I heard about this a few days ago over at Dan Savage's blog. As the people in the comments said there, adults gleefully joining in the bullying of children and teens has always been happening, and it's always been disgusting. Reminds me of what we hear about British boarding schools.

It's a very important point that what happens online is real.

Some people go through the hell of being lied about and attacked and think "Dude that sucked, I'm never going to be that big of an ass" and some people think "Dude that sucked... And now it's my turn."

What makes me sick about this story is that it was the parents who did this. Grown adults. They wanted to check up on what Megan was saying about their daughter, thinking that Megan was talking smack about her on the internet. (It's my understanding that it wasn't a question of keeping tabs on their own daughter; it was that Megan and the other girl had had a falling-out, and they were angry at Megan.)

I think the only laws that could possibly be applicable don't need to be new internet-specific laws. How about harassment?

Never commit suicide if you can do something else (e.g. move to Lubbock and get a job in a hardware store).

Megan was thirteen. Thirteen year olds don't have a lot of autonomy. They don't see a lot of options. Especially not thirteen year olds with depression. At thirteen, you're pretty much trapped in your social circle and in your school, and there aren't many ways out.

The only reason I'm here typing this is that, once I laid out all the sleeping pills on my dresser when I was thirteen, I found that I was too afraid to start swallowing them. If, at that moment, someone I thought was my friend had told me that the world would be a better place without me -- well, I might have overcome that fear.

I have a lot of sympathy for the people who want to see these parents punished for something. It would probably make a bad law, yes. I don't know if you can really send someone to jail for simply being lower than dirt, for treating another human being cruelly even if you don't physically harm them. But I want them to lose sleep. I want them to know that they hurt someone who was vulnerable, and I want them to feel guilty for it.

I guess this is why we don't, or shouldn't, codify revenge into law.

There's this saying we used to have in the Fleet: "Payback is a motherfucker."

Others here may talk about karma, or the law of three-fold return.

Believe me, I really, really know about depression. And I do know, down deep, how attractive suicide can look. I'm just laying out, as a general principle, don't do it. A lot of people you don't even know, including the EMTs, will have a lousy day because of it.

For me, suicide calls are some of the hardest.

I think it's murder, the same crime Nancy Grace committed against Melinda Duckett.

I just spent a couple of days untangling a legion of sockpuppets who were harassing a couple of my friends. (sordid story here, if you care) I can only conclude that there are some people who really think that anything they do is reasonable and proportionate, or possibly, that since everything online isn't 'real', it couldn't possibly be unreasonable or disproportionate.

Caroline,

Thank you for not swallowing the pills. I was nineteen when I found the reality of cutting my wrists to be substantially less comforting than the abstract idea. No amount of catastrophic depression has brought me back to that point, not after the beautiful sunrise that next day.

One of the many reasons that adults should not get too involved in the lives of their children (or their chidren's friends) is that adults can rarely remember the way that teenaged life feels. Not just the ways that a teen is effectively unable to change her life completely*, but also the essential loneliness of the age.

I wonder if the mother should be evaluated to see if she is fit to have care of her own daughter? There is certainly a case to make that the reckless endagerment of the emotional health (and life) of another teenaged girl is a sign that she is not.

I must also say that I admire and respect the parents of the dead girl, who seem much more interested in prevention than revenge in the courts. The relatively trivial damage to property is, in my book, completely understandable and well restrained. I am sorry their marriage did not survive.

-----
* My confessor at college called it "white suicide"

#6: Reminds me of what we hear about British boarding schools.

From someone who spent a year as a day student at a British boarding school: American schools are far more violent.

I agree with Earl Cooley. I want those two parents in prison for, at least, willfully negligent manslaughter. I want anyone who had access to the account's logs - and didn't say anything about it - to be imprisoned for conspiracy to commit.

Failing that, at the least, I want their children permanently taken away from them - forbidden to ever know anything about them, who they grow up to be, who they marry, etc. - and I want those parents under an injunction to never interact with anyone under the age of twenty, ever again. Because they clearly are incapable of interacting with minors in a responsible fashion.

Jon Meltzer @7:

Huh?

In the UK they could be convicted under the harrassment and stalking laws, which were passed in part to try and tackle this kind of thing. They have mostly proved quite successful (in that unlike some other laws, they don't seem to have led to malicious prosecution, and they do seem to have headed off some rather nasty situations).

As Caroline said, the fact that the parents were accomplices makes the case particularly vile.

I wish I could say that, when I was a child, I never did anything as cruel as what was done to poor Megan. But I'm sorry to say that I did. When I was a child and pre-teen, I participated in the bullying of mentally disabled and weaker kids. It is the nature of children to be cruel. But adults are supposed to know better.

I saw this sickening story a day or so ago. It hurts to think about somebody that callous. Would that karma worked like in the movies and comic books (and that it spared me somehow for my sins).

I've tried to be careful to the point of paranoia online, though probably not careful enough. Just the thought of those unexploded copies of my apazines out there is enough to keep me watching my step.

I want to ask the parents who created "Josh" -- "What were you THINKING?" What a wretched, awful event. The fact that it involved an online persona is essentially trivial; some variation of the event could easily have been designed without involving MySpace. Social manipulation, bullying, teasing, teenage nastiness have all been around a long time. But the moral cluelessness, and the narcissism of the parents who created the Josh persona is stunning. Where did this mother and her friends get the idea that it is okay to play around with other people's heads?

One wonders what sort of damage these people have done to their own kids.

I want to ask the parents who created "Josh" -- "What were you THINKING?" What a wretched, awful event. The fact that it involved an online persona is essentially trivial; some variation of the event could easily have been designed without involving MySpace. Social manipulation, bullying, teasing, teenage nastiness have all been around a long time. But the moral cluelessness, and the narcissism of the parents who created the Josh persona is stunning. Where did this mother and her friends get the idea that it is okay to play around with other people's heads?

One wonders what sort of damage these people have done to their own kids.

Is there no law against inciting someone to commit a crime? Add to the betrayal of trust that comes with creating a false persona with the specific intention of messing with someone's -- a minor's -- head. I realize there is no real expectation of trust on the interwebs, any more than there is one of privacy, but these people are in so many ways worse than the most genocidal monsters I can recall. They knew their victim. They encouraged others to torment her. They knew that this wasn't something they could admit, let alone be proud of.

I'm glad they have been outed. And I hope three-fold payback is not too long in coming.

The fact that they called the cops about the busted foosball table is pretty rich: were they that caught up in their own morality that they felt property crime outweighed killing that girl?

The sad thing is, elementary school teachers see this kind of parental escalation of girl fights all the time, though not generally on this scale. Usually it goes something like this:

Megan and Brittany have a tiff at school over some perceived slight. Megan gets all her friends to gang up on Brittany. Brittany is in tears.

Brittany goes home and tells her mother all about it. The story may or may not be embellished, but Brittany is, of course, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.

In the meantime, Megan goes home and tells her mother the story. In this version, she is innocent of any wrongdoing, and Brittany is an evil witch who deserves what she got.

Brittany's mother calls Megan's mother and demands that Megan apologize to Brittany. Megan's mother is incensed. Why should her innocent daughter apologize to that awful child who started it all? The phone conversation ends in a screaming match.

Both mothers, unable to let go of their own fifth-grade girl fight mentality, encourage their daughters to snub one another, and coach them on mean things to do to each other. They both call the school and insist that their daughters be removed from the classroom they are in because, "I don't want my daughter exposed to THAT child!"

The outcome varies. Sometimes everyone makes up. Sometimes the girls make up, and their mothers carry on the battle. Sometimes the battle continues for years. It's all very sad. You just want to smack them all and yell, "Grow up!"

Something I personally find incredible is that the parents behind the hoax had it in them to file property destruction charges after the event. Not that I'd have perpetrated such a hoax, but if I had and something like this had happened, I'd felt the general impulse to hide in a cave for the rest of my life.

Appalling.

@11: I don't think it's in the nature of children to be cruel so much as to test limits, which often manifests itself the same way. There's a lot more to it -- the dominant culture, how much supervision they have, how the participants were raised -- that can affect the outcome. It doesn't have to be Lord of the Flies. There are cases of children helping their peers and even smaller kids, as I see everyday. But the culture drives that.

I've been in schools where the pecking order outweighs compassion and empathy. They bring that with them, either from home or their earlier educational experience.

"Intent to deceive" seems to be a key element of what the scum did. This wasn't some other young teen adopting a non-attributable identity to avoid potential stalkers. It wasn't toleplaying a character in game-space. This was a deliberate deception of a specific individual.

How is this different from the 40-year-old perv? Under-age sex is bad, but it isn't the same as being dead.

abi @#9: Sorry for the confusion & typo. I should have typed #1 (Madeline F.) as my referred-to comment, not #6. Ouch.

At the very least, it sounds like a wrongful death lawsuit would seem to be in order.

FWIW, Poynter has a discussion about the local paper's refusal to identify the offenders by name.

This is yet another story that makes me so glad that the internet didn't exist when I was a teenager. I'm not sure I could have survived it any better than poor Megan did. I so want to see those parents pay. One can only hope their daughter is more mature than they are.

I wonder if MySpace has grounds to file legal actions against the people who created the malicious/false profile?

#20 How is this different from the 40-year-old perv?

It isn't.

Had Megan or her mother asked me, when Josh first showed up, I'd have said, "It's probably a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear," and I'd have been darned close to right.

The forty-year-old pervs who get caught are the ones who send photos of naked eight-year-olds to their new cyber-chums, or who discover when they go down to the bus station to meet twelve-year-old Cindy that "Cindy" is thirty, has five-o'clock shadow, and is holding an arrest warrant. The rest of 'em? Scot free.

You know, I can't even get to the property damage complaint.

They asked the Meiers to store their foosball table?

Geez, it's not enough that they actively covered up that they triggered the death of a disturbed kid, they asked her parents for favors?

It strikes me that stalking laws, sexual harassment laws, and perhaps child abuse laws apply. If "josh's" messages had a sexual content, well, perhaps we've found a use for child-porn laws after all. It seems to me appropriate for the prosecutor to subpoena the relevant logs and archives and depose everyone involved, as fast as possible. I suspect examination of the logs would show some very nasty stuff; it's possible that the harassers deliberated incited the suicide and are therefore accessories.

Eeeesh....this brings back memories about being teased unmercifully in school. I escaped in sixth grade with a school transfer. If the internet had existed then, and people had spread the rumours to my new school, I'm not sure how I would have survived.

I don't blame the internet though, not in this case. I blame the screwed up adults who should have known better.

...

Writerious @ 16: That's not just "girl" fights. I've seen that escalation in other situations too. I hope you weren't trying to attach that to gender.

Never commit suicide if you can do something else (e.g. move to Lubbock and get a job in a hardware store).

The thing that makes being a kid or teen so tough, IMHO, is the knowledge that you cannot do this. It's also one of the things that makes being a teen so different from being an adult. Your world is your world, and in most cases you're stuck with it.

If you're lucky you understand that you can wait until you can get out--that that day will come. But time passes slow when you're 13, and finding the resources to do that sort of waiting--when an adult could and maybe would just take off under such circumstances--is tough.

The fact that most teens make it anyway tells me that teens are way, way stronger than most adults remember.

You know, I wish I had a dime for every time in my childhood that my father said to me, "When are you going to learn to think before you do something like that?" In addition to (eventually) teaching me to consider the possible consequences of my actions before acting, he left me with the sense that one of the big differences between children and adults is that adults do think before they do something, do take into account what the outcome might be, and even consider how that might impact on other people.

It's scary to think that there are people out there, who have to be close to my own age, who not only don't think about the consequences of their actions, but who genuinely don't care.

And it's even scarier to realize that they're raising kids themselves.

I read this story early last week, and have been unable to get over being horrified.

One aspect that I find worth noting is that Megan Meier fat, always a factor to look for in cases of bullying and harassment of girls and women. ("She was heavy and for years had tried to lose weight. ... She had shed 20 pounds, getting down to 175. She was 5 foot 5½ inches tall.")

It's sad. When I grew up in the 90s, the internet was a better place. Mainly because "mainstream" adults weren't around.

Nowadays, incidents like these will be only be used to justify new attacks on online anonymity and privacy. Sad.

I'd think the mother could be charged under Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) at least, even with the causation problems. It certainly meets the outrage threshold. Or isn't it recognized in that state?

I'm speechless. What a disgusting thing to do to somebody.

Abi @ 6... adults can rarely remember the way that teenaged life feels

...or even what it's like to be a kid. That's probably why my 6-year-old nephew likes me so much. As for what happened when you were 19, I'm glad you didn't go thru with it. The world would be a sadder place without you around.

Throughout America there should be gigantic billboards that say: "Instead of killing yourself, you should try using drugs."

Your doctor may not prescribe the one that will work for you first, but eventually there will likely be some relief.

This is so *(#@%@%ed up. The thing that boggles my mind is that it was PARENTS who did this. Can you imagine being their daughter, the friend who was dumped? "Oh, it's okay, honey, don't cry that Megan doesn't want to be your friend any more. We tormented her until she killed herself."

Jennifer @24,

I know what you mean, but this sort of thing was going on when I was in school, too. It's just that it was kids pretending to be the bullied kid's friend instead of parents.

It is my understanding that the Drew daughter was a willing participant, as was at least one of the Drew employees.

As well as the daughter of the lady across the street, the one who eventually told the Meiers what happened.

All of these folks knew each other. The one-word description is "sordid."

So, how do we defend ourselves and our kids from the anonymous assholes who are trying to rent space in our heads?

(This is part of why I, as a moderator, have no problem with finding and posting the IP addresses of sockpuppets, and why Miss Teresa's certificate gives all moderators everywhere permission to ban "vexatious persons.")

What strikes me as almost odd is that I don't know of sockpuppets driving anyone to suicide in fandom. My general rule for the internet is, "it happens in fandom & techgeekery first", and we've certainly seen the early adopters of sockpuppetry, flaming, cyber-stalking, cyber-impersonation, cyber-seduction, and all kinds of emotional scamming, including quite a few faked suicides and other faked deaths.

I'm actually surprised that fandom didn't get here first, too -- I wonder if it's a sign of how much more stable & connected non-hospitalized adults are, compared to 13-y.o.s?

I wish I didn't stand corrected. Geeze.

So, how do we defend ourselves and our kids from the anonymous assholes who are trying to rent space in our heads?

This is why I finally had to go cold turkey on Conservapedia and Rationalwiki. One of the CP sysops isn't just a right-wing loon, he's a manipulative game player who's also active, under several different names, in the anti-CP activities. As far as I can tell, his only goal anywhere is to cause drama and pain, and I couldn't figure out how to convince others that he wasn't on anyone's side but his own.

There's known tech: "Who vouches for you?"

That is, "Who do I know face-to-face and trust who knows you face-to-face and trusts you?"

How do we defend ourselves?

Dude, I don't know. I just wish I could pull kids in Megan's place aside and tell them, "Anyone who talks to you that way is a f***ing piece of s***."

Seriously, kids. Rule of thumb. Anyone being deliberately cruel to you is by definition not someone worthy of an opinion of you.

Dr Science #42: there was a certain serial joiner of British fandoms (plural, but she had a bigger-than-average notch for SF fandom in her belt), who died a few years ago, and who I think came close. Her MO was to join some subtype of fandom (SF fandom; paganism; BDSM; others, I believe), acquire a coterie of newbies, manufacture persecutors, and leave in high dudgeon, taking her coterie with her -- and either she fucked them up, or she selected them for predisposition to fucked-up-ness, I'm not sure which, but they were spectacularly fucked-up.

I suspect, although I cannot prove, that sock puppetry of some kind was going on in there.

I'm going to shut up now. (Unless anyone who was involved can (a) recognize the person and (b) wants to correct me on any misapprehensions.)

The internet also helps kids. I've seen forums where youngsters in bad situations got to talking about things, usually because the forum's ostensible subject was related to some aspect of the bad situation. These weren't especially homey or brilliant forums, but the people in them were quick to figure out that the kids were in a bad place, and offer them help, comfort, and practical suggestions.

(It's a funny thing. Sometimes it's easier to talk about what's happening if the ostensible subject is something else entirely.)

I'm disturbed by several aspects of this story -- for instance, that so many people were in on the creation of "Josh," but not one of them stopped to think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

It's creepy to think of so much time and effort being focused on one thirteen-year-old girl. If the perps had been more experienced sockpuppet-wranglers, they could have had an entire cast of characters headtripping the kid.

You wouldn't have to be a thirteen-year-old girl with self-esteem problems to be taken in by that kind of targeted microtheater. If three different people you know from online venues all sent you e-mail giving you essentially the same feedback, could you ignore it? Would you first stop to wonder whether they're really three different people?

(Come to think of it, I saw that tried just a couple of weeks ago. The person they targeted is sane and confident, and the personae used were brand-new nonce accounts, but it was still a nasty attack.)

I've got no problem with online pseudonymity. I don't like anonymity, though I acknowledge that sometimes it's appropriate. (I nevertheless think anonymity is 75% of Wikipedia's problems.) What does trouble me is the use of anonymity for malicious purposes like stalking, harassment, or fraud. We're all vulnerable. Sometimes I think the only thing that saves us is that most con artists are neither imaginative nor enterprising.

IMO, only a small fraction of the netizenry abuses anonymity. Kathryn Cramer's line is that the number of people misbehaving on the internet is much smaller than everyone assumes. I think she's right.

Still, it would be nice to have a carefully and parsimoniously written law prohibiting the use of false identities for harassment, fraud, or other malicious purposes. And if we ever get one, I have a list.

Onward.

"What the neighbors thought they were doing" is an interesting question. Inventing a sockpuppet in hopes of finding out what the target is saying about her ex-friend is the kind of thing people do when they think they're defending themselves. It's contemptible and crazy to aim it at such a vulnerable target; but it's still a defensive strategy.

I think the family that ran the hoax was displacing their own issues on the kid who died -- identifying her as their daughter's problem, instead of whatever the real problems were. It's like parents who blame their child's suicide on the satanic influence of rock music, or dysfunctional families that have a designated family member who's supposedly to blame for all their problems.

I also suspect they're the kind of people who think in terms of retribution and malicious mischief. Why should they be trying to monitor what the kid's saying on the internet, unless they're assuming it's injurious to them? And why should they assume that, unless they think it's what anyone would do?

I don't think there's a just punishment for what they did. But if they don't think that what they did was wrong, I don't see how they have much cause to complain if their real names are attached to the story, and stay attached to it for the rest of their lives.

There is just so much awfulness in this story, but for some reason, this quote jumps out at me. Regarding the Anonymous Mother:

(She) felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.’

So she felt a little guilty, but not "as guilty" after she heard some gossip at the funeral? Somehow hearing some piece of information that lead her to believe Megan was troubled before absolves her of guilt in this situation? The whole thought of justifying this behavior to yourself in this way is ... well, like the rest of this situation, it's sickening.

Whether or not this group of people has any criminal action taken against them, they do deserve to be outed to their community. It boggles my mind that you can, as an adult, engage in this kind of bullying of a child, and there are no consequences, legal or social, to be had. (Short of a broken foosball table and a lawn-job.)

Jim @45
That is, "Who do I know face-to-face and trust who knows you face-to-face and trusts you?"

Interesting question. For pretty much everyone on this website, my answer is* "no one". I can name one person that I know Teresa has met‡, but that's all. And yet here we are.

But this is adulthood. Childhood is different. When I was 14, I met a boy from another school at Star Trek movies, and he asked me out. My mother insisted on him coming to the house and sitting down for a face to face interview before I could go to the local pizza parlour with him.†

-----
* Or was, till I met some people when I was in California at Easter
‡ She mentioned the name once on the blog
† OK, OK, he turned out to be weird in many ways, but none of them were harmful beyond the usual slings and arrows of adolescent dating

Caroline 2:The only reason I'm here typing this is that, once I laid out all the sleeping pills on my dresser when I was thirteen, I found that I was too afraid to start swallowing them. If, at that moment, someone I thought was my friend had told me that the world would be a better place without me -- well, I might have overcome that fear.

Me too. Not the sleeping pills, so much, but I contemplated various methods.

Scott 8: Hear, hear.

Jennifer 24: I feel certain that I would NOT have survived to adulthood had the internet existed when I was a child.

julia 27: My understanding is that they were storing the foosball table prior to this event, even prior to the falling-out between the daughters.

Emmelisa 31: It's scary to think that there are people out there, who have to be close to my own age, who not only don't think about the consequences of their actions, but who genuinely don't care.

I used to know someone on MySpace who not only participated in such behavior, but who wrote lengthy essays advocating it. I was the target of several of his organized campaigns of cyberbullying, and it was hard—for me, with my strong support network and adult coping skills! I'm certain, but cannot prove, that he caused more than one suicide.

This scumbag had his profile deleted over and over and over. He just saved the profile code and put it back up in minutes. MySpace doesn't track IP addresses or anything.

I hesitate to call him an adult. Let's just say he could drink legally in the US, though cocaine was his drug of choice.

He's the only person on my list of "when they die, the world will be, ipso facto, a better place" who isn't a public figure. Though I think I may add Lori Drew.

Teresa 48: The internet also helps kids. I've seen forums where youngsters in bad situations got to talking about things, usually because the forum's ostensible subject was related to some aspect of the bad situation. These weren't especially homey or brilliant forums, but the people in them were quick to figure out that the kids were in a bad place, and offer them help, comfort, and practical suggestions.

I can personally vouch for the fact that this is true. I have helped kids in forums like that. But...you know the fucktard I was talking about above? He would come into (say) a support group for overweight people, pick one, and tell hir that s/he was always going to be fat, and that she should probably kill hirself, because it would only get worse as s/he grew older.

He also targeted groups that were generally supportive of one another, and have his minions go in and attack people at their most vulnerable, making it impossible for anyone to share anything that was bothering them.

He seemed to get around blocks and bans pretty effectively.

Fortunately for the world, he's a cokehead, so we can hope he ODs and chokes on his own vomit (a fitting end for a person (using the word loosely) like that).

I don't think there's a just punishment for what they did.

I don't know, I kinda liked Scott's solution at #8.

Interesting question. For pretty much everyone on this website, my answer is* "no one".

In that case, abi, you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.

There is just so much awfulness in this story, but for some reason, this quote jumps out at me. Regarding the Anonymous Mother:

(She) felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.’

So she felt a little guilty, but not "as guilty" after she heard some gossip at the funeral? Somehow hearing some piece of information that lead her to believe Megan was troubled before absolves her of guilt in this situation? The whole thought of justifying this behavior to yourself in this way is ... well, like the rest of this situation, it's sickening.

Whether or not this group of people has any criminal action taken against them, they do deserve to be outed to their community. It boggles my mind that you can, as an adult, engage in this kind of bullying of a child, and there are no consequences, legal or social, to be had. (Short of a broken foosball table and a lawn-job.)

There is just so much awfulness in this story, but for some reason, this quote jumps out at me. Regarding the Anonymous Mother:

(She) felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.’

