That’s what I read, too. She (the ex-friend’s mother) started this as a way to teach Megan a lesson about friendship, it seems (“I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I’ve heard that you are not very nice to your friends.”). I’m not sure I’m prepared to call that cyber-stalking or harassment, 'though it is fucking shady.
It was another kid, the daughter of the single mom who allegedly told Megan’s parents what was going on, who sent the horrible message, as Josh, quoted in the OP. And I say “allegedly” not in the common newspeak-weasel way, but because the FBI has found no evidence of that post on Megan’s hard drive. Her very distraught father is reporting that as the best he can remember seeing the night his daughter hanged himself. While he has my every sympathy, absent any evidence, I don’t know what to think.
Either way, it was the neighborhood *kids *who sent the vicious harassing stuff, it sounds like. Still tragic and stupid and a great reason why parents should monitor their children’s internet use, but a lot more understandable to me than adults being that stupid and vicious to a kid.
I feel bad for everyone involved in this, even the asshats who made the fake account.
People get so comfortable behind a keyboard they feel free to act in the most antisocial ways because they don’t have to face any real consequences for it. I think something cruel spoken online is just as morally reprehensible as anything spoken to someone’s face.
What a brutal story. Especially that the parents are divorcing, and apparently have been together since high school. Tragic.
I can understand the adults’ feelings based on raising a few kids myself. I’ve thought of doing all sorts of crazy destructive shit when my kids were involved. But, I’ve never, ever, ever acted on any of those impulses.
What confuses me though, is surely she should feel *more[\i] guilty. You messed with a girl who was already disturbed lady. It would have been bad enough if you were going after someone who was solid as a rock, but this was worse!
I think this is terrible but it’s not the fault of MySpace. It just makes it easier to do this kind of thing to people. They used to use regular mail for it.
My own sister perpetrated the exact same “prank” on me 30 years ago, using notes and letters. It’s not like MySpace invented assholes.
I hope that mother and her employee get sent to a really scary prison. I’m disgusted that the newspaper didn’t publish their names.
missbunny, I think that’s a very good point that a lot of people forget when they try to castigate MySpace.
What gets me most, reading the story, is that the family that started the account, and encouraged other teens to post on the fake MySpace account, feels no accountability for what they did. And tried to remain friends with the surviving family even afterwards.
There are a lot of really nice, neat and caring people in the world.
And I really do believe that for the most part, they’re the exceptions. Most people just don’t seem to give a shit one way or the other, and for every caring, thoughtful person out there, there’s at least two assholes.
Wait, so this girl’s world is basically crumbling, and instead of sympathy, the mother feels nothing but anger towards her? That’s kind of cold if you ask me…
You’re a fat, socially awkward teenage girl suffering from clinical depression and attention deficit disorder. You take medications and go to therapy. You want a MySpace account.
Wait, what? What for?
At my high school, everyone knew the pecking order. The idea of trying to move into the caste above you was silly. Only a glutton for punishment would attempt such a thing. Apparently this girl’s dreams of worthiness were punctured on the rocky shores of reality. What’s next, trying out for cheer leading?
Still, you gotta hand it to the unnamed family and their daughter. Getting emotionally unstable people to kill themselves through online hijinx is the digital blood sport of the 21st century. Many try, most fail. But they pulled it off! That’s like winning the Super Bowl of online suicide baiting and they don’t even want their names in the papers.
As an aside, did anyone find it odd how the girl asked the parent’s permission to make a MySpace account? I can understand the parent’s POV, but Megan must’ve been quite the obedient drone. Just sign up for pete’s sake! It’s free and your parents won’t be able to find out! You’re a teenager, show some rebelliousness for crying out loud. What’s next, asking them to sign up for gmail or youporn?
Upon reading that exchange, I have to wonder why Megan’s parents didn’t find some way to keep her from being exposed to this. Prevent her from accessing MySpace? Send her to another school? Something? I know it’s nearly impossible to keep a kid from the internet, but maybe they could have found some way to limit it or mitigate it.
I’m not blaming Megan’s parents for her death or anything. It’s just really sad that here we have yet another tragic story to prove that serious bullying of teenagers should be taken seriously.
Well I’d be pretty pissed off if my daughter was working herself up into a frenzy because she kept reading stuff I told her to turn off, too. Although I would have taken the 40 seconds required to jab the Power button on the tower and force it off before leaving her unattended with that shit, if she had a history of problems with it.
“Her world is crumbling” happens to most 13 year old girls twice a week. There’s not always a way to really know that this time is real until it’s too late.
I always wonder if kids who are bullied in school are also bullied in the home environment, in some form or another (and perhaps unintentionally). Don’t some people seem to have a target painted on their foreheads? Where does that come from?
My sister is a child psychiatrist and has actually mentioned this phenomenon to me before-I forget what ACTUAL mental illnesses these girls had (though she mentioned that they had been hospitalised for suicide attempts from the resulting torture at the hands of other kids) but they have other issues that make it difficult for them to develop the coping mechanisms most people do-which is to exist on the periphery and protect their self-esteem by getting into non-commonplace things that help them develop a sense of superiority over the run of the mill people who think they’re losers. So they go ahead and do stupid things like try to become popular or try out for cheerleading etc… I’ll have to ask her the next time I talk to her.
I get that you’re being sarcastic in your entire post but this one statement leapt out at me because my sister has actually told me about his phenomenon. It’s actually not that funny in real life.
I half-seriously asked her if maybe “Made” encourages these types of pipe dreams.
Been there, done that (well, okay, just socially awkward, but anyways). The internet can be an escape from the world some people live in. They can meet new people who don’t know them as the fat, socially awkward girl or whatever it is that sets them aside in their own lives. They can ignore all the bad things in their lives, and take solice in the fact that someone, somewhere, actually cares about them and is willing to be friends with them. I didn’t do the MySpace bit, mainly because it didn’t exist yet, but I can understand why she’d want an account. It’s a networking site, a place where she can make new friends who don’t care about who she is in her school life.
And yeah, I’d be pissed too if my (non-existent) daughter continued to read something that was making her upset, because I care for her and don’t want to see her hurting any more than necessary. That she didn’t log off was her basically asking for more torture.