My hangover told me not to get out of bed today. I should have listened to it.

Marsupialized wrote:

Camaro wrote:

glynnisjohns wrote:I caught this story in the Rotten.com page.

No more internets for the rest of that day.

Most visits to rotten.com leave me feeling the same way, which is why I don't visit the site any longer. Like many a marsupualized link, I always end up clicking something knowing I'm going to regret it.

http://www.pyzam.com/img/funnypics/holidays/vday.jpg

I think she's cute. She reminds me of Droopy.

nice link marsup

The world is such a fucking shithole.

Ever seen the movie oldboy? If not see it, really. If so, I'd have gone to those lengths to psychologically fuck with the parents of the "Josh" account had it been a child of mine.

However a good saying comes to mind, "when fighting monsters, see to it you don't become one yourself."

What those adults did was wrong, sure. But I think that charging them with a crime (other than possibly misdemeanor harassment) would be a bit much. I understand that the parents loved their daughter and are extremely distraught over her suicide. I understand they are pissed off and want somebody to take the blame, but maybe they ought to consider how they themselves might have handled the situation better.

Her parents knew that according to MySpace ToS, Megan was too young to have an account on that website, yet they created one for her anyway and they allowed her to access it unsupervised. I'm sure they're not living in a vacuum, and I'm sure they've heard about the dangers of young kids using MySpace without parental supervision.

What I really don't get is why they would sit idly by and encourage her to entertain the fantasy that some random kid on the Internet, whom she's never even met in person, is some kind of boyfriend? Didn't they perceive the potential harm in this? Don't people teach their kids to be wary of what they see and read online? What were they thinking when they saw their daughter obsessing over this unknown boy, to the point of absolute giddiness? You'd think that the parents of an insecure young girl would suss out the need for some due diligence into the identity of this "kid". What if he were really a 40-something-year-old paedophile, seeking to arrange a "meeting" with their daughter?

There are always at least 2 sides to every story. I seriously doubt that two adults deliberately and sadistically conspired to torment a helplessly depressed young girl and destroy her life. I find it to be much more believable that two distraught parents might try to interpret events in that way, if they were angry and desperate to alleviate their guilt over their own poor decisions that may have contributed to their daughter's suicide.

Despite the very biased slant of this story, there are gaps in the information that indicate there's a lot more to it than what the Meiers have presented. Megan's mother just happens to be the real estate agent who'd sold these people their house. So there's more of a relationship there than just an ongoing hot-and-cold relationship between two little girls. The rocky nature of the girls' friendship was also completely glossed over. What transpired between them? What could have happened that got the other girl's parents so pissed off that they'd go so far as to create a fake MySpace account to spy on Megan? Was Megan perhaps a fucked-up, needy and manipulative kid who continually played games with the other girl's feelings of friendship? It looks like Megan had some serious social problems. Her parents are casting her as the helpless victim, but is this true? It's apparent that there was another side to her personality. What was the content of the profane language she was typing to the other kids online?

I'm also a bit skeptical about the mysterious message the FBI was unable to retrieve from Megan's computer, the one that allegedly said everybody in town knows her and hates her. Of all the messages on the hard drive that had existed there for weeks or months, why would that most recent file be irretrievable? Could it be that Ron Meier had used a disk-wiping utility to overwrite some damning evidence that his own daughter might have instigated or antagonized the other kids?

A more plausible story would be that Megan was a self-absorbed and socially inept kid who was unable to maintain long-term friendships. As a result of this, she might have acted out like so many maladjusted and unpopular kids do, by trying to make up for her lack of social skills by spreading rumors and talking shit about her acquaintances at school and around the neighborhood.

One can infer that the daughter of the family down the block was distraught over a failed friendship with Megan Meier, the abusive, manipulative daughter of the neighborhood realty agent. Maybe this girl knew that Megan was badmouthing her, and she told her parents. Maybe her parents wanted proof of this, so they used poor judgment and suggested a mean prank. So they helped her to contrive an irresistible fake MySpace character--a cute boy--and then use that persona to find out exactly what kinds of things Megan was saying about her.

Once it was determined that Megan was indeed slandering her behind her back, there was no longer a need to keep the secret that the MySpace boy was really a sock-puppet. At this point, the daughter was probably very hurt and angry and got carried away with tormenting her former friend (kids often act most cruelly towards their ex-best friends). She then obviously gave out the login info for the MySpace account to her friends so they could all join in the fun.

After the ambulance arrived, Megan was taken to the hospital and it was known that she'd attempted suicide, the parents of the other girl realized the gravity of the situation and shifted into "damage control" mode. They deleted the MySpace account and told their daughter and her friends to keep quiet about their participation.

After Megan's death, their condolences and support (however heartfelt it may have been at the time) made the entire plot seem much more sinister once Megan's parents began to piece it all together. About the ping-pong table, I don't understand why these people would have been "storing" it at the Meiers' house. That doesn't make much sense to me, when they own a home of their own. I'm guessing it was more likely a gift, a gesture of friendship. But when they found it hacked to pieces in a box in their driveway, I'm sure they considered it to be a possible threat of violence, so they made out a police report. Not so unbelievable.