So she felt a little guilty, but not "as guilty" after she heard some gossip at the funeral? Somehow hearing some piece of information that lead her to believe Megan was troubled before absolves her of guilt in this situation? The whole thought of justifying this behavior to yourself in this way is ... well, like the rest of this situation, it's sickening.

Whether or not this group of people has any criminal action taken against them, they do deserve to be outed to their community. It boggles my mind that you can, as an adult, engage in this kind of bullying of a child, and there are no consequences, legal or social, to be had. (Short of a broken foosball table and a lawn-job.)

TNH @48:
I think the family that ran the hoax was displacing their own issues on the kid who died -- identifying her as their daughter's problem, instead of whatever the real problems were.

I saw it a little differently. I think they, for some reason, tied their own images of success to their daughter's social status. This started as a little monitoring project: how are we doing?

Then, if there was a little rivalry between the girls, they may very well have entered into it. They played, and they played to win.

I hardly need state what this says about their view that people are there to be used, or their own self-worth as adults.

Gah. Not sure how my comment got posted three times, but I do apologize.

The Girl-Across-the-Street's Story:

The single mother, for this story, requested that her name not be used. She said her daughter, who had carpooled with the family that was involved in creating the phony MySpace account, had the password to the Josh Evans account and had sent one message - the one Megan received (and later retrieved off the hard drive) the night before she took her life.

"She had been encouraged to join in the joke," the single mother said.

The single mother said her daughter feels the guilt of not saying something sooner and for writing that message. Her daughter didn't speak out sooner because she'd known the other family for years and thought that what they were doing must be OK because, after all, they were trusted adults.

On the night the ambulance came for Megan, the single mother said, before it left the Meiers' house her daughter received a call. It was the woman behind the creation of the Josh Evans account. She had called to tell the girl that something had happened to Megan and advised the girl not to mention the MySpace account.

Jess 49: It boggles my mind that you can, as an adult, engage in this kind of bullying of a child, and there are no consequences, legal or social, to be had.

Well, their should be social consequences, and you can help. The "Anonymous Mother"'s name is Lori Drew. Spread it around.

And she and her husband Curt live at:

269 Waterford Crystal Drive
Dardenne Prairie, MO 63368
(636) 272-2670

Drew Advantage
2977 Highway K Ste 200, O Fallon, MO 63368-7862
Phone: (636) 272-2670

Jim @52
you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.

Really? Well, get dressed, the lot of you*.

-----
* assuming that you're not mostly sockpuppets, in which case, both of you.

I don't think there's a just punishment for what they did. But if they don't think that what they did was wrong, I don't see how they have much cause to complain if their real names are attached to the story, and stay attached to it for the rest of their lives.

The parents don't, no. The question is, even if their daughter was somehow involved in it, is it a good idea to tar her with that brush. She's 13, and has spectacularly bad influences at home. That doesn't mean she's doomed to be a sociopath or even a garden-variety self-centered nasty person. And I don't think it's possible to associate this story with them and not with her unless (a) their surname is very common and (b) her parents lose custody and she goes to live with people in another city. In which case, changing her surname to theirs might be prudent, assuming it's not her father's brother or some other relative who shares the surname, or so common that it's the same by chance. [I am here reminded of Robert Meeropol, though this girl is guilty of more than he ever was.]

James D. Macdonald, 52,
In that case, abi, you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.
I'm only 35.

And here's a blog comment listing the businesses that use Lori Drew's ad agency.

Vicki 60: Their surname is Drew. Not that common, unfortunately. I agree that the girl shouldn't be tarred with the brush, since she's the same age as Megan and therefore in my view recoverable.

Having her parents lose custody, have her change her name? All good ideas. I'd add, with Scott@8, that they should be forbidden to have any contact with her ever again.

James 52: I wish I were only 40 and that I were wearing underwear!

Teresa@48: I think the family that ran the hoax was displacing their own issues on the kid who died -- identifying her as their daughter's problem, instead of whatever the real problems were. It's like parents who blame their child's suicide on the satanic influence of rock music,

abi@55: I think they, for some reason, tied their own images of success to their daughter's social status. This started as a little monitoring projec

I think these are actually the flip side of the same thing. Focusing on external success rather than any internal self worth and well being of their daughter. And turning failures into blame games.

These are the sort of parents would would doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Xopher @ 51 -- do you know your MySpace bully's real name? I'm sure there are lots, but the CP one I mentioned also has a MySpace history...

James @ 52 -- I don't know-in-person anybody here either, and maybe you all are 40-year-old pervs-in-underwear, but if so it hardly matters, does it? Sexual issues don't come up here often, and even if they did most perversions wouldn't shock me and I don't get the feeling they'd shock or disturb most others here. As to age and garments, that seems even less material. (For the record, I'm 35 and am wearing jeans at the moment, but have no way of proving that).

These are the sort of parents who would doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Dang it.

Todd @ 66: Whereas enough of the people here have spent time with me in person that I doubt they'd be surprised if I said I was typing this naked, or expect there was any sexual content to that statement. (I'm a casual nudist, but happen to be wearing jeans at the instant.)

Discussions of garments live happily in the salwar kameez thread.

Get your kicks on Todd 66: No, I don't. I know what city he lives in, but that's all. He hasn't bothered me or my friends in a while, and I'm disinclined to stir the pot...though I've thought of doing things like hiring a private detective to collect evidence of his cocaine usage/possession (hopefully over the "intent to distribute" amount) and turn it over to the police.

But I've decided I have to let it go, unfortunately. Though if the evidence fell in my lap I'd certainly use it. Short of hiring a detective, it would take someone with better cyber-fu than I have to track the bastard down.

Greg London, 67,

These are the sort of parents who would doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Sparkle Motion? Could you explain that? (Google says it's the name of a band in Donnie Darko, but having not seen the movie, I don't know why this is obviously funny.)

And for the record, I am wearing courderoy pants. And everyone's a pervert, just some don't admit it.

Abi @45: I believe you have a passing familiarity with Edinburgh? If you're ever passing through, drop me a line and I'll come out to prove that I am, in fact, a 43 year old perv who reads ML in his underwear, and not a sock puppet. (I also read ML in my outerwear, for instance right now, but that's not the point.)

I also know PNH and TNH personally, from real face-to-face meetings over the years, so I can lay at rest your suspicion that they too are forty something underwear perv socket puppet wielders.

The truth is much weirder.

I'm wearing socks and an Akubra hat.

midori, Sparkle Motion wasn't a band, it was a dance team of young girls. The most selfish, stage-mothery swine of a parent in Donnie Darko says that ("I'm beginning to doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!") to Donnie's mother.

Spoiler: Guvf erfhygf va gur qrngu bs Qbaavr'f zbgure naq fvfgre. Jvgubhg Qbaavr'f zbgure gb gnxr Fcnexyr Zbgvba ba gur cynar, gurl pbhyqa'g unir tbar.

If I recall correctly.

Yeah, I don't know if it's possible to write a "Don't be a jerk" law that won't backfire in all sorts of horrific, but unintended ways. However, it's too bad that the people who goaded Megan to suicide are still anonymous. This is the reason why we invented shame.

The bit I'm missing is: if they were using her to monitor the gossip on their daughters, why did they have "Josh" break it off with her? It reads like they led her on (complete with fake photo) then dropped her in a really painful way. Is it possible to do this unintentionally in the process of collecting gossip? I can think of more credible (if also more slimy) motives.

abi @50: We haven't met. But I did see, up close and personal, your exquisite work for the Mike Ford auction at the last Boskone.

Tshirt, sarong.

I wonder if people really are sending the Drews hatemail? I'm still dwelling on the fuss they made over their foosball table and lawn. It's like they have no sense of proportion at all.

Jim (57):

The single mother, for this story, requested that her name not be used. She said her daughter, who had carpooled with the family that was involved in creating the phony MySpace account, had the password to the Josh Evans account and had sent one message - the one Megan received (and later retrieved off the hard drive) the night before she took her life.

"She had been encouraged to join in the joke," the single mother said.

Would you ever trust anyone again if it happened to you?

On the night the ambulance came for Megan, the single mother said, before it left the Meiers' house her daughter received a call. It was the woman behind the creation of the Josh Evans account. She had called to tell the girl that something had happened to Megan and advised the girl not to mention the MySpace account.

#74 However, it's too bad that the people who goaded Megan to suicide are still anonymous.

Not that anonymous. Their names are known, and spattered from one end of the Internet to the other. Just not very much here in my original post: You have to click one of the links.

I don't know, of my direct knowledge, that they are the right people.

No, not gonna make any funny comment Xopher 69 -- since you said "city" rather than "town", I'm going to assume they're different folks and leave it at that, rather than put in any google fodder and stir either your pot or mine.

Charlie 71 -- dangit, I had the chance to meet you, or at least see you, a few weeks ago; you did a reading at my place of employment, but I was sick that day. For now, for all I know all those books with your name on them could have been ghostwritten by Lanaia Lee.

#51--Xopher--you might google "cocaine cardiac damage" and see what you get. It's a horrible side effect, but some people deserve what they get.
Also, I, too, wish I was 40 again. My knees hurt less then.

It's hard enough being a teen-ager without adults working to make it worse.

Ema, I'm sure people are sending the Drews hatemail, both for the normal human reasons, and because there are always people out there who are happy to have an excuse to send someone hatemail.

midori@70: Sparkle Motion? Could you explain that?

Oh, sorry. It's a line from Donny Darko. Most of the movie is about Donny, but there's this third level removed thing going on between Donny's mom and another parent at school. Both Donny's mom and this other mother have daughters in this school "show" called "Sparkle Motion". The other mom is in charge of the show, and her daughter happens to have the lead part, if I recall correctly. Anyway, they get up and dance to a song. That's the big it. And the other mom is talking to Donny's mom about taking Sparkle Motion to New York or something, and Donny's mom can't go or something, and the other mom gets all upset and says "Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion".

And it's just like a spot on representation of that parent everyone knows that gets too wrapped up in their kid's external successes and then starts blaming other people when things don't go according to their master plan.

Plus, it's got a lot of the high school kid teen angst stuff going on, which just sort of plugs into this whole thread.

"Donny Darko" is a really good cult movie (Cult as in not mainstream, not cult as in koolaid.) I recommend it.

Nor is any allowance made for the fact that certain statements and certain actions might stem from the numbness that automatically swamps you when you realize (dimly, through a glass darkly) that you've done something irredeemable, irremediable, irretrievable, unforgivable. Saying you don't feel quite so bad because she tried to kill herself once before is heartless and cruel and stupid and an utterly human (and ultimately doomed) thing to do, to try and keep yourself from inkling what it is you've done. —Perhaps I am naïve to a fault, but the benefit of the doubt should always be weighed, even here, and bullying is bullying, no matter how much moral righteousness you have on your side. The arc of the universe bends towards justice, not vengeance, and certainly not lynch mobs.

The mother-down-the-street would have been able to see what "Josh" had posted, just by logging in as "him."

Two 13-year-old girls knew the account name and password. There's no reason in the world to think that the last day didn't include half-a-dozen boys from her old school, egging each other on into greater and greater awfulness.

James @52 - Thanks to the boiler being broken here, not only am I fully dressed, I'm wearing my dressing gown over the top of my clothes. Oh and I'm 32. And a dog.

I'll definitely second Teresa and Xopher on the internet being able to do good for kids (and adults) in bad places, as I've seen it happen (in person and online). But when you're in a bad place one person can say one wrong thing to push you to the edge, and never even know (and I've seen that too).

Jim @ #3, my sincerest sympathies. There was a suicide recently among my acquaintance, under circumstances that were bound to be severely unpleasant for the EMTs.

Katherine @ #46, good rule.

Re vouching: pat greene knows me, and I know one person who's met Teresa and Patrick. But 'by their fruits ye shall know them'--I trust all the regulars here, whoever you 'really' are, because you all have a solid record of civility and decent behavior. There's impatience with stupidity, occasionally short tempers, but not meanness.

Please understand that I mean no one any offence, but does anyone else feel rather uncomfortable about the widespread posting of the Drews' address, phone number and business contacts? I'm as revolted as everyone else by what they did, but doesn't this smack of vigilantism? Or incitement to vigilantism, anyway?

Actually, the larger part of me says they deserve everything they get. But part of me finds it rather disturbing.

Hey! I'm forty-eight.

Delurking re: the removal of the other daughter, and any child abuse connections.

I just wanted to point out the Missouri statutes (http://www.childwelfare.gov/) regarding abuse and neglect. Missouri does have a statute for 'emotional abuse', but it's not clearly defined, and one would need to define the abuser as a person responsible for the child.

As for the removal of the other daughter: clearly that woman and those involved--incredibly crapTAStic parenting, and utter failure at human decency. But removing their daughter at this point only creates more problems. Consequences? Yes. And consequences that show this child that her parents made BIG mistakes--but removing her penalizes HER, not them.

Also--unless the local DSS has more info than has been published, there's no imminent risk of harm to enable them to remove.

I think any legal consequences will have to occur from another angle--harassment, or a redefinition of child endangerment.

IMVHO. (relurks)

Perhaps I am naïve to a fault, but the benefit of the doubt should always be weighed, even here, and bullying is bullying, no matter how much moral righteousness you have on your side. The arc of the universe bends towards justice, not vengeance, and certainly not lynch mobs.

Thank you for saying this - It's more elegant than any of my abandoned attempts to say the same thing. Now that everyone knows names, addresses and phone numbers, I fear it's only a matter of time before some vigilante/mob with pitchforks goes for vengeance. And there is another teenage daughter to consider - however worthless her mother is, the child has had rotten role-models. She doesn't deserve what many people seem to think her mother has got coming.

Yeah, Dave, I hear ya.

I'm reasonably sure that everyone in the perp's social-and-business circle knows about this by now. That comes with being top-of-the-hour on CNN Headline News. And they all know the real names of everyone involved.

Apparently everyone in the neighborhood knew for months; they were just waiting to see if the cops would do anything.

For the rest of us, a letter from yet another anonymous jerk isn't going to help.

Part of me thinks "If you can't haul the weight, don't pick up the freight." Another part thinks "You've heard about three-fold return?"

They haven't harmed me, so I can't forgive them.

I debated writing this post. Would it do any good, or is this just slowing down to stare at a wreck on the Information Superhighway?

One thing that might be interesting would be to revisit the earlier thread, Blow, blow, thou wanker wind and read the trolls' and sockpuppets' comments again with this thread in mind.

PNM @ 87

Hey, kid, off the lawn!

(Birthday was Friday. I didn't tell the folks at work. While they are out at lunch and I was minding our workarea, I went down to Starbucks-in-the-lobby and got a pumpkin empanada.)

Dave, I'm not entirely comfortable with it either, and the more detail is added the less comfortable I am.

On the other hand, I came close to finding them myself, simply because I was so very annoyed at the newspaper for declining to name them. I don't think I'd have posted their names if I had, but I'm not sure.

The lack of truly local news is maybe the problem; the people in O'Fallon MO may have a right and need to know what kind of people the ____s are, without everyone on the internet knowing their phone number.

Oh, and by the way, the Meiers have requested that no retribution be taken against the perps.

Breaking my guideline of not saying anything sympathetic online because, well, the internet never gets it across the way real life does- this is very sad, and tragic, and just begging for some serious talking to the various "adults" involved.

AS for sock puppets and mind games, I can vouch that Charlie Stross is real, I've met him a few times.
Relatedly, I was also overjoyed to find an internet forum on Alchemy had been started by some expert who lives in Glasgow. I thought it would be interesting to see what I could learn and how many nutters and cranks there would be. Maybe 10 days after I joined the host shut it down complaining about people being nasty and silly and childish to each other. There were definitely some games being played by posters, and I have run into games players in other forums as well. As a result I have realised I have a deep desire to introduce sock puppets and their masters to certain 16th century devices in a book by Vannoccio Biringuchio. However being a nice law abiding person, I won't.

Abi @59, Jim @52 et. al.

..and I, for my part, am *extremely* impressed at the quality of recruit in online law enforcement these days.

Abi, while I have no (and no desire for) photos, I confess to gleefully and wantonly sharing your poems with.. well, anyone who stands still near a browser.

Perhaps you'd best name the bus station handiest to your precinct house. I'll go quietly.

Isn't it about time that public schools started having "Internet Health" classes? Since more and more interactions are going to be online, wouldn't it make sense for a few classes on how to deal with Internet bullying, harrasment, etc.?

Laws broken: hmm, that's difficult. Harassment? Incitement to suicide?

Rules broken: It's against the TOS of every ISP and online content host I've ever seen to post stuff to harass other users.

From Yahoo (I can't access MySpace from the computer I'm on):

You agree to not use the Service to:
1. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
2. harm minors in any way;

Seems that the ISP would have a nice civil case, if they could figure out how much damages to sue for. (Dragging their name through the press as a "teen suicide website" should be worth a hefty dollar.)

Oblique crimes: Custodial interference, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, potentially hate crimes if race, gender or sexual orientation were relevant.

P J... Joyeux anniversaire!

Ms. Drew used the same same exact mode of operation as a child predator enacts in the seduction of a child.

Drew posed as a member of the opposite sex and spent weeks and weeks luring this girl into a relationship.

But yet it went further. The adult Drew formed a heated relationship with the 13 year old girl. She worked hard to gain the girl's confidence. She exploited the girl intimately by posing as a boyfriend. She enacted the same methods child predators use to groom their victims.

Then the woman emotionally raped this child. She took her supposed love and sexual stimulation and crushed the girl emotionally with them -all while knowing the girl was unstable.

This adult and her friends calculated the best way to achieve maximum mental distress and then carried out their plan. Even enticed others to join in the destruction of this child.

There are manslaughter convictions on the books that won based on looser ties to a person's death than this. Child predators go to jail for following this scenerio.

Ms. Drew is the clear definition of a child predator. She used the internet to stalk, entice and lure a 13 year old girl into a romantic, sexually sparked, full fledged relationship. She then used that power to inflict Great Mental Harm to this child... A physical rape and mental rape are both as equally destructive to a 13 year old child. Drew knew this (or should have known this) and still proceeded unabated.

This is so far beyond "Harassment", this is full fledged exploitation of a child.

Is the local police of this county out of their minds to think that NO charge will stick?

Is the local District Attorneys office serious if they don't think this girl's rights have been thoroughly trampled by a grown woman?

Does the DA really expect people to roll over while this woman goes without so much as even a single charge?

Does even a speeding ticket register a more serious offense than this?

_____________

Last of all, the very worst. Ms. Drew remains defiant and indignant. Claims the girl was already on the edge mentally.

Ms. Drew denies wrong doing and insists she bears no guilt in her actions.

She justifies her actions as being "protective of her daughter"... Please tell me how she was protecting someone by mind raping a 13 year old child?

To add insult to incredible injury.... The Drews file charges against the family that lost this child.

The Drews, in a final act of ultimate hate, seek to hurt this family who lost a beloved child. She seeks to harm them financially....

Just as MS. Drew attacked an innocent little girl, Ms. Drew now attacks a grief stricken family - again seeking to harm someone's very life.

This woman is evil incarnate

This woman has county officials protecting her...

The same county officials who would put ANY other child exploiter in jail.

It would appear we have a few corrupt city officials. Officials who need to be fired

Perhaps the county detectives on the case need some scrutiny. Did they really investigate this crime thoroughly? Apparently not.

There had better be some charges...and some heads better role from this complete mismanagement of law enforcement.

James@90 - Apparently everyone in the neighborhood knew for months; they were just waiting to see if the cops would do anything.

Then I hope everyone in the neighbourhood who knew about it for months and just sat on their hands waiting for someone else to do something about it realises how complicit they all are. This story just gets worse the more I hear about it. That the Meiers have requested that no retribution be taken does them great credit; I'm not sure I would have the character to do that.

I kept thinking about the earlier thread while I went through the sources you cited. And also the MSScribe business. I still find the whole business of trolls and sockpuppets utterly baffling.

I'm glad you posted this. Although, in the circumstances, `glad' is entirely the wrong word. The chances are I would never have heard about it otherwise.

Todd@92 - I suspect I would have looked for them, too, and for the same reasons.

I'm still stalling on the idea that things were more civilized back in Usenet days when parents weren't involved.

Dan@99: This woman has county officials protecting her...

Well, that would be interesting.

Paul @19: I don't think it's in the nature of children to be cruel so much as to test limits, which often manifests itself the same way.

That is a very useful way of looking at it. Thank you.

Jim @3: Believe me, I really, really know about depression. And I do know, down deep, how attractive suicide can look. I'm just laying out, as a general principle, don't do it. A lot of people you don't even know, including the EMTs, will have a lousy day because of it.

A friend who killed herself tried very very hard to spare her friends grief by planning out the when and how ... which not only of course was impossible, but she wound up being found after the fact by some hikers instead.

I still think of those hikers sometimes, though I don't even know their names, and of how that day without warning became one of the worst days of their life.

Teresa @76:

And then, when the kid finally discovered that it had all been a joke, she'd also find out how many people in her world had known about it, and had participated in it without telling her. Would you ever trust anyone again if it happened to you?

I had something like that happen early last year, when one person took it upon themselves to castigate me in their online journal after my ex broke things off with me and I started dating again a whopping TWO months after the breakup. I woke up one day to find some horrific slanders directed my way online, with people piling on, and not one single person from the group of people asked my side of the story. Turned out that half of them thought they were talking about somebody else entirely, but wow, was that so not comforting after the fact. For months, I was unable to trust almost anybody associated with that group of people, even those who hadn't participated in the online slagging. I was emotionally fried, and I felt isolated, unable to decide who to trust. I can attest that if she had lived and found out about the hoax, she would still be dealing with huge emotional fallout for months and months. I was already in therapy at the time, and my therapist had a fun couple of weeks. At one point, I even asked if she had the authority to check me into a mental ward for a weekend or two, I was that desperate to escape the reality of the situation. And that was me, a grown adult, with a job and money and the ability to escape. Again, I can't imagine how a kid can cope with that level of betrayal, when it really does feel like the world is out to get you.

Xopher (51):

I used to know someone on MySpace who not only participated in such behavior, but who wrote lengthy essays advocating it. I was the target of several of his organized campaigns of cyberbullying, and it was hard—for me, with my strong support network and adult coping skills! I'm certain, but cannot prove, that he caused more than one suicide.

This scumbag had his profile deleted over and over and over. He just saved the profile code and put it back up in minutes. MySpace doesn't track IP addresses or anything.

...[Y]ou know the fucktard I was talking about above? He would come into (say) a support group for overweight people, pick one, and tell hir that s/he was always going to be fat, and that she should probably kill hirself, because it would only get worse as s/he grew older.

He also targeted groups that were generally supportive of one another, and have his minions go in and attack people at their most vulnerable, making it impossible for anyone to share anything that was bothering them.

He seemed to get around blocks and bans pretty effectively.

Xopher (58): When that was posted, I was forced to stop and think about whether it was a proper thing to have on Making Light. I didn't mind it, not one bit; but I had to do stop and sort out the implications.

