A Canadian college student at the University of Guelph reportedly live-streamed his disturbing suicide attempt for 200 viewers in a notorious 4chan forum this weekend, the Daily Dot reports.


According to CBC News, a 20-year-old University of Guelph student was seriously injured Saturday night after deliberately starting a fire in his dorm room. The school seemed to implicitly confirm the connection to 4chan with a statement on their website, which in part reads, "The University is aware that there is disturbing social media activity circulating about this incident and is urging people not to watch or distribute this hurtful material."

While the student's injuries are not life threatening, a university administrator told CBC that two school employees had to be hospitalized for smoke inhalation and 30 students who lived in the dorm were relocated. 

For a more detailed look at the events of the live-stream, Ishmael Daro at Canada.com offers a breakdown of how the night likely played out:

Another 4chan user set up a video chatroom with a 200-person limit, where "Stephen" proceeded to swallow some unidentified pills and vodka. He later started a fire in the corner of his room and crawled under a blanket, expecting to die. Other people on the message board variously told him to stop what he was doing, suggested ways for him to better kill himself ("bath + toaster for great scientific justice") or called the whole thing a staged event.

Daro also notes that the emergency responders who eventually saved "Stephen" received a call at 7:40 p.m. — "roughly an hour and a half after the initial message on 4chan."