Death by internet-spawned robot

Stories like this fall easily into the "Gothic in everyday life" category:

AN 81-year-old Gold Coast man built, and yesterday used, an intricate suicide machine to remotely shoot himself, after downloading the plans from the internet.

Then one notes that opening sentence's final clause, with its fillip of the fearsome internet.  Does that last bit matter to the story, or is it a titillating detail?  How it would look if the information source was altered:

AN 81-year-old Gold Coast man built, and yesterday used, an intricate suicide machine to remotely shoot himself, after obtaining plans from the local public library.

Or

AN 81-year-old Gold Coast man built, and yesterday used, an intricate suicide machine to remotely shoot himself, after talking with a local handyman.

Clearly these wouldn't have the same charge, unless the reporter then tracked down the devious librarian or handyman.  Which the reporter doesn't do, in the actual article: no further mention of the deadly Web.

A followup story linked from that article does perform the same scary-net act:

NEIGHBOURS say Pete Tovey had appeared 'normal and not depressed' in the days leading up to his death, before using a suicide machine he built from internet plans.

This ratchets up the fear a bit further, heightening, perhaps, the thought that the net led this guy over the edge. Now the internet-suicide meme is more fully activated.

The fearsome internet meme is so thoroughly established in global culture, so historically rooted, that it only takes a few words to summon it up.

Comments

[Steve B]

As John Varley wrote in 1985, just "Press Enter".