You know what? I think it's fine. We know this couple enlisted their daughter, one of their part-time employees, and the kid across the street to help them with the hoax. That's five people total, two of whom owed them nothing and thus couldn't be relied on to keep it quiet. And since I can't imagine that everyone they told about the hoax reacted by saying "Swell! Let me help," I think the total number of people they let in on the story must have been considerably higher.

If they weren't concerned about keeping their role in the hoax a secret, I don't see why I should be concerned about it either.

#100 Then I hope everyone in the neighbourhood who knew about it for months and just sat on their hands waiting for someone else to do something about it realises how complicit they all are.

No, Dave -- not while it was going on. After the event. After the Dad drove his truck across his neighbor's lawn, for example, everyone would know. Letting the police build their case is a decent strategy. It was only after it became clear that there would be no official action that the story hit the press, and here's the DA suddenly saying that he hadn't read the file....

Abi #6: I remember what it was like to be a depressed teenager with a perfectionist father who could never be satisfied no matter what I did (I got top marks in geography, he said that I should have got top marks in mathematics; I won national awards for poetry, he said I should have written short stories or a novel; I edited the school magazine, he said I should have been head boy). Suicide was often in my thoughts. I'm surprised I've made it to 51.

One quick look tells me Missouri has a stalker law; they could use that, couldn't they?

The lack of any ability to recognize what they did wrong and take responsibility for it is terrifying. The Meiers, on the other hand, seem like amazing people. I am not sure I could be as --I don't want to say forgiving, and rational sounds too cold-- about it all as they are. They honor their daughter's memory in ways those other folk couldn't even approximate in a century of Sundays.

BTW, I am a fifty-one year old librarian in a law school in South Florida. I'm easy to find and I use my own nickname. I don't think I know anyone here personally, but I used to hang around sf way back in the seventies, so there might have been some "brushes". I don't do it for the anonimity. Amazingly enough to many with whom I interact only online, I am extremely shy in person. It's fun being able to know people online: Charles, whose work I admire; Abi, with whom I almost-share a profession and a passion for paper :-); Serge, whose sense of humor delights me; Fragano, with whom I share a Caribbean upbringing... I could go on. To see that wonderful ability to make friends turned against a vulnerable child is... I don't think I have words strong enough.

TNH: And there in a nutshell is why the world needs moderators
Of course, when the moderators are part of the problem, the community is in for a world of hurt. The bully I mentioned above was a moderator on the Hot-or-Not community forums, and (I'm told) is the primary reason those forums no longer exist; he's also one of the reasons CP is so unpleasant, and he's been persistently angling to become a sysop on the anti-CP forums as well. He's also claimed (although I don't believe it) to be a MySpace administrator.

Dave @86: I'm as revolted as everyone else by what they did, but doesn't this smack of vigilantism?

That's why I said (way up @49), that their community should be made aware of their involvement. Which is not to say that every average person with internet access ought to be mailing/emailing/calling them on the phone to berate them or exact some kind of "punishment".

If their community knows, or has known for a while (since Megan's death?), and this still hasn't been a problem for Ms. Drew & whoever else may have been involved, then I would hope that there is some sort of justice somewhere. I can't understand why someone who behaves in this way has been allowed by their community to just ... keep on, business as usual.

Piscusfiche @ #104:

Exactly the same thing happened and is happening to me. And what possible recourse can you have? vigorously defend yourself? distribute your side of the story? I finally decided that all I could possibly do was cut my losses, and grit my teeth, but it's terribly painful, anyway.

Back on topic:
I think it's all the injustice in this story that makes it so tempting to join in a pile on of revenge - the abject cruelty of these people, and their seeming obliviousness to what their actions have really and truly actually caused. I hope it's true, what someone else said, that they are likely reeling with horror, and incapable of really thinking about what they have done (but when they are such monsters, I at least partly doubt that this is true).

James@106 - Dear god, I'm glad I don't live there.

PNH #87: Infant!

This woman is evil incarnate

Dan at #99, I find this phraseology extremely disturbing. This woman -- Lori Drew -- is a flawed and irresponsible human being who has a terrible act to atone for. But saying that she is "evil incarnate" takes a lot of other people off the hook, and frankly, it's too easy. I don't want to psychoanalyze her, justify her behavior, or meet her, but I don't think it's helpful or true to say she's evil. The scary thing is, she isn't. She's human. Like you and me.

The lady's not for atoning.

IMO, OC.

I was about to say I'd been reminded of the Kitty Genovese case by this, but then I read this at #106:

"No, Dave -- not while it was going on."

One can only hope that that community practices serious ostracism against the creators of "Josh."

Regarding the publishing of addresses and whatnot.

The families live in Dardenne Prairie, MO. Population seven thousand.

There ain't nothing anyone could do to keep that kind of information private. Not in a town that small.

I am not surprised to hear that there are no laws covering crimes over the internet in most states.
I had a few good friends who worked cybercrimes in the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area --- and for the most part their hands were tied and they had to walk in a vast grey area to get anything done to child pornography trackers and sociopaths trying to pick up teenagers in chat rooms.

What I am surprised about is that in this day and age...having had the internet around some 27 years (UDP/TCP 1980, 1981, RFC 791/793). Tulsa for example only established a cybercrimes unit in 2000. Does the city's population have any idea it exists? I doubt it.

The lion's share of cyber related crimes still falls within FBI jurisdiction. There simply aren't enough FBI field agents equiped with the tools necessary to deal with crimes such as these.

Short of donning the black hat and wading into the darkside of hacking there is not much a person can do outside of blocking IPs, using blocking and spam filter tools etc. It's not worth the attention you'll be getting from the FBI. I had a lot of friends who were part of the Memphis Underground movement (back when BBSs were cool) who were bringing vigilante cyber-justice to some of the big businesses --- the FBI didn't think it was so funny.

Lastly Jim @ 3 There's this saying we used to have in the Fleet: "Payback is a motherfucker."

Word.

Teresa 105: I think the meatspace world needs moderators...and people like the fucktard from MySpace should be banned, permanently, from interaction in any meatspace forum.

And I actually hesitated at first, too. But I figured you'd look at it and kill it if you didn't want it here. And I would not object; as we've tried to explain to trolls and dorks on numerous occasions, this is your space, and I am a guest.

And in this day where making a joke in the wrong place, or using the wrong WiFi link, can be punished with jail time, we're expected to believe that the prosecutors can't think of a suitable charge? Child endangerment, for starters!

I hope the perps get ostracized.

Ema @111: I'm sorry to hear that you're having to go through that. You may indeed have to cut your losses, although I think it's worth it just to try and reconcile at least once, for your peace of mind later. I tried to see if I could talk to the original poster and see what their deal was...offered to meet up for coffee, got an FU email in response, sadly. As for dealing with things, I'm afraid I'm a non-confrontational person, so after that I just kinda went hermity, and avoided everybody involved. I'd like to say that time heals all wounds, but well, it's almost two years later, and occasionally, I scrape this one open and it smarts a little. (I really wish I were over it. I'm in another city, in another state--you'd think that would help.)

A brief perusal of other posts out there on the subject finds DanCnKC@99 to be little more than a reflexive drive-by of the memes already calcifying into a Nancy Grace-worthy storyline.

Christ Almighty, the company one ends up kept with.

When I was 13 a friend of mine hanged himself because his girlfriend dumped him online. All he got was a tut-tut editorial in the local paper.

Piscusfiche #121:
Alas, the troublemaker is my ex, and father of two of my children, and without turning this into a soap opera version of my life: he denies everything; got his version out to all our friends and family (including my mother! - who didn't believe him for a second) very quickly, when I thought we were bravely moving on, and casting nought but a wistful sigh towards the past; and I have no contact with any of the people I knew then, including the one woman I considered a friend, but whose desire to 'be friends' with everyone saw her stand by mutely, while my character was assassinated. It's a little over two years now, and I am still hurt and angry.

Janet #123:
Why are we so callous to the suffering of other people, no matter how 'trivial' it seems to us? It's a terrible shame, isn't it? Your poor friend, and your poor 13 yr old self.

It was a meatspace incident for me, but I got very badly burned by trusting someone I shouldn't've over twelve years ago, someone who was inside my defenses and, when the time was right, hurt me badly.

Just this week, I think I'm getting two things: A little bit of indirect payback, and an easier mind.

I wish Megan Meier had that opportunity.

It seems to me that Lori Drew is in violation of several parts of section 8 of the MySpace TOS.

Content/Activity Prohibited. The following is a partial list of the kind of Content that is illegal or prohibited to post on or through the MySpace Services. MySpace.com reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in MySpace.com's sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending communication from the MySpace Services and terminating the Membership of such violators. Prohibited Content includes, but is not limited to Content that, in the sole discretion of MySpace.com:

...
2. harasses or advocates harassment of another person;
...
5. solicits personal information from anyone under 18;
...
7. promotes information that you know is false or misleading or promotes illegal activities or conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous;
...

The following is a partial list of the kind of activity that is illegal or prohibited on the MySpace Website and through your use of the MySpace Services. MySpace.com reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in MySpace.com's sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, reporting you to law enforcement authorities. Prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to:

1. criminal or tortious activity, including child pornography, fraud, trafficking in obscene material, drug dealing, gambling, harassment, stalking, ...
8. using the account, username, or password of another Member at any time or disclosing your password to any third party or permitting any third party to access your account;
10. using any information obtained from the MySpace Services in order to harass, abuse, or harm another person;
...

OTOH the MySpace TOS also precludes messaging anyone with any URL or email address or telephone number. Since they allow linking in messages, I don't see that that makes any sense at all, really.

Fragano @ 107... I'm surprised I've made it to 51.

I'm happy that you made it.

There's a disconcerting tendency these days to assume that anything "text" shouldn't/wouldn't affect you IRL. Or rather, this is the excuse people who like to harass/troll/attack like to make. "Oh, it's just a joke, don't take it so seriously,". It's _very_ different from how it used to be in the late `90s - I don't know what that says about the trend in certain internet communities. I'm saddened to read this - but not really shocked. I spend a lot of my time on IRC and I guess you see a lot when you do. I also don't understand why/how the parents of one girl could create a fake id just to mess with the head of another girl - that is something I cannot wrap my head around.

I don't get how this woman can feel less guilty because she tormented an already hurting girl with previous depression problems. If, in some twisted bout of insanity, I were to try to torment someone like this, I would feel more guilty, not less if my victim turned out to be especially vulnerable. About the way it's more reprehensible, not less, to torment a disabled person physically.

Really, her comment is the moral equivalent of "I don't feel as guilty since I found out the person I pushed off the cliff already had balance problems."

Xopher, that sure seems clear to me, and if you can track it down, so can the lawyers at MySpace. I should they would want to take some action, if only to make it clear that this sort of behavior is totally against their policy.

I am 46 years old, and am fully dressed, in T-Shirt, long pants, underwear, socks, and shoes.

I'm wearing the underwear on my head. Is that odd?

The poynter.org article referenced earlier in this thread causes me to shake my head sadly at the bloggers who think the most important part of this story is about the Death of the Mainstream Media.

Also, I think they don't understand what the word "cowardly" means. Cowardice is excessive fearfulness for your own well-being. The newspapers who did not print the names of the parents weren't protecting themselves, they were protecting a 13-year-old girl. The 13-year-old being protected may be a terrible bully -- but she's still a 13-year-old girl.

Teresa (#105): "You know what? I think it's fine. We know this couple enlisted their daughter, one of their part-time employees, and the kid across the street to help them with the hoax. That's five people total, two of whom owed them nothing and thus couldn't be relied on to keep it quiet. And since I can't imagine that everyone they told about the hoax reacted by saying "Swell! Let me help," I think the total number of people they let in on the story must have been considerably higher."

And not one of those people thought to tip off the parents of the girl's victim.

I can understand not wanting to go to the cops. I can understand not wanting to raise a public stink. But how about taking Mr. and Mrs. Meier and saying, listen, there's something you need to know?

Lizzy, MySpace is notorious for not taking action on something until someone really twists their ear. And when someone does, they usually just delete the offending profile, thus obliterating any evidence. I bet they've already done that.

*sigh*.

How soon before the Ripped From the Headlines episode of Law and Order?

One thing I remember vividly was that in sixth grade almost all of my classmates were going to two specific schools, while I was attending a different one. They all said, "What a shame," and out loud I agreed with them... while inside, I was rejoicing. They never harassed me (beyond normal child-callous comments) or treated me especially badly, yet I was at the bottom of the pecking order and felt it. I knew, even in sixth grade, that I needed a complete break to get out of there, and in junior high, and later, high school, I made my transition from somewhat weird (but nice) outsider to flamboyantly weird (but still nice) person that wasn't in any clique— but had no problem talking with anyone.

In some ways, I think it's important for that kind of complete change to be possible at a young age. Nobody at my junior high knew me from grade school and that was very liberating, and hammered home the point that circumstances can be changed. A lot of teenagers might feel less trapped if they had such an experience in their past.

On the topic of internet stalkers, I was shepherded in my first online excursions by someone who had a reason for online paranoia. These were the days of Usenet and BBSes, and he'd already managed to acquire death threats from people who didn't like his views. (The topics were usually things such as SF fandom and television shows; never underestimate the power of an obsession.) One person had gone so far as to track him down and do nasty things to his front door, so his paranoia was not unjustified.

Because of that, I learned the ins and outs of online anonymity at the tender age of nine. By twelve, further cautioned in the ways of online etiquette (i.e. 'don't be a jerk'), I managed to fool my parents and others with a false identity into thinking I was an adult. (I did have the complicity of the sysops, whom I had met.) All it took was thinking before I wrote and treating others with courtesy— plus a vocabulary gleaned from voracious reading.

Anyway, when this gentleman died, I was broke and far from home and couldn't return for the funeral. There were several Usenet thread devoted to his passing, and these threads had some truly awful trolls. I had a bad couple of days before I discovered the "block user" function. The man was dead and they used it as an excuse to repeat the hatred they'd apparently displayed while he was alive, turned up a notch.

Civility is civility, whether online or in person. Trolls earned that name for a reason— they're not up to the level of "human" in the online world. Leading on a vulnerable teenager qualifies as subhuman behavior in my book. Call them trolls.

Fragano @ #107: thank you for surviving to adulthood so I could have the privilege of 'meeting' you. May you enjoy many more decades of being out from under that cloud of disapproval!

Stefan 133: Not until after the writers' strike is over.

James @ 90 -

I think you may have done a good thing. I had already warned my daughters about the 40 year old perverts, but now they have been warned that a group of people they know could get together and create a persona to take them for a ride.

Knowing that this sort of thing can happen, so that a healthy skepticism is awakened can just what is needed.

I'm with Jess A., all three times. The events up to and including Megan's suicide, and such further consequences as her family's breakup, would have been horrible even if the instigators had shown a due and proper abject contrition upon realizing (too late) what they had caused.

But the utter lack of contrition actually expressed, on the theme of "Megan had been suicidal before, so it's okay that this time we pushed her to go all the way"....

Yeah, that's after the fact; yeah, it doesn't change the calamity that preceded it; yeah, on the scale of things maybe it's even a lesser detail; but it does manage to make the whole wretched story just that much worse.

Kip @ 81, Lizzy L @ 144, a nod of the head to your saying this is "human". A hit-and-run driver is "human", too. But so is a driver who stops after the hit, renders aid, calls an ambulance, and otherwise takes responsibility. Equally "human", but oh the difference.

This also is "human", and (in Catholic theology) "divine":

No contrition? No apology? No forgiveness.

Charlie Stross @ 47: Alas, the MO you describe fits a couple of people I might have run across. No point in going further unless it's to help write a "Field Guide to People You Want to Avoid on the Internet".

Xopher @ 51: The guy (you sure it was a male?) sounds truly horrible. MySpace doesn't track IP addresses or anything. -- only underlines my feeling that MySpace is a fundamentally sloppy, ill-thought-out operation.

Steve @ 96: Yes, there are "Internet Health" classes already, at least in my suburban NJ district. And the district's firewall blocks all the social networking sites, even from the teachers' computers.

But they could realize use a book, called THE TROLL WHISPERER or some such, written by an experience internet moderator who who really knows what she's talking about. I wonder if we know s/o/m/e/o/n/e n/a/m/e/d/ T/e/r/e/s/a/ anyone like that?*g*

Lila @85, thank you.

I can personally vouch for Jennifer Pelland. I've had the pleasure of seeing her in person several times.

Also, I am fully clothed, thank you. ;)

*really use* a book, not "realize use" a book. That's what I get from typing without finger gloves on a weekend when the furnace died.

Um, Pyre, no offense intended, but I wouldn't lecture Lizzy L on Catholic theology if I were you. Or rather, if you do, I'm making popcorn.

Particularly since, in terms of that system, you're wrong--both on the attributes of the divine, and on who gets to decide who's forgiven and who isn't. (Hint: Not you.)

Doctor Science @ 141: Keep up with the fashions; use oven mitts instead.

Regarding "internet health" classes...if I recall correctly, Cory Doctorow's S.O. Alice is just now starting a job with the UK's Channel Four in which she gets to spend a sizable budget on endeavors designed to teach young people how to sensibly navigate the Internet and tell good information from bad.

Pyre, as James said upthread, since I'm not the one injured, I'm not the one who needs to forgive. What the Meier family does with their pain and injury is their business; what God does is Hers. The people who perpetrated this horror, assuming they are not all struck dead by lightning tonight, have -- in theory at least -- the option to understand what they have done, to repent, and to amend their lives. Again, not my business. However, I'm not anxious for outraged total strangers to take some kind of ugly amateur vengeance upon them in Megan's name.

Regarding "internet health" classes...if I recall correctly, Cory Doctorow's S.O. Alice is just now starting a job with the UK's Channel Four in which she gets to spend a sizable budget on endeavors designed to teach young people how to sensibly navigate the Internet and tell good information from bad.

Great idea. I completely applaud such initiatives.

While not completely on subject, that reminds me of one of my favourite ads ever, The House Hippo, which explains to kids how they shouldn't believe everything they see on television. I imagine soon we'll start seeing its ilk regarding internet safety and information you get from the interwebs.

Patrick @ 142: With the highest regard for you and your opinion, may I suggest that you or anyone else interested take it up with the Catholic Encyclopedia?

Contrition, section "Necessity of Contrition" (excerpt): Catholic writers have always taught the necessity of contrition for the forgiveness of sin, and they have insisted that such necessity arises (a) from the very nature of repentance as well as (b) from the positive command of God. (a) 'They point out that the sentence of Christ in Luke, xiii, 5, is final: "Except you do penance", etc., and from the Fathers they cite passages such as the following from Cyprian, "De Lapsis", no. 32: "Do penance in full, give proof of the sorrow that comes from a grieving and lamenting soul ... they who do away with repentance for sin, close the door to satisfaction."

Well, I'm 52 and wearing a sweat suit and slippers because I didn't go out today. When I first started posting here, I knew or had been introduced to in real life almost all the posters, so I used Marilee instead of mjlayman, which is what I usually use online.

Posting the family's name here or on other online sources? Well, that stops you being kept "safe" and requires you to make your own decision about how you will act. I think that's fair.

When the WashPost is keeping someone's name secret because it could identify their minor children, they say so. Something like "We are not using the defendent's name in this article because it could identify their children."

I've been hearing about this for several days, including on the NBC News (click on When grownups become cyberbullies for the video) tonight where an "internet security" specialist said there was a national anti-harassment law that might be used against the Drews. I think if nothing else, everybody in that town should shun them.

I should add that my school district has programs on Internet safety for parents, but perhaps they need to make them *mandatory*.

Todd 78: Email me and I'll give you his MySpace url (which I have easily available because he's on my Block list).

I can vouch for about a dozen or more people on Making Light. Whether they'd want me as a vouchee is another matter entirely.

And, I am naked under my clothes, for what that's worth.

Pyre at 147, I am not suggesting that contrition is not necessary; I am saying that neither you nor I nor anyone else can know the ways God chooses to speak to the human heart. Jesus forgave the men who drove the nails into his wrists, presumably because he knew that the Father's mercy and light could and would, perhaps already had, reached them. We should not assume God cannot also touch these people and guide them to some sense of what they did.

Jezebel has a post about the second worst mother named Lori Drew, and her somewhat ironic quest to ban a book called When I Was A Loser: True Stories Of Barely Surviving High School.

Lori objects to the book on grounds of its "profanity," naturally. So if only to uncover this weird and awesome coincidence and the existence of this weird and awesome-sounding book, we're really happy we posted her name. Because, like, maybe if Megan Meier had read a book like the one the Rhode Island Lori Drew is banning, she wouldn't have hung herself over the Missouri Lori Drew's sick scheme.

Lizzy L @ 152: Yes, people may in future have contrition, even if they lack it now. I don't think that was disputed by anyone.

You or I may in future be elected to high political office, too. Doesn't mean we get to start enacting laws right now. Doesn't mean we ever will.

Like I said, Pyre, popcorn.

As an aside, I do have to wonder what it is that motivates people online to resort to the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia as a bar-room argument-clincher on issues of the (often hypothesized, and definitely fabled) Official Catholic Line. This isn't quite like using the 1920 Platform of the Democratic Party as a guide to what modern Democrats think, but it's a lot more like it than a lot of people in the Church's power structure would like to admit. The plain truth is that the 1911 encyclopedia is in the public domain, so it's online; the subsequent several decades of nuanced, often-agonized argument aren't. Duh.

That said, Lizzy's #152 sounds a hell of a lot more like something the Newman Center priests of my childhood would have said than the gloating "No contrition? No apology? No forgiveness" of Pyre's #138. Yuck.

Lizzy L @ 145:

However, I'm not anxious for outraged total strangers to take some kind of ugly amateur vengeance upon them in Megan's name.

Isn't it Official Catholic Doctrine that you have to count every picket in every fence you pass on your way to work, iron your socks, and wash your hands 100 times each day?

Well, that's odd, because someone told me those things were OCD, and...what?

Oh.

Never mind.

Pyre @154: Sorry but this response does not seem to address what Lizzy L said. What do you mean?

And when judging others, do remember that the only person who got personal assurances from Jesus himself of his entry into Paradise was a convicted, unrepentant thief.

Stefan @ 133... Xopher @ 136... If ever this becomes the plot for a cop show, I hope it winds up on Cold Case.The reason I've been following it since the beginning is that it's the one where, no matter how long it takes, those who had their dreams crushed eventually get some Justice. They get some Peace. Tonight's episode about a tomboy in 1963 was a great example. Seeing her get in trouble in high school and her being the one who gets called in by the authorities instead of those who caused the trouble very much resonated for me.

Pyre, I agree with you that the absence of remorse shown by the people who tormented Megan is hideous. One would certainly prefer it otherwise.

I've said what I need to say on the topic of contrition.

Patrick @ 155:   "gloating"?   "of Pyre's #138"?   Say what?????

For mentioning Catholic theology on the necessity of contrition?

Which you seem to be suggesting the Catholic Church has abandoned since 1911; cite?

And this merits your emotional imputation toward me personally why?

