Shoenice commits suicide

Shoenice, the famous viral stunt-eating YouTube sensation, has died from ingesting a whole bag of rat poison in under 30 seconds. The video of his suicide has been removed from YouTube, but the footage above shows a manic fit posted just hours before the suicide video. A transcript of the suicide has already surfaced on Internet hacking site Pastebin.

“Hey everyone, Shoenice again. Well basically I’ve eaten everything you mofos ever requested except poison. So Shoenice is going to step up to the plate and show you he’s nobody’s fool. Shoenice has gotten more requests for poison than anything else in his entire career, so this better be the biggest video eveeeerrrr. A whole pack of rat poison in under 30 seconds. On your marks, get set, Shoenice! [inaudible] Tiiiiime. Thaaaaaaaaank You.”

How did this man degenerate from eating stunts to abuse of random strangers and finally himself? Maybe the so-called “fame” got to his head, and his ongoing “comedic” breakdown continually needed more supplement. Maybe not.

Few Hollywood comedies end tragically, but on the Internet and probably in real life this story plays out again and again. What starts as a joke becomes an all-consuming self-obsession. When this newfound “success” fails to appease the boundless fantasies of the crazed self-made “Internet Celebrity,” the compulsion for increasingly risky artistic statements trends towards disaster.

Seeking fulfillment from without by mind-controlling obsessed fanboys and masturbating to hit counts is a slippery slope with death crocodiles at the bottom.

Why do artists try to manipulate culture in their image? An artist is jealous, hateful, and vain. Oh, and won’t the artist hate me for saying that? Is art just a grievous self-inflicted wound? The subject can not be transformed into an object without fatality!

Freeplay, on the surface, does not look like this kind of fatal jealous art. Freeplay is seemingly without intention, without the masochistic impulse to be understood. The fatality here is only incidental; total indifference coexists with love and hate. The experience is beautiful. Either ego reaches a peak so high it is completely out of sight, or it is buried in the unconscious. Even still, the act of creation in Freeplay is a death, an unbecoming of the subject.

The danger of wild “misinterpretation” is a shackle to the artist no matter the mixture of conscious and unconscious intention. Look at that masochist suffer, never to be understood! The tragedy of meaning, laid bare. Is this what Shoenice is all about? Is this what all art is driving for? Do I hear him crying before he laughs?

Because all interpretations are “misinterpretations,” there is nothing left but an embrace of “misinterpretation.” Art is a dead part of the artist. Fingernail clippings. Thankfully there is no authority on meaning–just the tyranny of the stylish!

Dear Lonely God, let this man cry, and SPARE HIM THAT DESPERATE LAUGHTER.