Now the Meiers are launching a media blitz against them, portraying them as monsters, vandalizing their property, making veiled appeals for neighborhood retaliation, and calling for a law to be passed that will ensure their infamy in the town for posterity.

I mean come on. It was a prank gone awry. It was not murder. If Megan was so emotionally fragile that such a thing could drive her to suicide, then her parents ought to have paid closer attention to her needs. Megan herself said the "N" in her name stood for "Neglected".

For chrissakes, they named the fake kid "Josh". How much more obvious do they have to make it?

Here's a list of the addresses to contact, in order to make sure that Mrs. Lori Drew is punished appropriately by authorities & the business community:

A brief letter to lawmakers, sheriff's department and other people -- even an email or fax -- will show that we will not stand for this harassment, goad them to change legislation to make this kind of online harassment illegal - a felony. And to exercise the INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS laws in place in Missouri!

Megan Meier is not the first kid or adult to be hurt by online harassment, and she won't be the last. It is the best chance for Lori Drew to see jail time she so richly deserves -- and get her child some counseling.

Write and/or fax a letter to:

Jack Banas, Prosecuting Attorney
Courts Administration Building
Room 601
300 North Second Street
St. Charles, MO 63301
~~~~~~~~~~

Tom Neer,
St Charles County Sheriff Department
101 Sheriff Dierker Court
O' Fallon, MO 63366
Fax: (636) 949-3078
E-Mail: sheriff@sccmo.org

Mrs. Lori Drew, the ADULT woman who started it all, actually had the gall to file a complaint against the parents of the girl she tormented, for destroying a "foosball table" she asked them to hide for Christmas.

The Meier family, when they learned of Drew's harassment of their daughter months after her death, destroyed the foosball table and drove its remains onto the Drew lawn. The police filed a report about the property damage -- but not about Drew's harassment and goading of Meier?!

Tell the police to immediately drop the property charges against the Meiers and file new ones against Mrs. Drew.
~~~~~~~~

Rep. Doug Funderburk
MO House of Representatives
201 West Capitol Avenue
Room 236B Jefferson City MO 65101

Congressman Todd Akin (St. Louis)
District Offices 301 Sovereign Court, Ste. 201
St. Louis, MO 63011
314-590-0029 voice
314-590-0037 fax
EMAIL CONGRESSMAN AKIN

If you're not from Missouri, also write your own senator and representative. Ask them to work on a federal law that would make online stalking, punishable by mandatory community service, mandatory counseling and/or jail time.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - CONTACT
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

SENATORS - CONTACT
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_i ... rs_cfm.cfm
~~~~~~~~~~

Ed Weeks
President and CEO
The Saint Peters Chamber of Commerce
1236 Jungermann Road, Suite C.
St. Peters, Missouri 63376
Fax 636-447-9575

Mrs. Lori Drew is a member of this above Chamber. Make sure the Chamber knows that using a business temp to harass someone, albeit a 13 year girl, using their office equipment, goes against all ethics. Ask that Lori Drew and her company's membership be suspended immediately.
~~~~~~~~~~

United States Attorney (Eastern Missouri)
Catherine Hanaway
Thomas Eagleton U.S. Courthouse
111 S. 10th Street, 20th Floor
St. Louis, MO 63102
Fax: 314.539.2309

Carrie Costantin
Assistant United States Attorney
Project Safe Child Coordinator
Cybercrime Task Force
Fax: 314-539-2309

Ask the US Attorneys to take on this case and punish the Drew family for causing this girl's death.

Hm. I try not to say things on the internet that I wouldn't say to someone's face, so I am going to try and practice a little restraint here...

that said,

What happened here was a tragedy and there's no excusing the behavior of the woman who is accused of harassing this child to death. But splashing her name all over the internet and saying things like

Mrs. Lori Drew is a member of this above Chamber. Make sure the Chamber knows that using a business temp to harass someone, albeit a 13 year girl, using their office equipment, goes against all ethics. Ask that Lori Drew and her company's membership be suspended immediately.

seems like you're rounding up your own little digital lynch mob.

What you're doing could just as easily be considered harassment, and is perhaps actionable, seeing as how there is no public record of the alleged perpetrator's name and business.

Don't drag the Electrical Forum into your little piñata-whacking party. There's been enough DRAMA in this already.

This sick little merry-go-round was spinning just fine before I got here, and I plan to put it behind me, since it's none of my business. Lori Drew has to live her life in her community, and she has to live with the shame of what she's done. Nothing I do is going to change her level of self-awareness or do anything more than harden her defensiveness and potentially inspire her to lash out in the form of litigation.

So, like I said, don't drag this forum into it.

SecondEdition wrote:If you ever needed proof of the banality of evil, here it is.

how about the ubiquity of trash culture?