Pyre at 156: sorry -- you did not suggest that outraged strangers should do ugly stuff. But I get concerned when folks (Jess A., in earlier posts) start talking about getting "the community" involved, and about "outing" people, and you did praise Jess A.'s responses in one of your posts. Getting a community involved in responding to behavior like Lori Drew's can go in all kinds of unforeseen directions, including physical violence, which will solve absolutely nothing.

"(She) felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.’”

Holy Pajoley, this woman had the nerve to attend the funeral! And then stand around and gossip! She is either in some pretty serious denial or has a small and shriveled soul.

PiscusFiche (104), my sympathies. I've seen a lot of people go through bad fanfeuds and flame wars, and I've become convinced that their condition afterward has much in common with post-traumatic stress disorder. It may be PTSD in truth.

Exhaustion, anhedonia, social and emotional withdrawal, apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you. It takes a while to get over the worst of it. The pain never entirely goes away, but it can be buried under a heap of further days and deeds and memories.

Greg London (117)

Regarding the publishing of addresses and whatnot.

The families live in Dardenne Prairie, MO. Population seven thousand.

There ain't nothing anyone could do to keep that kind of information private. Not in a town that small.

Dardenne Prairie: well-to-do recently-built white bedroom community-cum-housing development, a real commuter special, sucking away at the twin teats of Interstate 70 and State Highway 61 out of St. Louis while pretending it's a small town. Check out its geographical area in Wikipedia -- it was put together out of three non-contiguous parcels of land, 4.37 square miles total, and was only incorporated in 1981. It's pure burb. If you don't believe me, check out the street layouts.

Ema, if you don't have any stomach for confrontations, try for one single clear statement of the facts, then let it go. Your ex will still be himself, and over time the truth of this may make itself apparent to others who have to deal with him.

Nin Harris (128):

There's a disconcerting tendency these days to assume that anything "text" shouldn't/wouldn't affect you IRL. Or rather, this is the excuse people who like to harass/troll/attack like to make. "Oh, it's just a joke, don't take it so seriously,".

It's one of the reasons I believe in disemvowelling and deletion, rather than telling people to "just ignore it." We can't ignore it. If we see it, we read it; and if we read it, we get that jolt of nastiness its author intended. It drains our vril.

Pyre, you don't know the state of their contrition, and you don't know what's up between them and God. All you know is what's in the papers.

I try not to make claims about which things God can and can't do. God is very big.

Emma @ 158:

Pyre @154: Sorry but this response does not seem to address what Lizzy L said. What do you mean?

And when judging others,...

... do remember that the only person who got personal assurances from Jesus himself of his entry into Paradise was a convicted, unrepentant thief.

Pyre, re-read your own #138. Whatever you may have meant, it didn't read like you were "mentioning Catholic theology on the necessity of contrition"; it read like you were baying for blood.

If you want to convey a different impression, write better.

As the mother of an almost 13 year old who went through the trauma of having her best friend turn on her and take all her other friends with her last year in 6th grade (we're having *much* better year in a new classroom now!), this story may cost me some sleep. I never called the school or anyone's mother, I just gave the best advice and encouragement I could and was there for my kid.

Of course I wanted to protect her. I wish I could have. I try to help her build her own armor, instead of being a shield.

Now, of course, we need to discuss this situation. She's not on social networking sites yet, and we read her email (and she hasn't changed her password *yet*), and we've talked about the normal pervs, the trolls, spam and popup add trickery, and certainly about not putting anything out there you don't want out there forever - but now we need to talk about this too.

It gets tiring.

"Sticks and stones can break my bones
But words can never hurt me"

The problem is, words can and *do* hurt people. We expect words to be powerful. We make words extremely powerful in our culture. But then we send the counter-message that words shouldn't be regarded as powerful when we tell kids to ignore people who are using words to hurt, and to harm - and still expect them to regard words as powerful in every other context.

For my own part, I think at least part of the problem is the way that teenage bullying is regarded as "normal" or "part of growing up", to the point where it's allowed to reach toxic proportions. I'll freely admit to being biased in this respect, since I had thirteen years of bullying through pre-primary, primary and secondary school. I went into culture shock when I hit uni, because it was the first time in my life I'd ever been in an educational environment and *not* spent my days being physically, emotionally or psychologically harassed. Once I got over the shock, I was as angry as all hell, because I *knew* that the only differences between my peers at university and my peers at high school were the expectations placed on us. There hadn't been a magic switch flipped in the two months between finishing high school and starting university. It was just that the kind of idiocy which was perfectly and totally acceptable in high school (no matter how much physical, psychological and emotional harm it caused) wasn't acceptable in a university environment.

How many times does there have to be a tragedy like Columbine, or something like the death of Megan Meier, before our society starts to give the message that mental, emotional and psychological abuse is *just* as socially unacceptable as the physical kind? How often do people have to die because we give our words such power over our hearts, minds, souls?

On the vouching side of things: I don't think I've actually met any of the Flurospherans in person (comes from living all my life in Australia, I suppose). I could say I'm female, 36, and wearing jeans and a linen top over my underwear, but then again, how do you know? How do I know the rest of you even exist? How do you know I exist? How do *I* know I exist?

(Disappears in self-referential puddle of existential angst).

God is very big.

Did He get bullied at school?

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King, Jr.

I very much believe in emotional PTSD. Wasn't it just recently in the torture thread that someone mentioned how people who had suffered both emotional and physical torture preferred physical?

Pyre @165: a reading from the Gospel of Luke

---------------------------
23:39 One of the criminals who was hanged insulted him, saying, “If you are the Christ, save yourself and us!”

23:40 But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Don’t you even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? 23:41 And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 23:42 He said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

23:43 Jesus said to him, “Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
--------------------------------

Please note he criminal known in legend as Dismas the Good Thief does not ask for forgiveness, even though he's in the presence of God. He does not make an act of contrition; he simply acknowledges who Jesus is. He gets in anyway.

Lizzy L @ 162:

Pyre at 156: sorry -- you did not suggest that outraged strangers should do ugly stuff. But I get concerned when folks (Jess A., in earlier posts) start talking about getting "the community" involved, and about "outing" people, and you did praise Jess A.'s responses in one of your posts.

Years ago I remember reading somewhere a saying along the lines of:

"The lash of the whip leaves a mark on the skin; The lash of the tongue will break bone."

It stuck, probably because of my experiences, a bit in school, but mostly from my family, and in the community since school. Wish I could remember where it came from.

#171, Emma: right on. See also, Prodigal Son. Mercy, grace, forgiveness: not a damn video game. Or a check register.

Meg, your story is painful; I'm so sorry you went through such a bad time. I also had a rotten time in school until I got to college. I wasn't harassed or bullied, not in the way bullying happens today and as it appeared to have happened to you; I was simply disdained and ignored, until I discovered that, as you say, words have power -- and I used them to make other people fear me. It worked, and it gave me a modicum of respect, but it took me some time to discover that if I wanted to make friends at college I needed more than a sharp tongue.

LizT, you've put your finger -- so to speak -- right on one of the most frightening aspects of this story. Theoretically responsible adults, who claimed to be "protecting" a child, were manipulating teenage culture in a seriously unhealthy and dangerous way. As you point out, there's no difference between people like this and the would-be child molester pretending to be a boy named "Josh," except that this woman could be the mother of your daughter's best friend and how the hell would you know?

Fandom is how I managed to survive being a teenager.

Plain and simple.

Kip Manley @ 81: "—Perhaps I am naïve to a fault, but the benefit of the doubt should always be weighed, even here, and bullying is bullying, no matter how much moral righteousness you have on your side."

Word. I don't see how a bunch of people on the net ganging up on the perpetrators is any different than what they did to Megan--remember that they did what they did with the avowed aim of 'protecting' their daughter.

Emma @ 108: "The Meiers, on the other hand, seem like amazing people. I am not sure I could be as --I don't want to say forgiving, and rational sounds too cold-- about it all as they are."

The word that occurs to me is "principled."

Linkmeister @ 116: "One can only hope that that community practices serious ostracism against the creators of "Josh.""

I'm baffled by this idea that somehow ostracism is a more appropriate or finer-edged tool than a legal response. Ostracism is what caused this mess; I doubt it can solve it.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden @ 164:

Pyre, you don't know the state of their contrition, and you don't know what's up between them and God. All you know is what's in the papers.

I try not to make claims about which things God can and can't do. God is very big.

Teresa, you and Patrick are both editors. Surely the difference between the two statements "Jones said this" and "Smith said, 'Jones said this'" is easy enough to discern. The latter makes no claim of personal knowledge about what Jones actually said.

Teresa, #48: "We're all vulnerable."

Thank you for saying that in a widely-read forum. Now I am wondering if the 'net is actually making this sort of abuse more visible, rather than more common. That odd gap between speech and writing that the 'net fills may get abusers to put more in writing. I think there's probably a space for a large-scale social internet service that takes the moderation responsibility seriously. Still, it would take some work to fund it, and it could itself be corrupted. It all sounds very much like a new version of the classic problems of governance.

I don't know, Heresiarch. I think it would be good for the community if the Drews had to move to another town. Certainly it would be good for the Maiers. As it is, even if no one ever speaks to the Drews, they will be seen around town, and a constant reminder of their crime, and the death of an innocent young girl.

And if all the adults in town try hard not to treat the Drews differently at all, the teenagers still will treat the Drew girl differently. Oh, she will have her supporters—and that will cause disruption in the school. Not only that, but she herself has suffered a trauma, one for which no one in town is likely to have much sympathy, and having to live among people who know she caused the death of a classmate could scar her for life. She's not exactly innocent, but for Ghu's sake, she's thirteen. There's a limit to what a thirteen can deserve.

The Drews need to leave that community and start over somewhere else, not only for the community's good, but for their daughter's.

If they're too pigheaded to realize that (and so far the evidence suggests that at least the mother—well, let's just say her ears cannot be made into silk purses, and leave it at that), the community needs to let them know in terms they cannot ignore. Physical violence is out of bounds, and so is harassment, but shunning is not.

Jim, #90: The thing that's bugging me is that apparently there were some adults (the mother of the girl across the street, for one) who knew about the sockpuppeting while it was going on, and no one bothered to tell Megan's parents. I would like to think that if I heard about someone creating a false MySpace page for the purpose of talking to a teenager -- especially if said person was an adult -- I would out them to the teen's parents.

But then, I'm really, really paranoid and hostile about people who take up false identities for the purpose of fooling specific other people; whether it starts out with malicious intent or not, somehow it always seems to end up that way.

Steve, #96: I think that's a good idea in theory. In practice, I fear that the curriculum would be designed by the same people who are pushing "abstinence-only" sex ed.

Fragano, #107: Ah yes, the "moving target" strategy of parental approval. No matter what you do well (or change as a result of their disapproval), something else always suddenly becomes a higher priority. The only way not to lose that game (because it's defined in such a way that there's no win available for you; the best you can hope for is stalemate) is to walk away. I'm glad you were strong enough to survive until you could.

Lizzy, #114: Yes, we are all flawed; I'm sure every one of us can remember making mistakes that hurt other people. What pushes the description of these adults toward "evil" is their apparent complete lack of any impulse toward regret and/or atonement. The victim-blaming ("Oh, I don't feel as guilty now because she was suicidal before"), the entitlement (filing police charges over the foosball-table incident), and the complete unwillingness to admit that anything about the whole sockpuppet incident was WRONG... that's the model of a sociopath with no empathy circuit, not a normally-flawed human being.

Nin, #128: That meme is nothing new; it's been codified for centuries in the chant, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." The attitude that "words are only words, and can only hurt you if YOU let them" is one of the most effective weapons in the bullies' arsenal -- because so many people who are NOT themselves bullies believe it, and so will enable verbal bullying instead of labeling it unacceptable behavior. *pulls up short before launching into long rant about the way our culture reinforces verbal abuse of all types*

Pyre...do NOT go to the "as an Editor" place. It's not a happy place for you.

Please, please trust me on this. This is working its way up to be a battle, not about the topic (and this thread's topic wasn't Catholic theology in the first place) but about the arguments raised about the topic.

Such arguments are, as I've said elsewhere, foolish. Anyone involved could stop it by just not responding any more (on the topic of who said what and to whom and what it meant). I suggest that you might be the right choice of party to stop now.

I'm not saying you're wrong about what you said, or what you said about what you said. I'm saying you need to stop pursuing this particular course before our hosts get really mad at you.

Lee at 181: oh, I understand the impulse to label the Drews, especially Mama Drew, "evil." She sure doesn't sound like someone I'd want for my neighbor. But evil is a very strong word to throw around, and it implies such moral culpability and spiritual corruption that I hesitate to use it. You want to call her a sociopath, sure, go ahead. I find that less disturbing, somehow.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden @ 166:

Pyre, re-read your own #138. Whatever you may have meant, it didn't read like you were "mentioning Catholic theology on the necessity of contrition"; it read like you were baying for blood.

If you want to convey a different impression, write better.

Kip @ 81, Lizzy L @ 144, a nod of the head to your saying this is "human". A hit-and-run driver is "human", too. But so is a driver who stops after the hit, renders aid, calls an ambulance, and otherwise takes responsibility. Equally "human", but oh the difference.

This also is "human", and (in Catholic theology) "divine":

No contrition? No apology? No forgiveness.

In your #142 you asserted: "in terms of that system, you're wrong".

In my #147 I cited the Catholic Encyclopedia's Contrition:   "Catholic writers have always taught the necessity of contrition for the forgiveness of sin...."

Now by this time clearly both of us were discussing what Catholic theology does or doesn't claim.

Which makes it utterly inexplicable that you thereafter switched to assertions that the last line of #138 was my "gloating" and "baying for blood", and that "it didn't read like... 'mentioning Catholic theology on the necessity of contrition'".

Had you claimed not to know my meaning before #142-#147, it might have been credible; but after we had both discussed what Catholic theology does or doesn't assert, to claim you didn't know this was the topic is flatly incredible.

Oh, there sure is a large pile of kindling there and a lot of kerosene-soaked wood...and the Santa Ana wind is blowing right at it. And here comes a guy finishing his cigarette and throwing away the butt, still glowing as it falls toward...

I can't look.

Nice try, Xopher... Sigh.

Heresiarch @ #177, so far it seems to me that no legal response is going to be made, thus my suggestion of ostracism (although I like xopher's "shunning" better, for all its 18th century ramifications).

Editing my #187 for clarity: because of its 18th century ramifications.

Xopher... Don't we still have an agonizer lying around?

I can forgive someone who has wronged me, as an act of my own will, even if that person is even at that moment saying "Ha ha ha! I'm glad I did it and I'll do it again!"

It's a matter of my own volition and does not require anything from any other person.

If I can do this as a man, surely God can do the same?

If I have not already granted forgiveness of my own volition, and the person comes to me asking for forgiveness, though, he would be more likely to gain it if he came contrite and willing to make amends.

To assume one is forgiven despite the lack of contrition and penance, relying instead on God's mercy, moves one perilously close to the sin of presumption. I believe this is what the Fathers were warning against.

Nice point, James.

To carry this a bit further: contrition may be necessary for human beings, so that they may consciously receive and experience God's forgiveness; but God's mercy and love for us are not bound by human frailties and inadequacies. What human beings could not/cannot do, Christ's free sacrifice can and does for us all.

Why should it be this way? I don't know. But I believe it is this way. And I am thankful.

Emma @ 171

:... [Luke] 23:40 But the other answered, and rebuking him said, "Don't you even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? 23:41 And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." 23:42 He said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom." 23:43 Jesus said to him, "Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Please note the criminal known in legend as Dismas the Good Thief does not ask for forgiveness, even though he's in the presence of God. He does not make an act of contrition; he simply acknowledges who Jesus is. He gets in anyway.

To this lay reader that looks like an acknowledgment, a confession, that their deeds were wrong (justly condemned) and an acceptance of the punishment as penance (due reward) -- all stated freely and willingly in the hearing of Jesus. Together with the fear of God (and the plea to Jesus, "Lord, remember me..."), that looks an awful lot like contrition. Whether perfect or imperfect, no matter, since Jesus is right there and responds with a promise that seems to incorporate absolution.

FYI, the names of the two thieves, Gestas and Dismas, are both given in the Gospel of Nicodemus, wherein Dismas says only slightly different words: "Do you not even fear God, who art in this condemnation? for we justly and deservedly have received those things which we endure; but He has done no evil. [And he kept saying to Jesus:] Remember me, Lord, in Your kingdom."

How do we defend ourselves? The same way we always did: If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

"Josh"--model handsome, straight, and perfect--appeared out of the blue and right into Megan's lap. Megan's heavyset, unhappy, lonely lap. When does a perfect man appear out of nowhere to recue you? Answer: Never. Girls need to learn that early on.

Plus, "Josh" had internet, but no phone (according to the article)?

As a parent, I would have said, "Megan, I know you want to make friends, but Josh doesn't seem for real. He won't meet you though he lives in our community, he has no phone, but internet access? Let's forget about MySpace and do something else that you enjoy. How about horseback riding lessons? Or a console game? Or (insert some other fun thing)?"

Also, does anyone else notice the sick irony that his name was "Josh", as in, a joke?

josh
v : be silly or tease one another; "After we relaxed, we just
kidded around"

The internet game-spaces I use, and where I present a pseudonymous persona, are pretty determined to keep minors out.

On the other hand, there seem to be places which encourage minors to join, and use premium-rate phone lines. See this report on one such example. The details are in the comments.

Politicians don't seem to pay much attention to the underlying brokenness of such things. Minors, they appear to believe, need protecting. But they don't deliver on the inferred promise of "Think of the children!".

And there is the practical problem of how to keep the minors out of particular spaces.

What I would like to know is the employee's story. If I came into to work and my boss said to drop what I was doing and instead harass a kid on line, well, I would like to say I would do the right thing. Maybe the employee was a happy participant, though. I would be interested in that story.

Dave Bell, I can't imagine how "politicians" would have been the least use in this situation.

Lizzy L @ 197: As system administrators, politicians might have prevented the whole unhappy affair.

System crashes hard, stays down, no harassment takes place there.

In the US, there are already laws about collecting personal information about persons 13 years old and younger (I'm not remembering the details -- no company I've been involved with has chosen to try to comply with them the hard way).

That's at least one of the reasons MySpace and similar sites require that users be 14 years of age or older.

In practice, of course, this just means that persons under the age of 14 learn quickly they have to lie about their age to do anything fun online, and so far nobody's come up with a reasonable way to ID 14-18 year olds.

To do a bit of backtracking in the discussion- #45, There's known tech: "Who vouches for you?"-

In my experience, that wouldn't have made this situation any better. I joined an online fandom (in the fanfic-subset meaning of the term) that attracts fragile 13-year old girls as a fragile 13-year-old and worked my way up to the point where I'm the administrator giving support to the fragile newbies (and the experience is what inspired me pursue counselling psychology).

So in my experience in all the years that I've been in fandom, knowing that girls knew each other in meatspace always put us on alert; while I wouldn't call it a hard-and-fast rule, such a thing was often a prelude to really nasty infighting that got personal very fast, and drew in that person's entire RL peer group. I can't explain why--but anonymity (or rather, pseudonymity) seemed to make the fights that did happen less intense. Perhaps it was because the more "real" relationships got, the more they mattered and the greater their ability to hurt.

Maybe it was also that I could ban harassers from the messageboard, but not the classroom, and my twitchy banfinger made my site(s) an unusual case. But at any rate, what works for adult fandom, as has been pointed out, is not an exceptionally good indicator for what will work with the younger set.

A person @193:

The "handsome prince" memeplex is one which is instilled in girls from a very young age. Think about all the storybook heroines we're faced with, all the movie and television role-models, all the images we're handed. It has one hell of a lot of cultural capital behind it, and it's been part of Western culture for centuries. I'm in my thirties, and I'm still prone to dream wistfully of a handsome prince coming along to sweep me off on his horse and take me away from everyday drudgery. Not often, I'll admit, but it's an occasional fantasy. When I was a miserable teenager, my handsome prince was someone I hoped for on a daily basis. Someone who didn't know how damn hopeless I was, and saw beyond what the other kids at school saw.

I can see how he was so attractive to Megan Meier. He was designed to be. He was designed by an intelligent woman to appeal to the dreams of a lonely girl. Of course he was going to hit off every single damn trigger she could have.

What was done in the creation of "Josh" was what would have been described as black witchcraft in an earlier era - the creation of a creature to seduce another, and thus break their heart and steal their soul. That it was done by shuffling electrons hither and thither doesn't make the darkness of the act itself any less.

#52: you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.

At this point, a 54-year-old slob sitting around in his pyjamas (and dressing-gown) felt a moment of unease. But the concentrated, relentless unfunniness of the original posting makes it rather difficult to lapse into merry ML banter here. Truly chilling stuff.

Is this law still on the books:

A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

The thing that's bugging me is that apparently there were some adults (the mother of the girl across the street, for one) who knew about the sockpuppeting while it was going on, and no one bothered to tell Megan's parents. I would like to think that if I heard about someone creating a false MySpace page for the purpose of talking to a teenager -- especially if said person was an adult -- I would out them to the teen's parents.

No, the mother of the second girl didn't know about it until after the suicide; her daughter, who appears to have a conscience, unlike Lori Drew, told her. She then called the police, and eventually when the police said it wasn't going to be pursued, arranged a meeting with Megan's parents to tell them what happened.

What strikes me as the major similarity between a child molester and this family is that both treat the child as though he/she were adult and capable of making all their own choices. The wilful denial of the child's vulnerability and the harm coming to said child is the act I would define as evil (the act, not the person).

And I am on the net anonymously; sorry, you all, but there are reasons for this...

I really do wonder when Lori Drew looks at her life what the picture is she sees. She's in Pennysaver-type ad sales, her husband is in real estate, she's probably a fairly competitive person to begin with - does she think she won whatever game she was playing with Megan Meier? Does she think Megan won? Does she think Megan cheated?

Do you think she knows what she's done to her daughter's life? Do you suppose this troubles her sleep? If it does, is it the crime or the punishment that keeps her awake?

From having been bullied myself, my emotional reaction to bullies is to see them as one-dimensional pulp supervillains. I'm sure by their lights they're reacting proportionately to something, even if it's boredom or a low tolerance for annoyance.

Just because I don't see how anyone who wasn't a cardboard sadist in a pulp novel could do what she did without cobbling up some justification in their head (even griefers and trolls claim to be teaching life lessons, and who's to say they don't believe it on some level), and because I don't imagine it's something she herself would wonder about anyone else, I really do wonder what the world looks like inside Lori Drew's head.

Cynthia Wood@129: I don't get how this woman can feel less guilty because she tormented an already hurting girl with previous depression problems.

I think the reasoning is, "If it hadn't been us it would have been something else." She feels that she didn't drive an otherwise-healthy child to suicide, rather she just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

The reasoning is horrible and wrong, but I can understand it.

39 here, almost 40...but I can honestly say that I've never read Making Light or any other site while sitting in my underwear.

In the nude, yes. But not in my underwear.

