Stephanie Painter's death was swift and painless.At 9:10 p.m. on Feb. 11, she bid her 121 Facebook friends goodbye with one last "poke" (mood: sorrowful), then left the virtual world peacefully with a quick click of the mouse."It was hard to kill the profile I'd spent so long creating, but I felt it was the only way out," said Painter, 27, a personal assistant from West London. "Facebook was damaging my relationship with my boyfriend to such an extent that if I hadn't done it, we wouldn't be together now."Painter found out that what had seemed like an innocent way of reconnecting with old friends and colleagues had opened a huge can of worms."Within a couple of months, a number of ex-partners and people that I'd had random flings with were asking to be my 'friend' in Facebook. I didn't feel I could decline them and I admit I was intrigued by what they were up to," she said."But not only did that ignite unwanted feelings in me, it also made my boyfriend Danny, a 28-year-old TV producer, incredibly insecure. As one of my friends, he could view my profile page, my friends' list and my 'wall' (an area on which messages are posted)."Reading my ex's flirty messages, however innocent, made him insanely jealous. He hated the fact that I was in touch with men I'd once slept with and that some of them had posted up old pictures of us together which I had no power to remove."In the end, Facebook was causing so many arguments between us that I decided the best thing would be to log off. As soon as my Facebook profile died, our relationship improved."Painter is not the only one of the social-networking site's 31 million users to have committed what is being dubbed "Facebook suicide."Although it's impossible to estimate exactly how many people have "deactivated" (the site has yet to release figures), there are a growing number of Facebook suicide groups on the site.One, the Facebook Mass Suicide Club, encourages members to "cancel your account before it consumes you. Join this group so we can do it together!"So far, 143 people have joined. [Facebook makes it very difficult to cancel an account, but deactivation is easy.]Started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard, Facebook is now the 13th most used search engine in the world, with 150,000 new people signing up every day.Barely a day goes by without a story in the press about the site, from privacy concerns over its plans to make profiles accessible through search engines such as Google, to reports that more than 70 per cent of British businesses have moved to restrict or ban Facebook.Considered more popular with slightly older and more upscale users than other networking sites, such as MySpace, it has recently made the transition from niche concept to something with mass appeal.So why are people deciding to put a virtual noose around their online necks...?
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As in the days of Noah....