As internet social networks become a pervasive part of life, and we all wind up with accounts on MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, OKCupid, and countless other sites so we can stay connected to fellow human beings, that very network is beginning to morph and change such that it is beginning to mirror “the real world”
Case in point, the sad story of Megan Meier, a 13 year-old girl who committed suicide after being harassed via a fake account.
The fake account was the brainchild of a girl who was a former friend of Megan’s. What pushes this story from sophmoric schoolkid bullying in to the realm of the criminal is that the girl who created the fake account did so with the full support of her mother.
From the Associated Press article:
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The Dardenne Prairie girl’s parents say she hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, minutes after she became distraught over mean messages received through the social networking site MySpace. She died the next day, and weeks later her family learned that a boy she had been communicating with online did not actually exist.
A police report said that a mother from the neighborhood and her then-18-year-old employee fabricated a profile for a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her.
“I think people are upset that a parent got involved in something so childish, and that a young girl committed suicide,” Banas said in a telephone interview.
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In fact, the best summary of the story I’ve come across is this article in the NY Times.
The story does not end there…
The original article in the St. Charles Journal did not name the mother who assisted in the hoax that pushed Megan to ultimately commit suicide. The author of the article has been reamed in the press for not naming names, and had to respond to the criticism that he was a “coward” for not revealing the identity of the perpetrators.
Their identities came out when they pressed charges against the distraught father, Ron Meier, for destroying a foosball table he was keeping in storage for them.
It is at this point the blogosphere, in the form of a lady named Sarah Wells, decided to take matters in to its own hands…
From Wired.com:
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When Wells learned that the woman had filed a police report against the dead girl’s father — who had destroyed the woman’s foosball table in anger and grief — she resolved to take matters into her own hands.
The newspaper account didn’t identify the perpetrator of the deadly hoax by name, but included enough detail to track her down through online property-tax records. With a few minutes of sleuthing, Wells identified the woman as Lori Drew, of O’Fallon, Missouri. After confirming it with someone in the O’Fallon area who she says was “in a position to know,” she posted the name to her blog.
“It was outrageous enough what she had done, but dragging (Megan’s father) into the courts, calling the police and bringing the charges against the family whose daughter had suffered a great deal because of her … for her to do that, it was like, OK, it’s coming back to you,” Wells says.
Experts say the firestorm that followed illustrates what happens when the social imperative to punish those in a community who violate social norms plays out over the internet. The impulse is human nature, say experts, and few can imagine an offense more egregious than a trusted adult preying on the emotions of a vulnerable child. Shunning wrongdoers, especially in the absence of legal redress, helps maintain order and preserve a community’s moral sense of right — think church excommunications and the Amish tradition of Meidung.
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Given the (publicly) unrepentant attitude of Lori Drew (the mother who assisted in the hoax), it is hard not to feel that “outing” her and exposing her to the full, unfettered (yet somewhat ultimately impotent) fury of the Internet, is somehow just.
