NEWS: Terrible Woman's Myspace Alias Leads to Teen's Suicide.

CULTURE: Terrible Woman's MySpace Alias Leads to Teen's Suicide.

It was hard enough getting my heart broken face-to-face when I was in middle school. I'm so glad that the Internet was not available to me at age 13. I can't imagine going home at night, logging on to MySpace and getting rejected by other boys from all over the country.

That's pretty sad and fucked up, right? What if I told you that "Josh" was not a teenage boy but Megan's neighbor who created a fake MySpace account? That sucks. Kids can be so cruel, right? They sure can and so can their moms. "Josh" was created by a mother/daughter team. They live down the street from the Meier family.

What a great way to gain the confidence of a depressed 13-year-old girl, create a fake identity! Eventually the vulnerable, pubescent girl will fall in love with Josh. She'll be devastated upon finding out that he doesn't exist but screw it! Let's worry about that later. On to more important things like tricking Megan into talking shit!



Megan's father found a message from "Josh" the day after the suicide.

I can't stress enough how fucked up it is that someone's mother wrote that. There's not much that can be done legally (yet).

But equally negligent in my opinion are Megan's parents. I go to therapy. Therefore I am perfect and can tell you how others should live. The Meier's made some bad parenting decisions (in my opinion).



First Bad Decision:

You must be at least 14-year-old to have a MySpace account. Megan was 13. She's too young to be emailing with strange boys. Have her parents never watched "To Catch a Predator"?



Second Bad Decision

Megan had attention deficit disorder and was medicated for clinical depression. Perhaps she needed more stimulation from actual real-life friendships.



Third Bad Decision

After Megan confided in her mother that her new friend Josh was turning on her, Mrs. Meier scolded her for using bad language on MySpace.

Fourth Bad Decision

Mom, it's not good if your depressed teen with self-esteem issues is suddenly happy because a boy gives her attention. She's probably going to take the beginning and ending of their friendship waaaay too seriously.



I wasn't there so what do I know? This struck me as curious though:

I know that trauma can tear families apart but I know that it can also bring them together. I find this divorce interesting. Were they having marital problems before? Was Megan depressed because her home life sucked? Were the Meier's hoping that the love of some boy in cyber-space would snap their daughter out of a funk?



Sure, Mrs. Meier monitored Megan's internet use and came down on her for foul language but did she ever talk to Megan about building healthy self-esteem? Did she warn her daughter of the dangers of trying to build self-worth through the attention of boys?



The only revenge that Mrs. Meier has taken against her neighbor so far involves dismantling a foosball table on their lawn.

I would encourage people like this to reconsider becoming parents until they can learn how to play fair.

Damn people are fucked up

There are no words for how sick this event is, and how tragic. How many people failed this poor girl? How tiresome though, to go through the entire article blaming primarily this poor girl's mother. Mommy-blaming is so 1950's!

I understand that their are no pending charges against the mother of the team that created Josh, and local legislators are mtg to establish laws based on this incident

But I'd like to think she would face at least some minimum charge under existing child-endangerment laws, and this is as sick as can be.

sad.

This article is weird. I want to object to it, but I don't know where to start.

i was sent this article a couple days ago by a friend. i couldn't believe the woman's behaviour, posing as a teen boy just to fukk with this grrl. what is her trip that this seemed like a good idea? doens't she have anything better to do? fukk, the only reason i'm online so much is cuz i'm at work n it's slow, surely as a mother she must have things that need to be done, like teaching her daughter better values and not involving kids down the street, which this woman did.

and the family is pressing charges over the destruction of the foosball table. they're lucky it was only destroyed and not launched through their front window... they should be counting their blessings that megan's family is behaving as well as they have. if this had been my daughter, they would be in need of police protection.


edit ~ here's the article i was sent

if you are screwed up, you shouldnt have children!!!
why are some people so selfish that think they should procreate just because they can?

Yeah this whole story is unbelievably depressing...

I don't know, though. Megan's parent being "equally negligent" seems like a bit of a stretch to me. They could've done more, sure, but this situation seems to have a pretty clear cut villainous fucking monster, and it's not the Meier's.

