He posted a bunch of incoherent babble on WP, people tried to engage with him but it didn't do a lot of good. When he said he was going to kill himself and take people down with him people just assumed he was full of shit, since it was typical of the emo bullshit some members spout without ever being likely to go postal. Then he did it.
It highlighted a couple of things; firstly, online support sites are no substitute for proper offline mental health support, and no venue for counselling the disturbed; and secondly, that Alex Plank is an opportunistic, glory seeking wanker. He used the death to bring publicity, advertising revenue, and hordes of new members to the site. I was a moderator at the time, and he asked me what I thought - I told him my advice would be to cooperate with the cops but stay away from the media since gaggles of folk come to WP to gawk at the retards, and an influx of new members, woudn't be good for the community. He responded by leaping into a media circus, holding interviews on tv, etc. I stepped down from the staff in disgust, and left WP as a regular poster afterwards.
