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Saturday, November 17th, 2007 02:42 am
Megan Meier
Probably most people have already seen this story in the comms, but I read it three days ago and still get violently nauseated every time I remember it, so.
Original Link
Short version: thirteen year old girl and best friend break up. Thirteen year old girl meets boy on myspace. Thirteen year old girl and boy become friends. Thirteen year old girl and boy talk. Boy starts to send unpleasant messages. Boy becomes cruel. Thirteen year old girl with a history of known depression kills herself. Boy turns out to be an imaginary construct of the parents of the broken-up-with best friend.
Parents, adults that knew this girl and how to fuck with her.
Quoting from many someone's--what the hell is wrong with people?
More Links
You know. The oldest way society has to deal with people we can't kill or throw in jail is shunning. Jesus, if there was ever a textbook case for it, this would be it.
I would do some kind of meta on this, but honestly, it would be crappy because I can't see past the sheer horror of an adult--not just a parent, but any adult--doing this to a child. Doing this to a child they know. Doing this to a child they know and was friends with their daughter. I can't even get past the mental wtf of incomprehension of vendetta on a thirteen year old girl.
Mostly, it comes from a weird sense of--crazy, I know--proportional response. And this pesky set of ethics that come along with being human and not being a sociopath. There's not even a *whisper* of some kind of half-assed excuse--though seriously, I'm waiting for the Drews clever explanation.
Let's pick our top five choices for Why We Stalked a Depressed Thirteen Year Old Girl LOL:
a.) WE DIDN'T MEAN TO MAKE HER SUICIDE, IT WAS FOR THE LULZ.
b.) SHE WAS TOTALLY MEAN TO OUR DAUGHTER AND THIS IS HOW WE ADULTS HANDLE STUFF LIKE THIS.
c.) THE NANNY DID IT.
d.) BUT SHE WAS A BAD PERSON! BEING ALL THIRTEEN AND HEY, LOOK I PULLED UP SOME AWESOME DIRT ON THIS LITTLE GIRL THAT TOTALLY PROVES WE WERE JUSTIFIED! LET THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BEGIN!
e.) WE ARE TOTAL SOCIOPATHS BE SAD FOR US.
Anyone think they'll go for e? I'm thinking combo a/d.
ETA: More links to further information on Megan Meier via google news.
Original Link
A Real Person, a Real Death
From the article:
Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.
Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.
"I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet."
Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.
Later that day, Ron opened his daughter's MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw - one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.
It was from Josh and, according to Ron's best recollection, it said, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."
Short version: thirteen year old girl and best friend break up. Thirteen year old girl meets boy on myspace. Thirteen year old girl and boy become friends. Thirteen year old girl and boy talk. Boy starts to send unpleasant messages. Boy becomes cruel. Thirteen year old girl with a history of known depression kills herself. Boy turns out to be an imaginary construct of the parents of the broken-up-with best friend.
Parents, adults that knew this girl and how to fuck with her.
Quoting from many someone's--what the hell is wrong with people?
More Links
1. Mom: Web Hoax Led Girl to Kill Herself
2. Net hoax turns deadly, turns town against neighbors
From the article:
Tina and Ron Meier, who have separated since Megan's death, said they hope there will be a prosecution. In the meantime, Tina Meier said, they will push for a new law "to get justice for Megan."
In the absence of legal action, frustration is building online.
"Make them accountable. Anonymity should be awarded to victims, not to people who torment the helpless," wrote one reader in a posting on the Suburban Journals Web site.
"This family that perpetrated this prank is just EVIL ... Please move," read another.
"To the parents who did this to Megan, you're monsters. You are not welcome in our community. Leave now," read another.
3. Story of Girls' Suicide Takes New Life Online
4. Blog Readers Out Anonymous Adults that Newspaper Refused to Identify
From the article:
It turns out that Evans was a pseudonym created by two adults -- one of whom knew the Meier family very well. The St. Charles Journal decided to protect the privacy of the two adults and declined to name them in the story. That didn't sit well with incensed readers, who tracked down what they say is the identity of one of the adults and posted it online. Now the paper is being criticized for giving the adults anonymity.
You know. The oldest way society has to deal with people we can't kill or throw in jail is shunning. Jesus, if there was ever a textbook case for it, this would be it.
I would do some kind of meta on this, but honestly, it would be crappy because I can't see past the sheer horror of an adult--not just a parent, but any adult--doing this to a child. Doing this to a child they know. Doing this to a child they know and was friends with their daughter. I can't even get past the mental wtf of incomprehension of vendetta on a thirteen year old girl.
Mostly, it comes from a weird sense of--crazy, I know--proportional response. And this pesky set of ethics that come along with being human and not being a sociopath. There's not even a *whisper* of some kind of half-assed excuse--though seriously, I'm waiting for the Drews clever explanation.
Let's pick our top five choices for Why We Stalked a Depressed Thirteen Year Old Girl LOL:
a.) WE DIDN'T MEAN TO MAKE HER SUICIDE, IT WAS FOR THE LULZ.
b.) SHE WAS TOTALLY MEAN TO OUR DAUGHTER AND THIS IS HOW WE ADULTS HANDLE STUFF LIKE THIS.
c.) THE NANNY DID IT.
d.) BUT SHE WAS A BAD PERSON! BEING ALL THIRTEEN AND HEY, LOOK I PULLED UP SOME AWESOME DIRT ON THIS LITTLE GIRL THAT TOTALLY PROVES WE WERE JUSTIFIED! LET THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BEGIN!
e.) WE ARE TOTAL SOCIOPATHS BE SAD FOR US.
Anyone think they'll go for e? I'm thinking combo a/d.
ETA: More links to further information on Megan Meier via google news.
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no subject
From:I'm just incoherent about the parents' role in this, and boggling that adults would believe the appropriate response to 'my daughter's best friend has broken up with her' is to torture and humiliate the other child. I just - I'm reeling.
But it rips my fucking heart out to think of that poor little overweight ugly duckling of a kid. I mean, what, the world isn't cruel enough? It's not hard enough dealing with hormones and bullying and feeling shit about yourself, everyone comparing your appearance to that of the skinny icons of teen perfection? It's not enough to cope with the casual viciousness of high school? You're supposed to brace yourself for the possibility that adults you know and trust ARE COLDLY SETTING OUT TO DECEIVE YOU, BREAK YOUR FUCKING HEART AND HUMILIATE YOU?
Jesus. I don't know about you, but I had a fairly horrendous time being a teenager. I mean, yes, sure I was happy and friendly and passionately engaged with books and my studies, but I was also wretched about my appearance and my gaucheness and filled with self-loathing and awkwardness and all that painful cliched crap. Being a teen is pretty fucking agonising all on its own - but then this? It blows my MIND. I want to beat them with fucking bricks. They fail at life.
If this isn't child abuse, what the hell is it?
How is it possible that their daughter is still in their care?
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