A long-time user of 4chan’s notorious /b/ imageboard apparently attempted to take his own life in a fire Saturday night while 200 people watched on a live video stream.
The 20-year-old, identified only as “Stephen,” announced on the anonymous board that he intended to commit suicide—or “an hero,” in the parlance of /b/.
“As an oldfag who’s been on 4chan since 2004, I thought I would finally give back to the community,” he wrote. “I am willing to an hero on cam for you all.”
Another user responded by setting up a video chatroom on streaming website Chateen. Stephen joined in with the username LOLDoge, a reference to a meme featuring a photo of a Shiba Inu dog that’s recently been popular on /b/.
With 200 viewers—the maximum allowed on Chateen—watching him, and even more clamoring to get in, Stephen downed a combination of vodka and unidentified pills. He set a small fire in the corner of his room and crawled under his bed. The camera was still running.
In a video of the incident, still available on LiveLeak (NSFW), the room fills up with smoke and Stephen apparently starts to burn.
“#imdead #omgimonfire,” he typed from under the bed.
“I’m fuck3d.”
But Stephen wasn’t dead. At least, not yet. The video also captured firefighters entering the room and pulling him out.
Some /b/ users believe Stephen is a student at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada.
According to the Guelph Mercury, one person was injured in a dorm room fire on the university campus. That victim is now at Guelph General Hospital with “serious, but non-life threatening” injuries.
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Stephen has quickly become a legend on /b/, earning the nickname “Toaster Stephen,” as 4channers speculate about whether he survived the incident.
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