A person #193:
How do we defend ourselves? The same way we always did: If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

"Josh"--model handsome, straight, and perfect--appeared out of the blue and right into Megan's lap. Megan's heavyset, unhappy, lonely lap. When does a perfect man appear out of nowhere to recue you? Answer: Never. Girls need to learn that early on.

Well, yes . . . and no.

"If an attractive man likes you and wants to be closer to you, he is probably either not real or has a hidden agenda -- God knows no-one is ever going to like you for yourself" is not necessarily a great lesson for a young woman to learn. Undoubtedly, it is one that Megan would have learned, had she survived. A lot of young women learn this one. (Young men, too. Change pronouns as appropriate for gender, sexual orientation, etc.) And it may keep them out of some kinds of trouble. Overall, however, it's a harmful lesson, not a beneficial one. See also Teresa's post at #164 on PTSD:

Exhaustion, anhedonia, social and emotional withdrawal, apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you.

That's bad for you, that is.

Serge #127: Thanks!

Lila #135: Thank you!

Xopher @ 180: "I think it would be good for the community if the Drews had to move to another town. Certainly it would be good for the Maiers."

I agree. However, I think that that's a decision that the community needs to make, not you or me.

"If they're too pigheaded to realize that (...), the community needs to let them know in terms they cannot ignore. Physical violence is out of bounds, and so is harassment, but shunning is not."

I have trouble reconciling this statement with your behavior: which aspect of shunning requires publishing the offender's name and address on the internet? It seems far more likely to result in far more violence and harassment than shunning.

Linkmeister @ 187: "so far it seems to me that no legal response is going to be made, thus my suggestion of ostracism (although I like xopher's "shunning" better, [because of] its 18th century ramifications)."

The word for taking personal action to punish the guilty when the law fails is vigilantism. Why do you think you get a different set of rules if you choose to exact that punishment psychologically rather than physically?

If something intolerable happens that the law does not address, the answer is to change the law, not go around it. The Meiers seem to get this--I don't understand why it is so hard for others.

Xopher @ 180: "I think it would be good for the community if the Drews had to move to another town. Certainly it would be good for the Maiers."

I agree. However, I think that that's a decision that the community needs to make, not you or me.

"If they're too pigheaded to realize that (...), the community needs to let them know in terms they cannot ignore. Physical violence is out of bounds, and so is harassment, but shunning is not."

I have trouble reconciling this statement with your behavior: which aspect of shunning requires publishing the offender's name and address on the internet? It seems far more likely to result in violence and harassment than shunning.

Linkmeister @ 187: "so far it seems to me that no legal response is going to be made, thus my suggestion of ostracism (although I like xopher's "shunning" better, [because of] its 18th century ramifications)."

The word for taking personal action to punish the guilty when the law fails is vigilantism. Why do you think you get a different set of rules if you choose to exact that punishment psychologically rather than physically?

If something intolerable happens that the law does not address, the answer is to change the law, not go around it. The Meiers seem to get this--I don't understand why it is so hard for others.

Meg @168:

My observation is that there has in fact been a sea change in schools' tolerance of bullying. My district has been on a big anti-bullying campaign for several years now -- not just signs, but workshops for the teachers with people like Rachel Simmons, and repeated training for the kids at various ages. They're just starting to try to figure out how to teach about cyber-bullying, and certainly there's a niche for anyone who knows enough to teach about it.

The trouble is that anti-bullying campaigns have "liberal" written all over them -- especially because, when dealing with older kids, they *have* to teach tolerance of sexual minorities for the campaign to do any good. That's fine in my community but there are a lot of places in the US where it's just not going to play -- places where bullying on the basis of sexual preference or behavior is part of the adult culture.

I *think* that is changing, too, but more slowly.

Lee #107: Walking away is what I eventually did. My father's approach was his conception of 'encouragement'.

Feck. Sorry for the doubleup--read the second one. (Caught a grammar error seconds after hitting post, hit stop, corrected it, and reposted.)

Heresiarch @ 213

For me, at least, the difficulty in letting go of the situation and accepting that any further non-legal action* would be unacceptable vigilantism, is that this seems to be the outcome of all such situations at the moment. This does not appear to be a lack of legal recourse, a number of posts have pointed to relevant law, but rather a lack of will on the part of the authorities to pursue the matter. That's unfortunate, but I agree that it would be nobody else's business if it weren't that in this case and many like it, the lack of action makes it appear that the acts committed, while regrettable, are within the boundaries of acceptable social intercourse. This is not an acceptable outcome, since it makes it that more likely that more such acts will be committed by others.

My view of Xopher's comment is that it is not a call to vigilantism, but a call to the community most harmed, the town in which the actions occurred, to make it clear that it does not accept such behavior. Yes, doing that could devolve into vigilantism, but so can the actions of law enforcement agencies; any attempt to deal in a moral or ethical way with immoral or unethical people necessarily runs that risk. Moral issues by their nature aren't easy to deal with, and they require contant mindfulness. But we still have to deal with them.

* Which the legal authorities and the injured parties, such as MySpace, seem unwilling to take.

Just so you know, I'm wearing my bathrobe, you are all children relative to me*, and I've personally met, in corpus, three people who regularly post here. I also have a longtime friend who knows both Patrick and Teresa personally, so I must exist.

* 40 was a long time ago, and the wench took the other country with her.

I don't think anyone's yet cited the John Gabriel's Greater Internet [redacted] Theory.

It goes something like this:
Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Total [redacted]

Note the "Buy a Print" option. (This is new today.)

While this was originally formulated to describe the interactions over voice chat during gaming, I see an unexpected application in this situation. Perhaps [redacted] isn't quite the right adjective.

I'm at least somewhat surprised no one who accepted the offer to participate in the hoax turned the tables on the Drews and decided to blow the whistle on them; to remove the sock, as it were.

I've known of incidents where someone on a forum was Not What They Seemed and another participant who knew (or the public at large) spilled the beans.

Very sad story at pretty much all levels.

(Disclaimer: I am 38 years old and I am wearing underpants.)

I am not qualified to comment on Catholic theology of forgiveness, but I submit the following excerpt from an eighteenth(?)-century Jewish pre-Day-of-Atonement prayer:

Knowing as I do that hardly anyone is a righteous person who has not sinned against another one, either financially or physically, in word or in deed—this makes my heart tremble within me, because Yom Kippur does not atone for interpersonal sins until the offender appeases the victim. Regarding this, my heart is broken within me and my bones shake, because not even death atones. Therefore, I offer prayer before You that You pity me, and give me favor, kindness, and mercy in Your eyes, and in the eyes of all humanity. So I hereby completely forgive anyone who has sinned against me, either physically or financially, or one who gossipped about me, or even lied about me. So too, anyone who harmed me physically or financially. And for every sin that one person can commit against another, except for money that I could collect in a court of law, and except for someone who sins against me and says “I will hurt him and he will forgive me”—except for these, I completely forgive; and let no one be punished on my account. And just as I forgive everyone, so too may You put my favor before everyone else, so that they will completely forgive me.

I think that the mom-down-the-street's internal story was, "I'm protecting my daughter from this scary Internet stuff," and later, "She would have killed herself anyway, so it isn't my fault."

Or, the mom-down-the-street may have thought it was a clever ruse to find out if her own daughter was drinking, smoking, fighting, and going out with boys. That wouldn't explain why she asked her daughter and the kid across the street to join in.

At the beginning of the thread, I wrote But I want them to lose sleep. I want them to know that they hurt someone who was vulnerable, and I want them to feel guilty for it.

So now there are names and addresses, but I'm not going to make use of them. Because nothing I could do would enforce guilt or loss of sleep. I'd just be venting my anger, making myself a worse person.

Meg Thornton @ 168, I had a similar experience going from middle to high school. At the beginning of ninth grade, I went to a club meeting after school. The people there complimented me and joked with me, and it wasn't until I got home that I realized they weren't being sarcastic or making fun of me -- they were truly being friendly. It completely blew my mind.

Seth Gordon at 221, thanks. If we are to repair the world (and I believe we are, though always and only with God's help) we'd best begin with our broken selves...

David at 207, that makes sense, I think. I've been trying to understand her reasoning, too, and your formulation helps.

Pyre at 198, I still don't understand what you think politicians might have been able to do. What new law or application of old law do you think might have prevented this tragedy? I'm not trying to be contentious; I really can't see it. Suggestions?

You know I was wondering why, last week, Sky News was running wall to wall coverage of "Cyber Perverts on Second Life!", given that the story broke, what, 6 months ago in the press?

I think they must have got wind this story was about to break and are making a pre-emptive strike on a competitor of Murdoch's MySpace to draw heat away.

So, have Fox been covering this story at all? I'm guessing not, but they'll have something to say about either 2nd Life or Facebook within the week.

Pyre @ 192: I see your point, but...

O MY GOD, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

This is what I think of as a Catholic act of contrition. The thing is, we don't know -- great sinners have become great saints, and great saints have had great faults, and some seem to have found favor for no reason whatsoever. Ours not to argue with God about the tools He chooses, nor to assume that because we see someone as permanently flawed, that would be the view of the Almighty.

Some links in the "Sources" portion are to Fox News stories.

Lizzy L @ 225: Did you read the second line of #198?

Unless the politicians in question are techies like Al Gore or Newt Gingrich, I'd think the outcome would be a foregone conclusion.

Bruce Cohen @ 217: "That's unfortunate, but I agree that it would be nobody else's business if it weren't that in this case and many like it, the lack of action makes it appear that the acts committed, while regrettable, are within the boundaries of acceptable social intercourse. This is not an acceptable outcome, since it makes it that more likely that more such acts will be committed by others."

To me, this means the necessary course of action is to rattle the authorities' cages until they start doing their jobs, and to educate people about how terrible this sort of thing is. If the law is failing, then fix the law. Don't try to replace it with social penalties. Shunning and ostracism are blunt instruments, and are only ever one popular person's whim away from being turned on the innocent. Using them to address a situation like this is like trying to perform surgery with a blowtorch--it's worse than useless.

Of course, when Mrs. D said something along the lines of her feeling "not as guilty because she tried to kill herself before", she was just trying to justify herself to herself. However, since a suicide attempt does not mean certain death at some point in the future (as some here can attest), her justification does not come across as

"Well, she was doomed anyway"

but rather as something like

"Well, she was teetering on the edge anyway -- all I did was shove a little. What do you mean, 'pull her in'? She was mean to my daughter!"

-- which, if this ever makes it to court, will not look good in front of a jury.
Apart from all the other goodness and kindness, of course.

Todd@199 - I believe the federal law you are referring to (I can't speak to similar state laws) is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Part of the issue with COPPA in terms of its limitations is that I think in some aspects it ties the collection of informatin to marketing to children (and then you get into issues of whether marketing must involve attempting to get children to buy stuff).

And of course, since you're talking online transactions, it's difficult to properly establish parental consent. Even if you insist on running a credit card check for identity purposes only, here's no guarantee that Junior didn't swipe the card, although then the company could argue it made a reasonable effort and should not be penalized.

Emma @ 227: And Dismas had just confessed the wrongfulness of his deeds (justly condemned), accepting the slow agony of crucifixion as his penance (due reward).

As to whether he'd resolved to amend his life: in the face of imminent death, with his limbs nailed in place, all the range of action left to him was speech... such as to speak rightly, to speak justly, to speak the truth, to exhort his fellow thief to the good, to speak for the innocent sufferer, to make some rapprochement with God.

Did he not, in those few words, do all these things?

Fair enough, Jim; obviously the local affiliates are less "on message" about MySpace than Sky in the UK (where nothing bad happens on MySpace, only on non-Murdoch sites or "a social networking website")

James McDonald @ 52: In that case, abi, you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.

I am frequently in my underwear.

(Or, as Steve Martin once put it: "I sometimes wear ...men's underwear! In fact...I'm wearing them right now! [pause] Ha ha. Just kidding.")

But I am no longer forty.

Hey, two out of three.

These posters wearing corduroy and no underwear...now they're creeping me out.

a person @ 193: Plus, "Josh" had internet, but no phone (according to the article)?

I have a cable modem at home. I have no home phone.

a person @ 194: Seriously nice catch.

I just wanted to add to LizT @ 167. I'll be sharing this story with my twelve year old daughter. On one hand, it hurts me to have to tell her that people like this exist. On the other, the idea of her not knowing is so much worse.

Sigh...it's sad...very said. I used to send this around to folks I worked with:

Rules for using the internet:

1. Do not drink and surf. Your monitor, mouse, keyboard and cpu are not liquid proof.

2. That sparkly, happy, blond, bombshell LLcherrykiss that you are having dreams about meeting is a 50 year old man with a porn fetish, a wife of 30 years and 7 children.

3. Yes, you can order it.

4. No, you probably don’t want to.

5. No one loves you, those are spammers.

6. Plan to piss off at least 50 people each day.

7. Plan to be pissed of by at least 50 people each day.

8. Two words: Me too.

9. Two more words: I agree.

10. That intelligent, sour old man who comes in and argues every point on every board you frequent is probably your grandma.

11. Unlike Vegas, what goes on in the internet doesn’t stay on the internet.

IMO the conversation about the bad in the world must remain constant with kids. Things like this keep me up at night.

I started reading this last night, and caught up this morning. I'll have to try to keep this short, because the situation described in the ML post hits some of my buttons very hard. Good thing I'm at work right now, as I have strong incentive to keep it together and be rational. Hands are shaking as it is.

To all who have experienced/witnessed the torment that is being a "slightly different" (or average, just the "picked on of the week") teenager (or adult, for that matter): my deepest sympathies.

@Metz #173:"The lash of the whip leaves a mark on the skin; The lash of the tongue will break bone." That's been my experience as well. Time and, for lack of a better word, maturity have helped...

@TNH#164:Exhaustion, anhedonia, social and emotional withdrawal, apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you. ouch I think I resembled that at some time, perhaps sometimes still do...

you know you have issues when "the crow" looks like an instruction manual, but at least you know you have yourself rather well in hand when you know not to watch that movie again...

later,
-cajun
{sniffling at work, glad that it is cold season so it doesn't stand out}

Caroline @ 224, Your club experience reminds me of the first time I ran into the opposite situation. After going to a small, friendly, no-bullying-allowed school for years, I spent a semester in a public high school in the United States. And it took me weeks to realize that the girls who asked me where I got my so awesome jacket or what I was reading or any of a hundred other things weren't being friendly, they were making fun of me. It was just hilarious to them that I'd cheerfully admit I bought my clothes in thrift stores, that I hadn't seen any of the latest movies or television shows, that I didn't know what the curse words meant...

I insisted on home-schooling for a year after that semester, even though we went back to the place with that marvelous supportive school I'd been happy at for years, because it completely broke my confidence. It's been more than a decade since then, and I still have trouble trusting new people until I've known them for a while because I'm never sure if they're being friendly, or just humoring me and really making fun of me when I'm not around. Or if they're making fun of me right there and I can't tell. All this from what's apparently garden-variety relatively innocuous social viciousness in a single school.

I keep hearing about how awful schools are in the United States, and one reason it makes me so angry is because I know it's not inevitable. I've gone to schools where vicious bullying wasn't approved of by anyone, from parents to administrators to teachers to the other kids, and so it didn't happen. Mean kids were the ones who no one would talk to, at least until they stopped being mean and apologized. I continue to boggle at a culture that assumes vicious behavior in childhood is inevitable and natural and not to be interfered with.

Emma #227: Back when I memorized the Act of Contrition the line you bolded went: "I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin."

Speaking of St. Dismas and the apocryphal gospels, early in his career Dismas was one of the guys who robbed Mary and Joseph when they were flying to Egypt. (He saw how holy they were and let 'em go.)

Like a great many other commenters here, this story has pressed all sorts of buttons for me. It's ghastly on so many levels.

Here's something by way of a ray of hope in the wider context. Elder son who was viciously bullied at primary school, verbally and physically, was recently targeted on the social network he and his teenaged pals at secondary school currently favour.

This school has an uncompromising anti-bullying policy which takes in email, sms/text messages, the Internet etc.

On his own initiative, he promptly reported the abuse to the network who equally promptly banned the offender. Son asked around a bit and identified the offender because she'd used a variant on a favourite screen name she'd used elsewhere. So he reported her to the school. Her parents have been informed.

Son is pretty calm about all this. Not to say the intial attack didn't upset him because it did. But he's over that and moving on. He knows he's in the right. He knows she's in the wrong. So do all of their peer group who saw the nasty messages go up and equally, saw them taken down and the offender thrown off the network for unacceptable behaviour.

I spent a semester in a public high school in the United States. And it took me weeks to realize that the girls who asked me where I got my so awesome jacket or what I was reading or any of a hundred other things weren't being friendly, they were making fun of me. It was just hilarious to them that I'd cheerfully admit I bought my clothes in thrift stores, that I hadn't seen any of the latest movies or television shows, that I didn't know what the curse words meant...

Oh, my gd, that sounds so much like my high school experience. Of course my clothes were homemade, rather than from a thrift store, because my mother was a professional seamstress...

You didn't happen to live in Clearwater Florida, did you?

At my ten year reunion, this same gaggle of girls pigeonholed my husband (then-fiance) to tell him in horrified tones how I used to wear mismatched outfits to gym class. You'd think they'd've gotten over it in the intervening decade, but the fact they persisted in their idiotic obsessions was worth incalculable therapy. [More on my realization, here].

We need to teach kids that high school is *not* the best years of their lives, because they have many many decades of life afterwards to enjoy.

James @240: So did I, but in Spanish... not that I had much of a Catholic education. I got kicked out of catechism class, would you believe? My dad the freethinking freemason had much to do with what the priest called my "inappropriate questioning".

Dismas has always been a favorite of mine -- in spite of Pyre's argument I don't think he performs and act of contrition; he performs an act of honesty. He does not self-deceive,try special pleading, nor does he claim to love God. He simply states the facts of his life and waits for whatever may be handed out to him.

Contrition is a thorny issue for me because it seems that without some sort of atonement it's just another bit of special pleading. Feeling sorry for what you did -- ain't good enough.

Jim, people don't kill themselves because they think it's a good idea, they kill themselves because they have no choice. There comes a point when every rational consideration and all the decency of the world just cease have any hold on you. And many suicides suffer from manic bouts which undermine your ability to think straight; and/or have problems with alochol or drug, the bad kind, that impair their judgement.

I think those people triggered Megan's suicide, but did not cause it. They are scum not because they killed her, but because they wantonly cruel to a vulnerable child that needed help; and as adults they should have provided that help, not hound her. They made an already miserable little person more miserable, and there is no excuse for that.

(When I was two days out of pscychiatric hospital for major depression, a person who had a grudge against me called me on the phone and for half and hour told me what a thoroughly wretched human being I was. She knew I was in a major depressive episode. She did succeed in cutting me off from my then best friend and supporter. I pity her.)

But adolescent suicide happens, even with love, help, support. Suicide happens, despite love, help, support. There are many ways to help, but it still happens.

A different but related story involving the Internet and forty-year-old pervs sitting around in their underwear, as reported by Fox News.

From January of this year:
22-Year-Old New York Man Murdered After Being Drawn Into Internet Love Triangle

#148 I think if nothing else, everybody in that town should shun them.

Unless I've totally forgotten what small towns in rural America are like since I left mine 17 years ago, they've been shunned and/or villified and/or gossiped about by pretty much everyone in that community and all the neighboring ones as well. It's also why this made national news when other cases have been swallowed whole by the ether. Someone in the community cared enough (or was embarrassed enough) to hold them up as an example of what not to do. It's a cross between "Some people's only reason for existence is to serve as a warning to others." and "How does it feel when others do it to you?"

The Meiers and their "we're not going to prosecute" stance pretty much ensures their community is more or less behind them. By taking the moral high ground, they won't be accused of petty fuding or mud slinging or any other host of things that would loose them support and sympathy. (The foostable and lawn abuse can be reasonably excused as "knee jerk reactions" and indirect positive ID of the guilty parties. Small town politics are sooooo much fun.)

It also accounts for the "I don't feel as bad" comment. The guilty party was trying to share the blame with the other blamers. It's the Glass Houses, Stones, and Throwing Principle. Only the aim was a little off.

For the record, I'm 37, clothed and met Teresa at ConQuest this year where we talked about beads and beading.

Anna, I know that teen suicide happens. I even know that it's one of the leading causes of teen deaths. I know that a lot of things get blamed, including the internet, and rock music, and D&D, and The Sorrows Of Young Werther.

I deny that there's no choice. One could always read a science fiction novel instead. I recommend this course of action.

Lis Riba @ 242: "We need to teach kids that high school is *not* the best years of their lives, because they have many many decades of life afterwards to enjoy."

Hell yes. As a rotten-childhood survivor myself (first suicide attempt at age 8), one of the things that really made everything worse was the insistence of adults, books, movies, everything that these were the best years of my life and I should be the happiest I could ever be.
Didn't really make me think I had much to look forward to as far as growing up went.

The really hard part for kids like Megan is learning that what people tell you about yourself isn't necessarily true - it's a hard road to understanding that maybe the problem isn't that you are fundamentally flawed, but they are. But when you're that young, your picture of the world is still being shaped by the people around you; taking words with a grain of salt doesn't come naturally.

Heresiarch 213: What Bruce said at 217, plus: I think the internet community, and especially MySpace, needs to protect itself too. I think what Lori Drew did is so outrageous that she ought not have access to the web (a sentence with precedent for merely financial computer crimes), but if the authorities won't do that, we can at least ensure that most social avenues in the web world are closed to her.

Seth 221: Sometimes I wish I believed those things were true. I wonder if I'd be able to act the way the person so praying is acting, if I did? I doubt it, frankly. When I forgive, it's for me, so I won't carry poison around in my spirit. I don't believe it has any effect on the other person, unless they know about it, and even then it sometimes just makes them angry.

In my view, forgiveness is something only humans do. It's an act of compassion and/or self-protection, depending on whether the wronging party needs it, the wronged party needs it, or both. The Divine does not forgive, ever. You don't get to "wipe the slate clean," you can only balance your karma.

But the Divine doesn't punish you beyond karma, either. In fact, karma is just a natural outcome of your actions, not the punishment of some conscious entity.

Any social ostracism that Lori Drew experiences will be her karma. Her daughter is another matter.

You didn't happen to live in Clearwater Florida, did you?

Nope. San Dimas, California. Only for the one semester, but it was bad enough. My usual school was in another country, and sufficiently isolated from US culture--and even the culture of the country it was in, to some extent--that it got to have its own microculture that simply didn't tolerate that kind of teasing or bullying. California was...different. Especially since I had moved from an environment where no one had much in the way of disposable income and it was just the way things worked, to one where you were socially inferior if you couldn't compete as a consumer. Finding out that my parents' comfortable middle class income was, in that area, technically below the poverty line--and even worse, that people considered this a mark against me--was one of the nastiest realizations I've ever had.

There is a church my parents used to go to when they lived there that I couldn't attend for years for similar reasons. The teasing was much milder, but I was so shocked to encounter it inside a Sunday School environment that I would start crying just thinking of going to that church. My parents were understanding enough to let me just stay home instead, and I'm still grateful. And, sadly, still holding a grudge against that church.

