as sociopathically selfish and live it to the hilt, as you were well trained to do by school (and startup culture).

theshiva5• 15 years ago

It seems that Ilya left behind a detailed suicide note.

http://oobly.com/?p=530/

I spoke to a person who was there when his mother called to check on him. Tragic.

shalmanese2• 15 years ago

This is false.

lwat• 15 years ago

Why

rottencupcakes• 15 years ago

Do you have any evidence of this?

theshiva5• 15 years ago

My source was there, in the house, in that bedroom.

codybrown• 15 years ago

I know this is an open forum but these threads are getting hard to read. Copycat suicides are a real phenomenon and some responses, however genuine and well intentioned, can make them more likely to occur.

Department of Health Recommendations for Covering Suicide. Do not apportion blame. Do not give simple reasons. Do not glorify.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/126241/WHO-Media-Guide-for-Suicide...

invisiblefunnel• 15 years ago

Diaspora commit: "Image for Ilya" https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/0c33791069010869...

maxklein• 15 years ago

Internet criticism can be very hurtful. A simple way to prevent further startup suicides is that when you see someone being heavily criticized, or when you see a startup that is being criticized a lot, send them an email supporting them and offering to listen to their side of the story. Even if the people are not suicidal, it can help them through a difficult time and motivate them to continue to do good stuff.

The reality of the situation right now in the startup world is that when people hear you are making x amount/month, you get 500 emails, but when the tables turn and you are suddenly on the receiving end of heavy criticism, you get zero emails.

goatforce5• 15 years ago

Is it just speculation that his suicide relates to his work life?

(And not, say, girl/health/money problems...)

vaksel4• 15 years ago

money problems would definitely fall under work life for startups.

Girl/health problems might fall as well, since the work/life balance is so crappy

davidhansen2• 15 years ago

A little bit of a derailment from what this threat "ought to be" about, but...

Is this a serious observation? It is my experience that literally nobody cares how much money you're making. Your popularity as a "startup celebrity" is entirely associated with how cool your project is perceived to be, and who is backing it. There are legions of founders making plenty of money on perceived-to-be-boring projects that nobody cares about.

prawn• 15 years ago

Criticism is one thing, but a threat seems a bit much!

subpixel• 15 years ago

I hope Ilya is at peace. I'd like to speak to anyone who might feel, now or in the future, as desperate as Ilya must have.

Please consider this: by nature our own pain and suffering strikes us as intensely personal and private, but the truth is the experience is universal. For different reasons, at different times in our lives, we all get served heaping helpings of grief, desperation, regret, shame, disappointment - sometimes all at once. And, in the case of people with depression, sometimes for no discernible reason.

The most crushing aspect of depression and its cohorts is the false perception that your pain is so diabolically personal that it cannot be shared or understood, to say nothing of being addressed or overcome.

tl;dr you're never alone, in fact more people love and respect you than you know - try to never forget that.

vaksel4• 15 years ago

what a waste, at 21 and with Diaspora on his resume, he could have gone on to work at Google or Facebook, making $100K-$200K/yr. The skillset was there.

Sure it's not as much as owning the next Facebook...but it's plenty of money to live a comfortable life...and nothing was stopping him from trying again in a few years.

clarkevans• 15 years ago

I think you completely misunderstand Ilya. He emphatically did not want to work at Facebook for $100-$200K/year.

vaksel4• 15 years ago

Not everyone gets to be a dotcom millionaire...plenty of people have to work for a living. And with his skillset, at least he didn't have to settle for a $20K/yr job flipping burgers.

anigbrowl• 15 years ago

I can't say I ever had the impression that profit was a core aim of the Diaspora project; rather it seemed an attempt to create a Free Software social networking platform along the lines of GNU/ Linux.

As you mentioned above, there's really no way for a bunch of near-total strangers to know what led to his suicide, since most of us knew of him only through his internet activity rather than as personal friends or family members. Simplistic cause-and-effect analyses are usually inadequate or outright misleading where suicide is concerned.

vaksel4• 15 years ago

the point is that at 21 and with his skillset, he had quite a comfortable life waiting ahead of him, one that would have been better than 99% of people out there.