Megan's dad should've pummeled these people. I can't imagine a jury convicting him, under the circumstances.

You're right Mommy bashing is lame. I didn't mean to single out the woman. The parents, both mom AND dad....should have been a little more on top of their daughter's issues.

Maybe they were, at a certain point on top of her depression... you really can't blame everyone related to or close to a person who commits suicide.

Anyway, equally negligent perhaps a stretch but what I mean to point out is that your average person doesn't commit suicide from mean Myspace emails and so I wish Megan's mom had realized that her daughter's depression is not going to "clear up" because she met a cute boy on line and to remain hyper vigilant.

This is absolutely hilarious, in a really bad, Death To Smoochy kind of way.

+ 10000000

That's really an awful story.
Kids are cruel, everybody know that, but when they're motivated by their parents world's really going insane.
Hope that's an only case.

I didn't read this article, but I read about the girl's suicide yesterday.

It's a shame that there's no way to hold the crazy neighbor lady accountable.

That's true...

Man, reading about this story was like getting hit in the stomach with a hammer... So sad.

Yeah, dead thirteen-year-olds are hilarious.

+1
If it were my kid, I'd have done more than smash a foosball table and drive across their lawn. They'd have been lucky if I didn't toss a Molotov cocktail through their front window (and I'm not a violent person by any means).
There may not be a law about this sort of thing, but driving someone to suicide is the moral equivalent of murder.

The clear villians in this are the people who toyed with the 13 year old in a really disgusting way.

Not exactly sure who you think you are that could judge the parents of the girl who killed herself. You have no idea if they were good parents or not.

You're doing to the grieving parents almost exactly what the dumbass mother and her kid did to the depressed teen. Only it's okay since apparently they're adults. Get over yourself.

i read about this yesterday.

its pretty fucked up.

people can be pretty fucked up.

fuckers.

From Wikipedia:

Case solved. Maybe this is nature telling us that kids should not be on mind-altering drugs.

neither of the parents should be parents.. fucking ridiculous..

That neighbour lady is essentially the scum of the earth.

Wow....there's just no words.
I'm sickened by this.

That poor girl

I really hope that woman's conscious (if she has one) has a heavy weight to bare from here on in.

How is pointing fingers relevant at this point? What good does it make identifying the "villain" when we reall should be more concerned about the victim and other potential people who could follow her example?

You know, I thought she was pointing out several mistakes the girl's parents made, not so much judging them... I do find it a bit tacky, not so much on the part of SleepyLady for commenting on it but on the fact that so many details and analysis is being made, because it inevitably leads to judgement rather than compassion and awareness which are the two things that should be coming out of this sadness. Still, there's a difference between what those two persons did with the mind of this girl and what this article is about.

PS: I'm not jumping on your opinion or anything, I just

this is pretty devastating. not just myspace, but the internet in general has definitely changed the way kids reach out and communicate, and try to date. before myspace there was livejournal and all. hell look at this site! how many people spew obnoxious opinions to try and get attention, etc? i don't think THAT aspect is sad though. i think it's easy for people to not realize how important it is. that there are reasons this happens. going through a period of possibly the highest levels of insecurity in your entire life, major development and general confusion it makes sense to want to find other people you can communicate with and connect with emotionally. it's easy to fall for someone on that intellectual level, even if you know it makes no sense.

i don't fault the girl's parents too much. there's only so much you can monitor without going through things with a fine tooth comb. and when you're 13 you're old enough to know what to hide from parents too.

it's completely insensitive and ridiculous of the neighbors to have done this. i really don't see how they can't be punished even in some way not connected to the suicide like fraud.

Jeez... that's all kinds of fucked up...

SHOCK!! You can't trust random people you "meet" on the internet!! Film at ELEVEN!

I think Penny Arcades' Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory expresses it best.

Granted, she's ADD and a little more vulnerable, but people like Encyclopedia Dramatica just live to screw with people like this.

SHOCK!! People are MEAN!! THAT'S TERRIBLE!!!