#242: They don't get over it.

My high school class has had a twenty-year reunion, a twenty-fifth, a thirtieth, a "class 50th birthday party", and is now getting ready for the thirty-fifth. The class's website of "lost alumni" has many that are quite well known in their professions and could easily be found if one knew anything about who they were looking for. I did go to the twentieth, out of curiosity, because I happened to be in town that week visiting my mother. None of them had changed and there was no one there that I cared to see again. I can't imagine doing that over and over and over.

Meanwhile the endemic racism and bullying in the school has now received national attention after some brave parents finally filed human rights complaints and lawsuits.

Three years ago, I was harassed online by my father. I haven't spoken with him for many years, for various reasons, chief among them that he's an amoral, manipulative misogynist; when I mentioned those qualities of his in passing, in the context of another topic that I was posting about on my blog, he showed up in the comments to tell me what a terrible, ungrateful person I was. I didn't have the concept of a Troll Bingo Card at the time, but he scored an awful lot of spaces on it.

I was very lucky that I had family and friends around, online and elsewhere, who rallied to me and assured me that I wasn't the crazy one (one of his most unpleasant talents being the ability to throw that into doubt) - if I'd been alone against that, I can't imagine what might have happened. Literally can't, because my brain will not allow me to go there. (Especially considering my therapist's reaction to the whole debacle was "But he's your father." Alas, talk therapy and I also parted ways at that point, and we have not reached a reconciliation since.)

As for suicide, yeah, I've been close enough - not scary close, but feeling bad enough I just wanted everything over close, and more recently than I like to think. Some days the thing keeping the abyss at bay more than anything else is my dog, because there's just something about a creature who loves you that much with that little justification that makes you a little more determined to not disappoint.

Reminds me of the panel about conversation on the Internet at Minicon last year. I was bamboozled that it turned about to be about privacy issues instead of how to better approximate face-to-face expressions and emotion. This case, however, shows how big an issue privacy and the guarantee of identity really is in online communication.

A Person@193: Count me as another person who has interwebs but no landline phone. (I do have a cell phone, but I can see a teenager not having one.)

It occurs to me that I forgot to add one of the endings to my first tale of group-think woe. (entry 29*) A month ago, I got an email from a girl from elementary school, who I could barely remember. She wasn't one of the main malefactors by any stretch of imagination, but she offered up an apology. Twenty years later, but hey, better late than never. So, people do change.

...

And I just had a thought about James's comment back at 45.
There's known tech: "Who vouches for you?" That is, "Who do I know face-to-face and trust who knows you face-to-face and trusts you?"

In my old online art boards, we had three or four groups of people that could vouch for each other in different cities across North America. When we met up with somebody who had already been vouched for, we got our real personhood "certified" on the board. It was mostly a joke in our case--we didn't have issues with sockpuppets and assholes--but yeah, it did add a level of cachet to say you'd met somebody in the Real People group. :)

In the Linux community, people had key signings. You present your address and id and whatnot to somebody whose information has already been verified. They log this information, issue you a key, and all your changes to the Linux packages go out with your key, so that if malicious code were introduced they'd be able to track it down. I can kinda see that sort of thing gaining traction in the future not just among programmers, but among other types of social groups.

Also, it occurs to me that nobody here can directly vouch for me being a real person, but Teresa and Patrick know Bill Shunn who knows my cousin through the Leading Edge, so that may satisfy any doubts as to my existence. :)

(BTW, I accidently have two user names here, Pixelfish, and Piscusfiche. At one point, when Pixelfish started becoming a slightly more popular nickname, I thought I would transition to the punny PiscusFiche. But it became more of an accreted nickname than a replacement. Sorry if that ever confuses anybody.)

Dan @ 252

Ouch.

I feel your pain. My politics has traditionally been a rage trigger for [a person in my family] and I've more or less stopped posting on my blog since they started showing up there.

Dan @ 252: Ye gods. If you can take some comfort in not being alone... mine was in the medical professions, and once sent me to a psychiatrist friend for counselling because "Only a crazy person doesn't love their father."
I hope you feel more free now. Those are hard chains to loose.

Dan@252: Oh, man, I'm sorry to hear about that. Your therapist should have known better, methinks. And I hear you about the folks that have that talent to make you think you're the crazy maker...there's no living with them. Sometimes you are really better off to cut your losses. I'm glad you had a group of friends to stand by you.

#247 - I disagree with your last statement, so much that I don't even have the words to express it properly or without being stupid and/or offensive in some way. I don't want to be stupid and/or offensive, so all I'll say is that is not that easy.

I know someone face-to-face who knows Teresa face-to-face, but Teresa does not know that they know me. So I guess Teresa is real, but I'm not? *poof*

Also, while I never sit around writing in my underwear, I am writing in the same clothes I've been wearing for the last two days, due to serial stomach bugs from the children. I'm only 38 though, so I don't get to be a pervy 40-year-old yet.

Piscusfiche at 254: A month ago, I got an email from a girl from elementary school, who I could barely remember. She wasn't one of the main malefactors by any stretch of imagination, but she offered up an apology. Wow!! That makes me really happy.

Dan at 252: that sucks. I'm sorry. Dogs are good.

don't want to be stupid and/or offensive, so all I'll say is that is not that easy.

I never said it was easy. Continuing is an act of will.

I believe that the option of suicide must be completely removed from the table.

246: The Meiers and their "we're not going to prosecute" stance pretty much ensures their community is more or less behind them. By taking the moral high ground, they won't be accused of petty fuding or mud slinging or any other host of things that would loose them support and sympathy.

I reckon they might want the Drews to have the chance to savour their responsibility for what they did unsoothed by any victim status they might accrue by being the targets of anyone's retribution, legal or otherwise.

Miz Julia, I wondered what had happened to you... I'm sorry to hear that.

Teresa@164: Easterner.

I can only assume that the reason I'm taking that as a mild knock is that I grew up in a tiny farmtown in the midwest. I guess I still identify with my home town.

If it's purely a commuter town, then it won't have the same atmosphere as a place that's grown up together for a century or so. Too bad.

The story that I tell that pretty much sums up my home town was when a buddy of mine from college came out to visit over the summer. I'd given him directions to the town, but bad directions to get to my parent's house. He got lost. He stopped and asked for directions to "Maple Street". The person shook his head and said he didn't know that one, but who was he looking for? My friend told him my name. The person replied, Oh, he's at his parents home for the summer from school, and proceeded to tell him how to get to the house.

Jim@190: I can forgive someone who has wronged me, as an act of my own will, even if that person is even at that moment saying "Ha ha ha! I'm glad I did it and I'll do it again!" It's a matter of my own volition and does not require anything from any other person.

This comes up once in a while when I'm life coaching. To "forgive" means to give up the resentment you have towards the person. It doesn't mean you condone their actions. It means you're going to let it go, whatever it was.

When helping people who've had some seriously shitty things done to them, it usually helps to make sure they're using that definition, rather than thinking they must condone the behaviour.

And I've seen some people forgive some seriously heinous things that was done to them. And it's always just amazing to see how much freed up they become when they let something like that go.

James D. Macdonald - I did read SF instead, only to have many well-meaning people try to stop me, insisting that I should "deal with the real world." I was, at that point in my life, unable to adequately articulate that if I dealt with the real world I had, I wasn't going to survive grade school. I have mixed feelings about removing suicide from the table, even if it were possible. I was in my late twenties before the accummulated goodness of my adult life outweighed the decade-plus of sheer misery and torment that had come before. I.e. if someone had told me at twenty-five that I would be transported in the morning back to fifth grade, and had to go through it all again, I would have thrown myself off a bridge without hesitation. Even though my life in my mid-twenties was good. Even now at 38, the same thing would make me hesitate and think long and hard.

I got scary-close to suicide more than once in school. To places where if someone had walked in at an inopportune time, I would have been in a psych-ward before I could say "Boo!"

When I was a teenager, my mother told me, "Anyone who tells you that their high school years were the best years of their life must have been living a really boring, pathetic life since then."

It was lucky for me that she, my father, and almost all their friends and colleagues had been nerds, geeks, or art freaks while growing up, so I had plenty of interesting, talented, unusual people reassuring me that yes, things would get better.

Piscusfiche @ 254: I do have a cell phone, but I can see a teenager not having one.

In my current experience (which is a highly urban one), this is backwards. Based on observing my fellow bus riders, I'd guess that 4/5 of Oakland teens have cell phones.

#195

"Think of the children!" is much easier for a politician to say than "Make a genuine effort to act on behalf of a child's safety."

37 and dressed.

The fact is, I don't really care if you all are a bunch of 40 year old perverts in your underwear. You're such interesting perverts, and I don't have to see (or smell) you over the tubes.

Lexica@267: I suspect it may be a regional thing though. Urban versus rural. Also the (in this case, fictional) parents attitudes towards technology. Josh was supposed to be homeschooled, so I can see a family allowing access to the internet for schooling reasons, but not wanting to spend money on cell phones when the live in a small country town. Anyway, while it could be a warning light combined with many other factors, I don't see the lack of a cell phone or landline to be a complete creepazoidal thing. :)

1) I'm glad you're all here, you make the world a better place (unlike some people aka the topic of the thread).

2) I have been known to read ML and engage in other online activities naked, wearing some clothes, outerwear sans underwear, underwear only, and sometimes only wearing a cat. I'm 35. I suppose posting naked from my couch with a cat across my shoulders might be considered pervy. It's your call.

3) I know at least one person who has probably met *NH, and I have a fairly unique name. I can be found in meatspace. If you stop by, don't be put off by my redneck compound, we're just blending in with our neighborhood.

Every time I get close to posting something more meaningful and revelatory, I get rather worked up. Let's just say that if one were to throw in more life unpleasantness and subsitute an uncle's ex-wife for Lisa Drew, I find I identify with that child far more than I should.

Thanks, everyone, for your words of sympathy. I've mostly scarred over it all by now, but it really was a profoundly traumatic experience, and one it wasn't easy to post about here. I think sometimes the only thing to do for that kind of psychic damage is be comforted that you're not alone in it, and see that other folks have managed to live past it; all the more tragic that Megan Meier did not have those tools at her disposal.

Also, credit where it's due: at the time the incident with my father happened, I'd been reading Making Light for a year, and had some good examples for how real grownups deal with Vexatious Persons showing up in their virtual living rooms. I think being able to sit back and think like a moderator (though I did not have the option of disemvowelment at the time, more's the pity) saved me a lot of flailing and drama that would not have improved matters. So, yeah: thanks for that too.

More stories:

November 19, 2007
Girl, 13, commits suicide after being cyber-bullied by neighbour posing as teenage boy
(Daily Mail)

Officials in Dardenne Prairie now plans to pass a law to outlaw cyber-bullying.

"People are just totally shocked.They can't believe that an adult would have done this," said the town's mayor, Pam Fogarty.

November 19, 2007
St. Charles County prosecutor reviews Meier case
(Steve Pokin)

In that police report, the woman down the street told a sheriff’s deputy she created the MySpace page to see what Megan was saying about her daughter. She also said the account was monitored by her, her daughter and an 18-year-old part-time employee.

The neighbor, when contacted by the Journal last week, disputed the accuracy of that police report.

She has not been charged and is not being sued. The Journal has not named the family.

McGuire offered this reminder: "These people have not been convicted of anything. There is a thing called due process in this country."

November 18, 2007
Mom: Daughter killed herself after Internet friendship ended
(USA Today)

Aldermen in Dardenne Prairie, a community of about 7,000 residents about 35 miles from St. Louis, have proposed a new ordinance related to child endangerment and Internet harassment. It could come before city leaders on Wednesday.

"Is this enough?" Mayor Pam Fogarty said Friday. "No, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it's something, and you have to start somewhere."

#262

Mother Drew is denying responsiblity. Accepting responsibility for your actions is a lot like admitting you have a drinking problem.

I wonder who notified the media. It could be the Meiers, or it could be the mother across the street who had her daughter suborned. It could be a concerned citizen afraid of the evils of the internet. Regardless, the Drews are being tried in the court of popular opinion. If enough people tell you "you're wrong" sooner or later you believe it. If you don't, there are other ways to get the point across. (The phrase "run out of town on a rail" comes to mind. The Drews are self-employed. Think about it.)

The one thing that keeps a small, rather inbred community alive and healthy is the willingness to "forgive and forget" minor insults and small thefts. (Not that anyone ever forgives or forgets, it's the appearance of it that matters.) The first time one member turns on another with malicious intent, escalates things, and shows no remorse when caught, all bets are off.

In a lot of ways, a small town is like a self-moderated list - everyone is responsible for everyone else's good behavior as well as their own.

Ooo, the mayor's helping to spread it around? I imagine those people are really going to need to think about moving soon, probably to Mexico if they don't want it to follow them.

Teresa @ 164
I've seen a lot of people go through bad fanfeuds and flame wars, and I've become convinced that their condition afterward has much in common with post-traumatic stress disorder. It may be PTSD in truth.

Exhaustion, anhedonia, social and emotional withdrawal, apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you. It takes a while to get over the worst of it. The pain never entirely goes away, but it can be buried under a heap of further days and deeds and memories.

Wow. That's... incredible. That describes perfectly the reaction I've had to some past encounters, and describes what a friend is going through now. If I were still in the psych community I'd drop everything I was doing to get some real research in on this. Alas, I am not. Instead I'm just going to keep this near my heart.

Within the last six months or so I was the victim of some cyber bullying. A few years ago I became involved in a community that had a certain popular, intelligent, and beautiful female as a long-standing member. At first a lot of the threads there seemed to be mostly her having conversations with various friends. I was originally afraid of her, but after a while we got friendly. I tried to be nice to her and all the regulars, this was their turf after all. Eventually, I felt at home.

The popular woman began telling me that some people didn't like me. She also began by pressuring me to post photos. When I refused, she started by saying things to me like "I think some people don't like you because you talk too much and don't post photos." These messages were gentle prodding, not abusive at this point in time. At the same time, I watched her and her circle of friends attempt to destroy the reputation of anyone who ever said anything bad about her within her hearing, again and again. Evetually she became this frightening behemoth to me. I still tried to be nice to her, but she was definitely scary. One day, I made the mistake of trying to defend someone she got into an argument with. A few weeks later I ended up with a horrific private message asking me why I was such a mean, bad person who was manipulative and such. I sent her a letter asking what I had done, only to recieve stony silence. I became incredibly paranoid. People who had been acquaintances or friends but who were much closer to her stopped speaking with me.

After a while it sort of cooled off, though it became clear that she did not like me. Eventually, she had a falling out with a male member of the community.This person had previously been a member of her circle of friends - the same group of people who I had watched abuse others who crossed her. This led to him being immediately labeled as a 'stalker' and her threatening to put out a restraining order against him. The same group of her friends began to actively shun him and spread rumors about him. Eventually this led to him having a breakdown and cutting ties to the community entirely. I was very sad, but then I realized there had been further fallout.

When the rumors had started about him, I'd been foolish enough to defend him in public. Now the popular woman had me as a top name on her hit list. Some of her friends began threatening mine, telling them they were terrible people because they didn't hate me. For a while I considered leaving the community altogether. I'd say if she'd been able to get, say, five more people to turn against me I probably would have left, or at least cut down my participation immensely.

In Teresa's quote above, one particular section stands out to me: "apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you."

I've definitely experienced this. Right now I am incredibly scared to post this here, and under my usual name, because she might find it and connect it to what happened and use it against me. I still doubt the friendship of some people in that medium, and I'm always worried that she might come up with some new lie that will cost me their friendship. I've never had this feeling before in my life. This woman is literally the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. And I've never met her in real life.

LizzyL @162: But I get concerned when folks (Jess A., in earlier posts) start talking about getting "the community" involved, and about "outing" people, and you did praise Jess A.'s responses in one of your posts. Getting a community involved in responding to behavior like Lori Drew's can go in all kinds of unforeseen directions, including physical violence, which will solve absolutely nothing.

Please note -- I said that I hoped their community knew who these adults internet-bullying a local child was, and what the end result was. I did not say that they should be outed on the internet; and I certainly didn't say that I thought their community should exact some kind of revenge (physical or otherwise).

I think it's important that this community -- described in the media reports as tight knit and small, the kind of group who car pools and even vacations together -- knows that one set of parents in their midst thought that this sort of behavior was somehow appropriate. Further, that this mother publicly states that she doesn't feel "as guilty" as she might otherwise.

These are not the kind of people I would want to continue vacationing with, or that I would want caring for my child at a sleep-over or some such thing. If they were local business owners (and apparently they are), I wouldn't want to give them my business, either. That's all I meant; I don't think I stated or implied anything more than that.

Leah @276: You don't mention what you're getting out of belonging to that community apart from feeling at home there, but it'd have to be quite something to make me put up with living in fear. It sounds like an appalling little high-school smugfest. Drop 'em! Or post a link, I have a talent for annoying annoying people.

abi: Interesting question. For pretty much everyone on this website, my answer is* "no one".

Jim: In that case, abi, you'd be perfectly justified in assuming that every single person here is a forty-year-old perv sitting around in his underwear.

I can say that I am not in my underwear.

As to the more relevant point. I’ve met a couple of the people who frequent here (TNH, PNH, at ConJose, Ulrika, and Bruce Arthurs, Lucy Huntziger and come immediately to mind; though I’d say that, in Jim’s terms, the only one I would say is a solid vouch is Ulrika, followed by Lucy. From a couple of passing moments in the Fan Lounge, I don’t think our Esteemed Hosts fulfill the requirements. Bruce and I haven’t spent enough time together in the past couple of decades for his vouch to be more than general. ).

But time is a great modifier. There are any number of people whom I’ve never met whom I trust to vouch for other people. Some of that vouching (Jim for Robert Glaub being trustworthy on intel) is fairly precise. Some of it, (Xopher for someone being a decent human being) is more general.
It’s kind of like getting a letter of introduction from one Meeting to another (Quakers still do that). I may not know anyone from the Santa Clara Meeting, but if they show up at Orange Grove, and need a place to stay (there are “traveling Friends” who make personal pilgrimages) I have no problem offering them the spare bed.

(She) felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.

That, IMO, is the single greatest condemnation of the woman in the piece. Not knowing Megan was troubled is one thing, but saying, “she was weak, so our hounding her to death is less culpable,” that’s evil.

Funny (ha! ha!) This reminds me of some crap I’ve been dealing with so long (of rumor and innuendo) that it’s faded to general background noise. But I recall, when I put it into context, how painful it was (and I in my 30s) to look at friends and know they had, for reasons of personal gain/comfort cut me loose and said things against me. Looking at them, and being furious, and shamed, all at once. The saddening comfort which came from finding those who refused to believe it (saddening because something which ought to have been expected was extraorndinary) To be 13 and face that... good god, as Teresa said, Exhaustion, anhedonia, social and emotional withdrawal, apprehensiveness about things that previously wouldn't have frightened you, and chronically underestimating how much people care about you.

Been there. Thank god for people who cared enough to tell me what they thought of the whole mess. Who were actively supportive (even to the point of being willing to court some serious blowback in standing up for me). It's good I shall never meet the Drews (or at least that if I should, the odds of my knowing them for who they are is slim).

Terry @ 279

Some of the exchanges on other threads make me think of the typewriter meeting years ago at LASFS. Fortunately time has blurred the details of that one (save for it being very acrimonious, and also loud), but tabling stuff for 17,000 years still seems a very good idea.

I think Lisa Drew should have had her bright idea tabled for about that long.

Adrian Smith @ 278

Her group of friends is a small part of that community - probably less than 10%. The community is for a social activity that I love, and where I have responsibilities. And of the 10% who are friends with her, a large percent do realize the kind of things she does... they just don't want to see the knock-down drag-out community-destroying war that confronting her would bring. I don't blame them.

One of the big problems here is that the popular woman has, in the past, suffered from legitimate stalking. For a long time I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and chalked up her somewhat hysterical reactions to people's criticisms of her as a result of damage from previous encounters. I didn't think it was right, but I thought her past trauma had made her somewhat paranoid, and I felt some empathy. I also believe most of her supporters see her as a woman who has been through too much pain and who doesn't need any more. I don't think that they're bad people, just misled.

There have been a few times when I've wanted to scream, because someone has come into the community complaining that someone is harassing them, and she shows no mercy and says that those who harass others are the lowest form of scum, etc. I still believe it may be possible that she doesn't know what she's doing, or she really sees all those monsters...

Still... if someone is making you miserable, the knowledge that they're only doing it because they're probably a little mentally ill isn't very comforting.

It's also a hard question - do I make people who are friends with both of us choose? I can tell them how she makes me feel, but if I tell them we can't be friends unless they dump her, then I'm being just as bad as she is.

The whole situation is, as they say, bad news. That I have been able to stay in the community despite it should be seen as a testament to the rest of the decent people in there.

P J, the Mother From Hell is named Lori Drew, not Lisa Drew.

Mitch Wagner #131: I am 46 years old, and am fully dressed, in T-Shirt, long pants, underwear, socks, and shoes.

I am familiar with the T-Shirt, but what is this "underwear" of which you speak? Is it crucial survival gear one needs to survive in the Other Place with the Searing Light in the Sky that some say exists beyond the Magic Pizza Portal?

Leah @281: Ah right, substantial investment, I see. Bummer.

#254 ::: Piscusfiche pondered:
In the Linux community, people had key signings. You present your address and id and whatnot to somebody whose information has already been verified. They log this information, issue you a key, and all your changes to the Linux packages go out with your key, so that if malicious code were introduced they'd be able to track it down. I can kinda see that sort of thing gaining traction in the future not just among programmers, but among other types of social groups.

If you mean PGP keysignings, the problem with those is consistent - it's never anything close to a full mesh, and it relies on everybody in the trust chain having similar ideas of what "acceptable identity" is. I don't sign keys for people I've only just met, or who just show me government issued photo ID. Neither of those conditions tell me anything helpful about whether that person is somebody I'm willing to be a trust pointer for...

As far as the "met in person" tag goes, I've met a variety of the folks here in the flesh (and even dragged a few to here). Whether that says anything at all about me...

My G-d. There's so much to be appalled by in this story; I can't even think of where to begin.

I can't even imagine how this must be for Megan's parents. When someone you love kills hirself, it's very common to feel somehow at fault. I spent the greater part of a year after my sister's death replaying her lest visit (two weeks prior), trying to figure out what I had done, or failed to do.

To know that there's someone out there who is, if not culpable, at least the beginning of a pretty damning causal chain? I'm not sure I could handle that. I certainly couldn't come out and say that I don't want retribution, just laws to make sure it never happens again.

I believe with all my heart that justice and vengeance are completely separate beasts, and not even in shouting distance of one another, and I know that vengeance is toxic and never-ending. But if that had been my son, I also know that I'm not a strong enough person to make the right choice.

This whole thing makes me tear up when I think about it. Here at work. Fully dressed, and not-yet-forty.