I don't care what other things happened in his life, at 21, there is absolutely no valid reason to kill yourself.

DilipJ2• 15 years ago

You're making the mistake of thinking that wealth is correlated with suicides. In fact, the countries with the highest per-capita suicide rates tend to in Northern and Eastern Europe.

I can't explain why. I think the people there are more melancholy by nature. They also have some of the highest IQs in the world, so maybe there is a correlation there.

Sorry for the tangent, RIP Ilya.

shareme• 15 years ago

A question, I do not mean to be dramatic. But, is there some type of out-reach program for start-up founders to prevent this sort of thing? Let us admit that founding or working in a start-up is extremely stress-full compared to other work or professional activities.

I know each one of us has a circle of friends that they have cultivated to provide unconditional support so that when they need that its there. But even when you do that you might hit obstacles that even overwhelm that.

ethank• 15 years ago

Something along the line of Nuçi's Space, in Athens, GA which provides these types of services for musicians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuçis_Space

davidhansen2• 15 years ago

I know each one of us has a circle of friends that they have cultivated to provide unconditional support so that when they need that its there.

This is a fairly strange assumption. Not everyone makes friends easily.

thomasgerbe4• 15 years ago

Especially in early startups where one works alone quite a lot of the time. Very different than getting a job at a company.

orky56• 15 years ago

This is really sad news. It's ironic that in Silicon Valley, a place that embraces failure, someone has misconstrued something and taken it too personally. I hope Ilya has found peace.

grusk• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Zhitomirskiy

suivix• 15 years ago

I find it appalling that much of his notability is the fact he committed suicide.

politician2• 15 years ago

Given the sensitive nature of this conversation, how is downvoting suivix's comment justified?

pheaduch• 15 years ago

Interesting, he went to the same high school as Kobe Bryant.

imran• 15 years ago

Why did paypal mysteriously freezed donations to diaspora?

Joeboy• 15 years ago

Probably because they fell foul of some fraud/money laundering detection heuristic by making too much in donations too quickly and/or not (in the conventional sense) shipping a product.

theshiva5• 15 years ago

anyone knows how to delete a comment that has replies?

kamaal• 15 years ago

One of the key things in dealing with failure really is not to worry too much about what the world thinks about you or your failure. Not to succumb to peer pressure. The society is ruthless in criticism towards people who take risks and fail. They are sort of used up as examples for other people.

I have relatives, two of whom died out of extreme stress and tension(Heart attack and Cancer) because they took loans beyond their means, were unable to repay it back and put a huge burden on their dependents. This is one example of taking risks which people really can't sustain. None of which is needed.

Although you must not worry about the world, at the same time you must not take unnecessary financial risks beyond your means. Because we are people and we go through emotions, and sometimes for things beyond our control we are responsible not just for our lives but for many other people around us. And when we take huge risks, we put both ourselves and people around us under that risk. Now when we can't deal with that risk and we fail, things go worse very quickly and we commit suicide or die out of a disease(fallout of stress).

Nothing is more important than health, and being happy. Take calculated risks. And if you fail, forget about it and start over.

Don't do things which put you in these situations at the first place. And if you are in that situation, seek help and deal with it with it patiently.

beatpanda2• 15 years ago

I've been reading comments on Hacker News since this happened, and I have to say, you people sure have a funny definition of "failure".

https://joindiaspora.com/tags/NewHere – New users every one or two minutes.

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/ – Multiple commits, sometimes dozens, every day, many from volunteers.

Would that I were fortunate enough to "fail" this well.

Attributing Ilya's suicide to "failure" is, to my eyes, condescending, and I wish you all would stop it.

Achshar• 15 years ago

When did you see the users and commits? did you account for the possibility that This is due to the (unfortunate) publicity disphora got after Zhitomirskiy passed away? i say wait a couple of weeks an then try again.

beatpanda2• 15 years ago

Seriously?

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits?page=5

joannemiller• 15 years ago

Failure precedes success ... Ilya was too young to know he was almost there. RIP shooting star.

CNN Reports Diaspora's Ilya Zhitomirskiy Committed Suicide

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