Romeo and Juliet ends up with a set of mind games that I am strongly reminded of - a case where mind games backfire badly.

The tragedy of Megan's death is not - despite the use of the internet - about the internet. It is about mind games, about overparenting by that Drew person trying to live her daughter's teens for her with all the experience and dirty tricks of an adult. Similar effects (a "social death" that leaves the victim seriously considering a self-applied actual death) have been brought about by lies and conniving pretty much since humans developed language. Or possibly earlier.

The technology that made Megan believe that a nonexistent "Josh" would court her should be a side issue; before the Internet it would have been the malicious mother leaving notes signed by the local homecoming king, with some excuse for why they can never communicate outside of notes until some condition is met ("I'm not allowed to date anyone new until after the mid-terms" or some such). It has never been hard to persuade a person of something they really wish was true.

The pertinent fact, I think, is that all the people involved in this tragic situation lived on the same street. The choice of harassment medium deserves less legislative attention than the actual harassment and malicious mischief, against which I am quite certain Missouri has legislated protection for its citizens. Why the local police or sheriff did not move in that direction is a mystery that bears some digging into, I think.

Xopher @ 282

My bad. Sorry.
(Theoretically, I'm working. Of course, that can also be said about every one else around me.)

i was in underpants & a bathrobe when i started reading this thread today, & am now in underwear, corduroys, & two shirts. um. i am twenty-six.

i met dan layman-kennedy briefly in person, & am glad he has been able to rise above a toxic situation (/person) & be with us still. alter s. reiss is my brother-in-law, & he's met teresa & patrick, & i imagine several other posters, from rec.arts.sf days. i missed meeting bruce cohen, speakertomatojuice, by being really stupid & not turning my cellphone on (bruce, i'm very sorry. i hope to make it up to you someday).

i was an odd one in primary & secondary school. probably the only thing that made me come through it ok was having a very close & loving family by design (hi, naomi libicki at 209!), & a best friend who had been pretty much raised with me.

We lose our children everyday to accidents, I know cause I lost my son 6mo. ago to a trucker who blew off a stop sign and killed my son while riding his bike to school. This on the other hand is down right murder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This mother should be tried for the loss of this girls life. Her parents are so devastated and believe me there is nothing worse than loosing your child and getting no justice. I hope they look at this case again and see it for what it is MURDER!!!!!!!!!!! shame on those parents that drove her to this. She may have already had issues, but without their internet harassment maybe she never would have gone there. My prayers go out this family and I hope they get the justice that they deserve.

The parents were responsible for their child's health. You cannot blame someone else for what rests squarely on this girl's parent's shoulders. This girl had clearly many deep seatedd problems before this incident. The parents are in denial and are trying to blame someone else for their failings. I'm disgusted with her parents if anyone. They are the ones who screwed up royaly. If this girl had a strong enough sense of self and her parents were in touch with her emotionally, she would have talked about it rather than do what she did. I see where this is all leading - an attempt to use this family as an example to control people's web use. I'm not saying I agree with the parent who pretended to be someone else. That in itself is unethical but the parents of the girl must take responsibility and examine their own actions or inactions.

Jess A. at 277: I understand you didn't intend that the Drews should be attacked. But given the amount of public commentary now swirling around them, I don't think there's much more "outing" to be done. The individual members of this community -- parents, people who use whatever service the Drews provide, etc. -- pretty much have all the information they need to decide whether or not they want to vacation with these people, let them watch their kids, and so on.

I would hate to see some sort of community "shunning," to the point where they might have to sell their house and move, for example. (I know you said nothing about that -- I'm just riffing off your post.) It might feel good to make them move, but I don't think it would improve the situation -- except, now that I come to think of it, it might improve it for their daughter, who is going to go through all kinds of hell now.

Leah, you have my sympathy. I advise you to stay as far away as possible from this person, and if that triggers her animosity and retaliation, get out of there. Actually, you should probably get out now. None of what you describe is healthy or doing you any good. Some things to consider: 1)This can't be the only place you can engage in this activity that you love. 2)Other people will take up your responsibilities in this group, or not -- once you leave, that ceases to be your problem. 3) In six months, or two years, or whatever, this woman will have moved on, or the situation will have changed, and you will no longer be a target. You can go back to them if you choose to do so. (I don't think I would.)

I have met both Patrick and Teresa, I'm over 60, and I know and have hugged several other folks who post here, and it's nobody's business what I wear when I'm posting. Feel free to indulge your imaginations.

Tania @#271: I suppose posting naked from my couch with a cat across my shoulders might be considered pervy.

No, but it sounds painful! I don't let my cat sit on my bare skin. Heck, even through a blanket, her enthusiasm can draw blood....

Another 41-year-old debatably-perv here... I was in PJs when I first read this thread, but I've since gotten dressed. And yeah, I've had my own introductions to online illusions, some less pleasant than others. In one case, I lost a friend, he almost lost his marriage, and... well, let's just say a whole bunch of folks lost their innocence. I don't think anyone actually committed suicide over that one, but the support group in question had a strong community and dedicated moderators.

The group that Leah wrote about is, frankly, scary. They sound like people who need serious professional help - they sound like social predators.

One day in June many years ago, I got a wedding announcement in the mail. My brother, it seemed, was getting married that same day, in California (I live in New Jersey, for those just joining). Please note, an announcement, not an invitation; he not only wasn't inviting me to his wedding, but wanted to make sure I wouldn't have time to just show up anyway (as if I would do something so gauche).

Well, that wasn't so bad. I wasn't that close to him, though I certainly would have gone to his wedding. What really hurt was finding out that everyone else in the family had known (since about February), had known that I didn't know, and had kept quiet about it at my brother's request.

In truth, I wasn't that good at keeping in touch, and I wasn't really on speaking terms with my father at that point (and for some time thereafter), but I had been in contact with my mother: on Mother's Day I'd sent her 13 yellow roses, and spent an hour or two talking with her on the phone, and she never said a word.

I wrote her a subzero letter about this, saying that I guess I couldn't blame her for keeping solidarity with the son who she'd actually have to deal with (they all live in CA now), and who might at some point provide her with grandchildren. I made it clear that I thought [NAME REDACTED] just didn't want the queer brother at the feast.

She wrote back words to the effect of "No, it's not that you're gay. It's that you're obnoxious, and he doesn't like you and never has."

Well, I didn't speak to my mother for years after that, though we exchanged emails. Certainly no more yellow roses were forthcoming. (When you're in shock, you regress to your early training, and mine was Behaviorism: don't reward behavior you want to extinguish.) I didn't speak to my brother for much longer than that.

It wasn't until years later that I found out that I had been excluded at the bride's request, because she felt her conservative relatives would not be able to accept me. Or so she said. I felt this was more or less equivalent to "I don't mind Mexicans, but if I let them eat at my restaurant my other customers will be offended," and I said so. Oh, I forgot to mention the bride was Mexican. Details.

I few years ago (and a decade of therapy later) I decided that I needed to let go of all that (I'd been leaning that way for some time, and hearing that the marriage in question had ended in a messy divorce pushed it over the edge). I decided not to mention it unless someone brought it up, and went to visit them for Christmas. Things were really stiff and awkward between me and my brother, not least because the Southern California sunshine made me jabber like an untied balloon. But we got through it. And I was all scared that my brother and my dad in particular, and the whole family in general, would be just waiting their chance to poke one of my known buttons and start a fight.

But they didn't. I wasn't the only one who'd worked on issues, apparently. My resolution to be just as nice to them as they were to me paid off in spades, as we tried to outdo each other in niceness (my family always finds some way to compete).

These days things are fine. I don't hang with my brother, but I bear him no ill will, and as far as I know that's mutual. My parents and I actually have had FUN together, which would have shocked me had you told me even 10 years ago that it would happen.

And my other two married sibs have good, strong marriages, one of which has given my mother a grandchild. See? Gotta invite the queer brother to the wedding if you want the marriage to last!

I forgot to mention that I've met Patrick and Teresa and Jim and Avram (briefly) and several other people who post here. If Lizzy L is who I think she is, I've been an uki (if I use the term correctly) for a self-defense demo she gave at a convention once. I bet she wears Aikido pants while posting (hey, she said to indulge our imaginations).

More media stuff:

According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, some members of the local community have made their opinion about the Drews very clear over the past year.

Something claiming to be Lori Drew made a cartooney at hitsusa.

A bag of slime oozed onto blogspot to say that megan had it coming. Currently 502'd, but I have a saved copy on another computer.

Leah Miller @ 281: "It's also a hard question - do I make people who are friends with both of us choose? I can tell them how she makes me feel, but if I tell them we can't be friends unless they dump her, then I'm being just as bad as she is."

In a similar situation, I tried to take that high road. In the end, what I felt/realised/paranoidly speculated was that when my friends didn't take a side... it felt like they had taken a side. Against me. This in a case where I was being roundly mistreated by a couple of parties who were trying to cast me as the villain (which, if you knew the details, was an absurdity beyond belief); much as I wanted to be even-handed, the way it hit my gut was that people who wanted to be friends with people who had treated me so viciously couldn't have that much affection or respect for me... therefore maybe they weren't my friends.
It took a lot of years to learn to accept some of them, but a lot I just left behind. Can't value yourself if you hang around people who accept your belittlement.

Oh, and I've never met anyone here. I'm a figment! Does that mean I don't have to wear clothes?

Xopher: uke.

And yes, I think I've met Avram, once or twice, now as I think on it.

I'm 34 and wearing my pajamas. And I can only think, right offhand, of one occasional commentor around here that I know I've met in person on a couple of occasions, and who has met a different (and more illustrious) subset of the Usual Suspects on a more recent occasion, but I'm going to leave it to that individual's discretion whether they really want to vouch for my existence.

Now, whenever Mr. Macdonald leads the grand expedition to go hunting for the glowing tombstone in Portsmouth, I'll see if I can swing down and illuminate the fluorosphere with my, uh, radiant wit or something. I really should have gone down there last month, I need to get some rum and Everything's Cheaper In New Hampshire.

#291 wwolfette: You cannot blame someone else for what rests squarely on this girl's parent's shoulders.

Hi there. Welcome to Making Light.

Seeing as you're posting from California I presume that you, like most of us, only know what's been printed in the papers. Based on those reports, what else were Megan's parents supposed to be doing? They were monitoring her Internet use (far more closely than many of us do with our own children), they had her in therapy, they moved her to a new school to get away from bullying, and they had her under medical care.

Do you think that the Mom-Down-The-Street had any responsibility for the events? 25%? 10%? None? Would her phone call to the girl across the street while the ambulance was still at Megan's house, warning that girl to keep silent, show some hint of a guilty conscience?

What is your answer to the question, "Am I to be my brother's keeper?" What is your answer to the question, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

Is the protection of children solely the responsibility of each set of parents, or is there a general community responsibility?

Does the government have a legitimate interest in the health and safety of children?

Do you feel that the Mom-Down-The-Street acted morally? Did she act ethically? Do you feel that her actions should be the universal law for rational beings?

Oh! On the subject of clothing -- I'm currently posting in my bathrobe, having managed to catch whatever ick is currently going around, and currently being in a state that involves my cats not only sleeping less than I am, but also having a vastly superior attention span, even in the face of shiny objects. (If I owe anybody email, I apologize... I'll eventually get better, catch up and respond)

It's uke, Xopher, and gods that was a long time ago! No, I don't wear my gi pants in my home office, which is where the computer lives. My gi and hakama are at the dojo, unless I take 'em home to wash them.

Jim at 301, I deeply admire your patience. Great post. Let's see if you get a response...

I appreciate the sympathy from everyone, but the last thing I wanted to do was paint the group I belong to as scary. It's really only three or four people there who have caused me specific distress, and I'd hate to see the entire community tarred with the same brush (despite the fact that I haven't outlined their actual identity here).

A while ago someone linked to an essay on Geek Social Fallacies. While I was originally indignant and felt the article was wrong in many ways, upon later and wiser re-readings I realized that the writer specified that all of the fallacies were actually good ideas that had been extended to the point of dysfunction. I think a LOT of trouble with persistent harassment being permitted in geek social circles comes from that very problem: some logically rational idea being extended to its breaking point, and people bending over backward not to be 'unfair' or 'take sides.'

There's a huge problem in geek social circles. The line of reasoning goes something like this: "If DudeA has never been mean to me specifically, and I haven't specifically witnessed DudeA being cruel to someone else, then I have to give DudeA the benefit of the doubt."

This makes it really easy for people who do their business in private messages and behind the scenes to get away with things. Hell, I've almost never disliked someone who didn't show naked hatred for me first (Unless I had definite evidence of them deliberately harming one of my friends). I've always been the peacemaker; I also tend to forgive just about anything that's done to me, if the person apologizes. Before this woman targeted me, I thought she could be reasoned with, and tried to make peace between her and the people she was having conflicts with on many occasions. I wish I knew a good way to disabuse people of this notion of infinite benefit of the doubt... but the fact is that I have a lot of trouble breaking the habit myself.

I have no fear of specific trolls and thugs - a troll has few real supporters, in most cases, and harms people deliberately, out in the open. The most dangerous people are the ones who are very, very nice to everyone until they are angry with them, and then they are very, very quiet about how they go about taking out that anger. They will always have a large cadre of supporters who say "DudeA has never said a mean thing about anyone! This person accusing them is obviously jealous/ugly/evil/mistaken."

I originally considered doing as several people here have suggested, and leaving the whole community - but if I did that, then that small handful of people would have won, and they would have eliminated one of the very few strong voices who will stand against them if something like this happens in the future. At this point I've gotten over it, for the most part. I'm still scared of them, yeah... but Teresa's symptom outline has helped me get even farther down that road to recovery, especially now that I realize that the fear is probably largely unjustified, and that people do care about me more than I think.

I think one of the things that will help me a lot is being able to talk about it here. I've avoided going into a lot of details about it with my friends over there because (and this is hilariously ironic) I didn't want to be seen as talking behind her back and getting her friends to turn against her. I may finally be able to get over that now, and talk with them. That's another flaw with my generation - we don't want to be seen as 'emo,' and we see whining to someone as putting a burden on them... so we avoid talking about this kind of stuff until we nearly break down.

A bag of slime oozed onto blogspot to say that megan had it coming.

I assumed upon reading it that the blog was written by either a)a troll or b)a deeply misguided sympathiser to the Meiers, trying to whip people into a frenzy of outrage against the Drews - it's such a pallid and pathetic attempt at defending the indefensible it just didn't ring true. Who would seriously argue that someone dedserved to be hounded to death?

If it were written by (b), they must be very pleased that most people assume it was written either by Lori Drew or her daughter. But surely the Drews would be under legal advice to keep a low profile. Just doesn't ring true ...

Lizzy 303: I'm pleased you remember. Do you remember a very earnest feminist (though at the time I would have said my Y chromosome disqualified me from the label) gayboy with frizzy blond curls?

I'm still earnest, feminist, and gay, but the blond curls have gone the way of all flesh.

Another saying from the Fleet: "If you get out because of all the assholes, only assholes will be left."

(Private for you-know-who: "Most ships do, but few boast of it.")

This is horrible...it makes me want to cry for her. I could never understand the amount of pain a person has to feel to take their own life. Though I admit I've silently thought out "What ifs" to console myself in times of despair in hopes of knowing I would be missed.

It breaks my heart when I find something like this. I'm not old enough to claim I have enough life experience to know what was behind that mother's intentions. But the media has been bringing stories of parent's 'accidentally' hurting or killing their children. Its heartbreaking.

40 and wearing jeans, t-shirt, and several cats. I've spoken briefly with Patrick once or twice though I seriously doubt he remembers me. However I know at least one other Tor editor quite well, so I could probably establish that I exist if needed.

Reading this, I am so glad that I was in middle and high school long before the age of MySpace.

37, and it's far too chilly here with heating oil at $3/gallon to sit around in my underwear. I'm wearing a big purple sweater and black jeans.

I know I've met Mr. Macdonald last year, at Arisia, because I was doing consuite food prep when he was running the VP brunch. When I realized who he was, I praised his Cold Blows The Wind Today post. If Nancy L is the Nancy of nancybuttons, I've been aware of her since my first convention in 1984, but I doubt she'd know me from any other customer. And David Harmon might be the same one I knew from an MIT group c. 1987? Or maybe not.

There are also some people I only know from other online interactions, but recognize their presence and persona. (Hi, Madeline F.!)

And I read out the bit about "40 year old pervert in his underwear" to my 12-year-old daughter, who has an LJ but not a MySpace. I hope that the message will sink in, as well as the humor.

Still wearing a T-shirt, pants, underwear, socks and shoes.

The same clothes as yesterday, as a matter of fact. I work from home, and my wife has gotten used to the odor.

as we tried to outdo each other in niceness (my family always finds some way to compete).

LOL! Sounds like some sublimation going on there... usually a good thing! ;-)

#304: I like those Geek Fallacies, and it's nice to see somebody getting memetic terminology right!

I'll add that poor social skills (think Aspie) can include not really getting the idea of "reputation", and thereby screwing up in any of several ways -- soiling their own, failing to keep track of others', or being unable to separate malicious gossip from "mouth-to-mouth news".

The thing that really hit me the deepest (at least as something I'd take away personally from what I've been reading about this) of all the terrible things surrounding this whole event, was the report of Tina and Megan's last words to each other: " 'I am so aggravated at you for doing this!' she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, 'You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!' "

I can't imagine how I could go on if that's what I kept hearing over and over in my head and wishing there was some way to take it all back. I can't imagine how I'd go on even if my last words to my child were loving and supportive, but the extra load of guilt, seems to me, would be excruciating.

I'm not, just to be clear, trying to point any finger of blame at Tina - moms and daughters get into fights all the time and they blow over, how could anyone know this one would be different?

My daughter is 20 and I guess I was very, very lucky - I honestly can't remember having a fight with her from the time she was 12 to the present day. My son, whole different story in terms of his teen years, but he's 22 and in Iraq now, and I make sure that every conversation I have with him ends in me telling him I love him and am proud of him. I know that every time we talk, it could be the last time we talk.

If I ever do end up having words with my daughter, I hope this is so firmly fixed in my mind that I make sure that, no matter what angry words have just flown between us, I remember to tell her that I still, and always will, love her. Just in case.

(reality check: 50, never posts nude, met Teresa, Patrick and Serge at WorldCon in L.A. and Lee at NASFic)

Leah: Thanks for the link to the Geek Fallacies. A lot of your described experience really rings true with me.

Thena@ 300: I want to do a trip to the glowing tombstone myself. Maybe we should throw an unofficial Fluorosphere gathering, and pick a date.

My 12-year-old Fi said, when we talked about this tonight, "Kids do this now, with notes."

I pointed out the problem was a grownup was involved. So we discussed strategies for figuring out if someone was real. And she told me she didn't want to be on social-networking sites yet anyway. Then she angled to try to get us to buy her some anime downloads instead.

Yup, we love that kid.

Xopher #296: I forgot to mention that I've met Patrick and Teresa and Jim and Avram (briefly) and several other people who post here.

I met Patrick at ArmadilloCon 18 in 1996, when he was Editor Guest of Honor. I thanked him for the quality of his posts on the GEnie SFRT, where he had recently won some flame wars in impressive fashion. I don't remember if I've met any other of ML's guiding lights in person.

OT for RikiBeth @ #311: Quite possible, as I was hanging out with MIT crowds then. (I was actually studying at Harvard, albeit in fits and starts). The groups you might remember would be the PSG in meatspace, or the kin-shards online (being a relative newbie, I managed to stay on good terms with both sides of the split). I went to a few cons with the online crowd, too. Sometime around then I was also working for the Athena Project.

I dropped out of that social scene in the late 90's, eventually moving down to NYC. A few months ago, I moved further south to Virginia.

Glancing at your LJ page, I can't say I recognize you, but between one thing and another, I don't know how many folks from that era I would recognize! Regardless, if you want to go to E-mail for reminiscence, I'm game....

Dawno: yeah the Iraq thing makes it hard. Letters are good. Phone calls were iffy, but when I could get them, they were golden (even the horrible one which was practically drowned out by the blackhawk... though as I recall {at the time} it sucked terribly to be on the phone; pointlessly).

Lizzy L.: Aikido?

Dawno @ 314: And the worst of it is, that remark came as part of trying to protect her daughter. She'd been trying to monitor her daughter's use of MySpace, to be responsible, and unknowingly said the wrong thing.

Meg, #201: At a slight tangent to your comment, another extremely common meme in the areas of romance and fantasy is, "If the man you want treats you like shit, it's just because he hasn't realized yet how much he loves you." On a cultural level, I consider this the equivalent of grooming women for exploitation by physical and emotional abusers.

James Marsters earned my undying respect for saying, in a speech at a convention where he was one of the media guests, that he was APPALLED by the number of women who considered Spike a desirable sexual partner. He went on to say, "If a man is mean to other people, sooner or later he'll be mean to YOU." That's a message that needs to be broadcast much more often and more loudly.

David, #207: You're probably right. And once again, I'm thinking about the Carrollton church bus disaster. What the article doesn't mention, but I remember from reading the media coverage during the trial, is that one of the primary defenses put forth was that if the bus had been more safely constructed, fewer people would have died. To me, that's exactly what Lori Drew is doing -- trying to pretend that SHE really had nothing to do with it, it was all because of the victim's prior problems anyhow.

Naomi, #209: Not "an attractive man" but "a STUNNINGLY attractive, perfect man". You're ignoring the bit about things that seem too good to be true, and there's a reason behind that aphorism. It's perfectly reasonable to teach young women that there are a lot of men out there who will like you for who you are, but that they are not likely to appear like magic just when Prince Charming would be a welcome visitor.

Side thought... I wonder where they got the picture they used for "Josh"? If it was something like an actor's publicity photo, I would think that person has grounds for action on the basis of unauthorized use of his image.

Doctor Science, #214: Of course anti-bullying campaigns have "liberal" written all over them. So did the abolitionist movement, and the women's suffrage movement, and the union movement, and the civil rights movement. Bullying is a normal and accepted part of current American culture, and cultural change is always spearheaded by liberals.

Dan, #252: Especially considering my therapist's reaction to the whole debacle was "But he's your father."

*incoherent sound* I have no words to properly describe my response to that. (Well, I sort of do, but they'd get their vowels removed.) You were absolutely dead right to fire that therapist, and I don't blame you a bit for being hesitant about sticking your head back into that fire-ants' nest after being so badly bitten the first time.

Xopher said something here not very long ago that seems appropriate in context: "It's often hard for someone who grew up in an unreasonable family to understand what being in a reasonable one is like. It's impossible for someone who grew up in a reasonable family to understand what being in an unreasonable one is like." Which in no way excuses what that therapist did to you, but probably does explain it.

Julia, #255: Don't you have a way to ban that person from commenting? (This is probably ignorance speaking; one of the things I like about LiveJournal is that it does let me ban both specific individuals and anonymous commenters.)

Side tangent... I am SO glad that both my parents died before I started having any significant online presence, and that I have little contact with anyone else in my family. I suspect that this has saved me a great deal of grief.

Greg, #265: I specifically use phrases like "letting go" or "walking away" to describe what you're talking about here, because there's such a lot of pressure to think of "forgiveness" as "saying it's all right". And I've had people try to scold me for not being "willing to forgive" someone who had hurt me so badly that I wasn't about to let them back into my life in any way, even though I was no longer wasting my own energy on being angry with them. To which I responded that if they didn't shut up about it, I'd be happy to include them in my invitation to the world as well.

Picusfiche, #270: See Theresa's comment @164. This is not a "small town" in any traditional sense of the definition; it's a rich-bedroom commuter suburb. I would expect any teenager living there to have a cellphone, home-schooled or not. In fact, I might expect a home-schooled kid to be more likely to have one, as Mom & Dad would want to use it as an activity-monitoring device.

Oh, all right, everyone else is jumping off the cliff. Age 51, wearing a Celtic-print tunic and nothing else. And let's see... I met, and briefly chatted with, Theresa at ConDFW a few years ago; I met James & Debra (and got them to sign all my Mageworlds books) at ConStellation a few years before that; I've known NancyL since ChiCon 1991, where I spent $100 on one rummage thru her tables; I knew Randolph for years on a.c., although we only met FTF at this year's NASFIC, which is also where I met Dawno; there are probably others I've met who I'm not remembering at the moment. Some of them would know me under the nick Celine. And I have a good sense of the "realness" of a lot of you who I haven't met.

(I do wonder whether "wwolfette" isn't someone trying to make trouble for another online acquaintance of mine who goes by "wolfette" without the extra W.)

Dan, #252, I probably don't want to know if he's the Layman or Kennedy part of your name. My father has never used computers and is now in a locked ward for violent Alzheimer's patients. My brother and I sometimes wish there'd been a locked ward for him when we were kids. But if he were to show up and say things about me, I doubt they could be worse than the things he's already said to me and that's why I don't see him anymore. I'd just ban him.

John @ 320 - and I'd bet that's where most of the arguments parents and kids have come from (at least it was in my experience with my son). We know what's coming if they go down a certain path and we want to protect them.

Sometimes they ignore you and do it anyway, but it'll be years (and sometimes never) before you hear them say "you were right, thanks for caring" - if you're lucky and they made it out of the situation ok. It makes me even sadder for Tina.

Terry @ 319 - I am one of the more fortunate ones in that my son has wireless internet access where he is and can IM and email me with some frequency. He also has a cell phone he got there and he calls fairly often, too. On the other hand, when I don't hear from him for a while, I get way too anxious. I hope this passes soon, the sleepless nights are taking a pretty heavy toll.

Terry at 319: yeah. For 36 years. Also Iaido, for about 20.

Xopher at 306, amazingly enough, I do. Dimly. My hair's still there, but it's mostly silver.

Dawno at 314, you sound like one hell of a wonderful Mom. Blessings, on you and your kids. May they be safe.

Thank you Lizzy - and as for the blessing, your lips to [insert name of higher power]'s ears. My daughter is going to drive all night to come home for Thanksgiving tonight!

Leah Miller: That sounds like exactly the situation I was in some years ago... Except I've seen the end of the story.

I watched her and her circle of friends attempt to destroy the reputation of anyone who ever said anything bad about her within her hearing, again and again ... a social activity that I love, and where I have responsibilities ... they just don't want to see the knock-down drag-out community-destroying war that confronting her would bring ... if I [left], then that small handful of people would have won, and they would have eliminated one of the very few strong voices who will stand against them if something like this happens in the future...

--Don't help these people unless they've specifically asked you to
--Don't help people who won't stand up with you
--Don't stick around making a place nice if, in order to stick around, you must endure your reputation constantly dropping from the subtle attacks of a crazy person who has it in for you
--Don't stick around making a place nice if, in order to stick around, you must endure Oh Crap What Now twitches every time you see the name of some person of importance there

Search your feelings. Has this woman ever accepted someone again as a friend once she has it in her head that they're working against her? Does everyone else there have their own reasons, much like yours, that they will continue to endure the craziness after you have been shouldered out?

If you get out now, the fears you have about how a war would go need never be realized. Instead of a group of people you must forgive for not standing with you, you'll still have a group of people who would no doubt have totally gone to the mat for you if you'd needed them. Also, by leaving in a quiet time, you'll be much less likely to have her assassinating your character. Thus, you'll be saner and have more social ability to help others who must escape, instead of being "that crazy freak ok maybe I'm having problems but I wasn't bringing them on myself like she did".

I hope for you that however it turns out it will turn out pretty well.

Dawno @ 314... 50, never posts nude, met Teresa, Patrick and Serge at WorldCon in L.A. and Lee at NASFic

52. No nude posting, but sometimes in a robe and hopefully a better sight then than Richard Grant was when thus attired in Whitnail and I. Have met Abi, Teresa, Patrick, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, David Goldfarb, Tom Whitmore, Dawno, Susan, Lisa Goldstein. Does all of that make me real?

Lizzy L @324: I have no idea whether Terry's reaction is based on the same basis as I have, but the only context in which I've previously seen uke (and its counterpart seme) is yaoi fandom. My mind, it is boggled.

#327 ::: Serge says:
Have met Abi, Teresa, Patrick, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, David Goldfarb, Tom Whitmore, Dawno, Susan, Lisa Goldstein. Does all of that make me real?

This is almost starting to sound like a certain story involving puppets, well meaning and less well meaning persons, and the trouble a young person can get into because they want to be real... er... Okay. I think I just twitched.

Julie L. at 328: no, the reference has nothing to do with yaoi. Aikido is a Japanese martial art. Uke means, "the one who falls" -- or is thrown.

xeger @ 329... I'm really real. No sock. No muppet. Someone even left a message to me in the 6th issue of LAcon's newsletter last year. That has got to be the reality-concretizer.

#331 ::: Serge asserted:
xeger @ 329... I'm really real. No sock. No muppet. Someone even left a message to me in the 6th issue of LAcon's newsletter last year. That has got to be the reality-concretizer.

I gotta say... now I want to figure out a way to have random messages inserted into the 6th issue of the next LAcon's newsletter... ;)

"Serge - xeger wants to investigate your quantum state. Will you vanish if observed?"

Lizzy, in Yaoi the uke is what in America we'd call a bottom (often in many senses). You can see how the terms would be related.

xeger @ 332... In that case, the message's author was trying to observe me and couldn't find me anywhere.

Julie L: My reaction is probably exactly the same as Lizzie's, years of aikido means that uki is wrong.

Lizzie L: I've been doing aikido, off and on, for going on 14 years. I guessed aikido because iado isn't the sort of thing Xopher would be allowed to be uke for, and there's not much else where hakama are worn.

I'd like to do iado, but the only dojo I know of is so far away as to make it prohibitive (that and we plan to move to someplace where the aikido is great, but the iado non-existent).

Dan Layman-Kennedy @ 252: "Especially considering my therapist's reaction to the whole debacle was "But he's your father." Alas, talk therapy and I also parted ways at that point, and we have not reached a reconciliation since."

It seems to me the main problem with talk therapy is that for it to work, the therapist has to be sane. Somehow, this never seems to be the case.

Leah Miller @ 276: If it helps, picture her as a forty year-old pervert sitting around in his underwear. Actually, I give this a damn good chance of being correct--I think 90% of all "beautiful" people are the internet are really exceptionally homely members of the opposite gender.

(And demanding photos from you? Ew.)

My classical japanese is a bit patchy, but I believe the original meaning of Ukeru is "to receive," so the Uke is "one who receives." It also, amusingly enough means to take (damage or a lesson) and to catch (as in a ball), or to undergo. I could go on, a lot the of other funny definition variants add meaning to both the martial arts meaning and the yaoi one.

Two of my friends who are engaged illustrate this contrast perfectly. He used to do judo, she writes explicit fanfic. He finds the alternate meaning of Uke slightly disconcerting.

Serge @ #334, "the message's author was trying to observe me"

So you're He-Who-Must-Be-Observed?

I haven't met anyone else who posts here in person that I'm aware of. Clifton Royston saw me (it turned out) in a local used bookstore once. And there was that recent marriage which informed our hosts that we were suddenly related. Since Teresa met my cousins then, I suppose that counts toward me being real.

Dawno: re connections: I'm glad you have regular contact. The sense of worry about the empty times, will not go away. I'm sorry. When that happens the best thing to do is figure that no news is good news.

I recall my agonies when we got internet (in 2003, it was not common, and we had to strain our privileges to the utmost to get access, and then we had to fight like blazes to keep it). Maia had, in the intervening six weeks, given up on checking for e-mail, and I was tearing my hair out at the lack of response. I finally sent an email to someone else to tell her to check it.

Making Light was, actually, a great comfort because most of the places I might have wanted to go were blocked (bandwidth issues).

If I can help, just drop me a line.

Terry Karney @ 335:

I guessed aikido because iado isn't the sort of thing Xopher would be allowed to be uke for,...

Heresiarch @ 230

Damn, bit by the nannyfilter again. I composed this 12 hours ago and couldn't send it, then forgot about it completely (been hiding from a migraine since 4 this morning, so my memory is not what it should be). Apologies for the delay.

I really want to agree with you; the thing that stops me is that I don't see a lot of evidence that law enforcement is willing to enforce the laws that do exist, or that they will enforce any changed or new laws. What I see in a lot of local law enforcement situations* is that police, sheriffs, prosecutors, and often judges act as vigilantes themselves, trying to get revenge for the community in the name of justice, and not trying** to deal with problems which go outside the narrow confines of what they can easily do.

Maybe you're right, and we're better off being very conservative about the actions we take against people we consider transgressors. But I fear for the society I live in if it can't make clear that acts like this, especially ones that cause serious injury, mental or physical, or death, are not acceptable in civilized society. At times I fear that our society in fact doesn't feel that way and isn't civilized.

* both in my hometown and other towns whose news I happen to come across. Some of what I see locally has come from conversations with local lawyers and newspeople.
** in fact, trying not to

Pyre: I think we should draw this to a close, lest the point be lost and the fine edge of discussion be lost.

Pyre: I think we should draw this to a close, lest the point be lost and the fine edge of discussion be dulled.

Who says there are no charges? Harrassment. The emotional distress one. And if the anti-paedophile laws can't be interpreted to prevent adults from pretending to be children to take advantage of those children non-sexually, they need some rewriting, because it's the same situation.

Teresa @ 48: that so many people were in on the creation of "Josh," but not one of them stopped to think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

It's almost always easier to send a room full of people to war than it is to send one or two. There's this saying -- about boys at a certain age, girls at a different age, but I think it applies to people in general whenever stirring up violence or discord -- that the group IQ is the lowest IQ in the group divided by the number of members...

But also there are other factors at play: people who do things like this frequently tend to have narcissistic personality disorder, for instance.

When I was about seven years old, I was kicked out of my Campfire troop for being weird. (That was pretty much the official reason: "you're weird and no one likes you.") Now, mind you, this was true -- I was weird and probably quite obnoxious, and no one liked me -- but then the troop leader handled this by writing a huge multi-page letter to my mother with this gigantic screed about how awful every member of my family was. It even contained nasty insults slung at my older brother -- who was generally quite mild-mannered, and whom she'd met maybe once.

My mother went on the warpath for a while and complained to everyone about it, but I privately thought good riddance once I realized this person was... not firing in all cylinders. And that lesson stuck with me -- if, in the sendoff, they give you a hundred reasons to not want to be there any longer, be grateful for the sendoff, even if it's a rude one. I feel lucky that I wasn't targeted more severely, looking back. I've had this happen as a child and very occasionally as an adult, and I know a lot of my social avoidance is aimed at preventing that kind of thing from ever, ever happening.

I don't know there's a moral to the story. I guess I just wanted to reconfirm that predatory adults are not just found in their underpants, so to speak.

Dawno, Terry Karney: Tor/Privoxy/Vidalia Bundle (a Mozilla add-on) slowly gets around the Great Firewall here; I don't know if it would also work elsewhere, but maybe give it a go?

Oh, and from here, I've met Bruce Cohen, plus a couple of occasionals. I've met quite a number more of my Livejournal friends; a few years ago, I went on a roadtrip to visit about twenty of them.

Speaking as a first-time poster and as a minor in my country (well, for the next three months) and a minor for some more years according to US law, where ML is based, I have a question which I haven't seen answered in roughly three years of reading ML and given earlier comments, this looks like the best time to ask:

What are ML's guidelines on minors commenting? Are we allowed to? I understand that this blog sometimes mentions topics which would be considered unsuitable for underage posters, and I take it as read that even if I want to comment to those, I probably shouldn't. Does that apply to ML as a whole?

Lee #321:

A reasonable caution is undoubtedly a good idea. However, the line between "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" and "If it's good, it probably isn't true" is not necessarily a clear and bright one, especially to a young teenager with an imperfect grasp of emotional nuance. I prefer to err on the side of optimism. This probably has something to do with the fact that I've had a basically good life, and nothing really bad has ever happened to me.

(Please not that the causation I'm implying goes in one direction -- I've had a good life, so I tend to be optimistic. In no way do I mean to imply that optimism will magically protect you from bad things.)

(Also for the record, I will be twenty-eight in a week and change, am fully clothed, and don't care to discuss my perversions or lack thereof at the moment. I've met probably between ten and twenty of the regular posters here, mostly casually. miriam beetle, however, can vouch for the last twenty-six years or so of my existence, although she probably remembers the first few of those imperfectly at best. Alter S. Reiss is better qualified to settle the pervert question.)

Long time Making Light reader, first time Making Light poster. I've been following this story and regularly posting about it since it broke on Nov. 14. I'm thrilled to see it showing up in so many places, because I think people need to read it (for the record, I'm not in favor of posting the (supposed) perpetrators' addresses and contact info to the world; that's just asking for trouble).

An additional horrific component to this story, for me, was the fact that the parents down the street targeted someone whom they knew suffered from depression. As someon who has had this disease since age 7, I can say from experience that it can make you more vulnerable to sick games like this at *any* age. I've known depressed people who made suicide attempts after being targeted by sociopaths with some 'net savvy.

A few years ago, a really nasty person targeted a a friend who also has clinical depression. Said nasty person spread lies about my friend (that he was crazy, that he was a stalker and a pedophile, etc.), and got quite a few well-meaning people to buy it ... largely because he was friends with a few people (including me) she had decided were "crazy stalkers" who wanted to kill her. As an added piece of irony, his stalker also sent *me* a death threat (or got one of her friends to do it). I was very young then, just barely 20, and my mental health problems were still largely undiagnosed and untreated, so you can imagine how much this terrified me.

A few months later, my friend tried to take his life by overdosing on perscription pills. He was in his early to mid-20s at the time, and his attempt was serious enough to hospitalize him for several days. He should've been hospitalized longer, I think, but mental health care sucks where he lives. Although it was ultimately his decision to overdose, I still blame that disgusting woman for a large part of it. Shem like the family down the block, *knew* my friend had mental health issues.

Although I would never want to see laws passed to force people to be "nice" to each other, part of me really would not be sorry to see people who knowingly goad depressives (particularly with dares to kill themselves) to face at least some heavy fines. I mean, call me old fashioned but a society and its laws are only as good as how they treat the most vulnerable of citizens.

NB: I'm not posting with my usual handle or email address here only because I wouldn't want my friend to stumble across this and identify his story, or for people who know me to deduce who he is from my very abbreviated account. He's suffered enough these past several years, and I don't want to be the inadvertent cause of any more embarrassment or suffering.

But I do assure you that I'm 27, fully clothed and not at all a peverted old man. :)

Lindra@346: What are ML's guidelines on minors commenting?

In the years I've been reading Making Light, I don't recall any mention of a restriction against minors commenting. But then I wasn't looking for it, being an old fart who long ago lost the ability to qualify as underage. hm.

Lindra @ 346, I started on Usenet as a minor (and thank the Gods I did; if there's a reason I can count exactly zero suicide attempts/ideations in my own history, it's growing up late enough to get on the Internet as a teen) and so I'm shall we say very sensitive to attempts to restrict minors from communicating with older adults as they will.* Attempts which have only gotten worse over time, as the recent Livejournal debacle shows.

To my knowledge Making Light has none of these barriers in place, which is in keeping with its tendency to exemplify All That Was Good About Usenet. I've seen young teens come out as writers on this blog and be encouraged by the blessed folk here.

*As opposed to the other way around. I'm perfectly willing to say there should be restrictions preventing adults from, say, willfully misleading minors.

I should ante up. Fifty, in my robe (with underwear on, thank you very much), and I've met Bill Higgins. I'm barely real.

WaitsFan24 @ 348... I would never want to see laws passed to force people to be "nice" to each other

The Republicans call that legislating morality.

Shame can be a good weapon although not always swift enough. Sometimes a person's nasty nature finally catches up with her/him when they commit an act that gets thru to what little conscience they have. That happened to one of my aunts, who didn't like us, for some reason: when her husband got Alzheimer's, she started getting rid of his stuff, but he wasn't so far gone that he couldn't figure out what was going on. He passed away, and so did she eventually, but her last days apparently were filled with guilt. Good.

Well, I'm 47 and currently dressed, although I confess to occasionally posting here in my underwear if it is early in the morning. I have met a couple of posters here, but my wife (reader, not poster) has met more than I. Does that make me real? I'd hate to find out I'm only a figment of my imagination...

Several years ago I was befriended by a poster with similar interests as mine on a Usenet highway-related newsgroup. We soon became friends and allies on the group, and he relied on my design experience to bolster several arguments he had with others online about various highway controversies in his state.

At times he would call on the weekends to just talk, and I soon found he was a very lonely person in real life, with nothing much other than his computer to keep him company. He would stay on the phone for hours, sometime until very late at night despite my efforts to end the conversation. When my wife and I were in his area on vacation, he arranged to meet us and again overstayed his visit, staying with us at the hotel until I literally had to push him out the door so we could rest.

Then, one time online, I disagreed with his position on an issue, and he sent me an email accusing me of "backstabbing" him on it. My attempts at explanation weren't good enough, and he began making public comments on the newsgroup questioning my integrity and legitimacy in my field of engineering. Pretty soon it got to the point that if I said anything referring to my experience on the newsgroup, he was questioning it and making pointed comments about whether I was qualified to even make such statements.

We were also both members of an email-based discussion group that he had created to avoid the controversies and arguments that always seemed to spring up in the public newsgroup. One day I found myself barred from the group, and when others asked why I wasn't posting there any longer, this person announced I had requested I be removed from the mailing list. One of the other participants emailed this exchange to me, at which point I emailed every other member of the mailing list a message saying that he had summarily removed me from the group without my permission. This revelation had several others question this person about his intentions, and he finally admitted he had removed me "because of our past disagreements". Several others promptly asked to be removed as well.

Since then he has emailed me threatening to actually call/email my supervisors at work in an attempt to verify my qualifications and work experience, and hinted that if I were to silence myself about issues he had an interest in, he would not do so. At the time I was running a website about a massive highway project I had been the lead design engineer on, and had given my responsibilities on that project and my work experience/qualifications there. He felt I had overstated my responsibilities and was looking for something he could accuse me of that could lead to me losing my professional licensing.

I called his bluff and told him to take his best shot, that my supervisors not only knew of the website, but they liked and approved of it. He then backed down, but since then he has not stopped the constant sniping and questioning when I post on that newsgroup.

I found the best tactic I could take with him was to use the killfile feature to not see his posts, and the majority of readers support my participation there, so he is now just a minor irritant to me.

Marilee: If it's any consolation, the Kennedy side. My family-in-law has no shortage of fascinating disfunction, mind, but they're none of them Sith lords (AFAICT).

Lee, Heresiarch: My therapist was basically a nice person with some odd blinders about certain things that had to do with a certain quirky old-fashioned mindset. It's not that I got nothing out of my time in that arrangement, but that was the point at which I realized I wasn't really being listened to; it's not like I hadn't been talking about dear old dad's various atrocities for a long time by then. Sigh. I realize this has made me more gunshy about therapy than is really good for me, depressive that I am, but it's a little disheartening to realize that you've already developed more coping tools than the professional is giving you. And I'm a subversive, fannish bisexual, and under no illusions about what the odds are of finding someone who isn't going to think of at least one of those things as a disorder to be corrected.

On iaido: I have a friend who was practicing a few years ago (still is, as far as I know, but we've been out of touch for a while), and that is one of the most elegant and beautiful things to watch done, and also one of the most terrifying once you understand the applications. I have to hand it to any culture that devotes effort to solving problems like "What's the most efficient way to kill a guy standing in a doorway?" Amazing stuff.

I got to the article from the Lanaia Lee thread at the original blog, so I suppose most ML regulars already know it, but in case it's of any use to anybody else:

The Life and Death of Jesse James: An internet love mystery by the screenwriter of A History of Violence - the guy obviously has talent, but may be too close a pal with Harlan Ellison for his own (prose style's) good...

[Capsule, spoiler warning: A pro net impersonator tries to mind... um, ...rape a woman, but she's adult and has good friends. In the comment thread, if you can get to it, there's a link to her weblog, with all stuff before deleted, and even a YouTube of the video.]

I'm in my mid-twenties and always wear at least pajamas while posting (it's getting cold here and I keep the heat at 60).

As far as I know, I have not met any of the other posters here in person. Perhaps this makes me a figment of someone's imagination.

If you google my name and the email address with which I post, you'll only find my posts here -- but if you google the email address I accidentally posted under a couple of times, you'll find me. I'm duking it out with a horseback riding therapist for Google primacy.

...Of course, now I go and google myself and Google has gone and changed the algorithms again, so that a lot of completely useless hits come up before either of us.

Anyway, Xopher has access to my Facebook profile and could run extensive background checks on me if necessary. So.

Quick, before I have to go behind the nannyfilter again:
miriam beetle @ 289

It's not at all a problem; you'd told me you didn't know if your schedule would support a meeting, and I simply assumed you'd gotten jammed up and didn't have time to call. We'll do it some other time. If you're planning on being at that Extropian party at Galactic Center 10,000 years from now, I may see you there (I think there may be a competing bash in the Lesser Magellanic, and I've always been more for edges than centers).

A.J. Luxton @ 344

if, in the sendoff, they give you a hundred reasons to not want to be there any longer, be grateful for the sendoff, even if it's a rude one.

This is extremely good advice. Sometimes (see below) the best thing you can do is exit in as graceful a manner as possible, and never go back.

James Macdonald @ 301

Wizard. I'm not normally a fan of the Socratic dialog*, but you make it clear what a handy tool it is for gently calling into question closely-held and unexamined beliefs.

Xopher @ 295

Please save some mindspace to talk about this later. I really haven't time right now to do it any justice and it's an important topic for me. I've been almost completely estranged from my extended family (8 aunts/uncles, 30 cousins on my father's side) for the last 37 years, so it hits close to home.

Picusfiche @ 104
* you must be a very small fish - grin*

I was very lucky in that, as late as I started therapy, and even though it was for something totally different**, my therapist listened to my trials with my family and said, "I think you've adjusted reasonably to your own life and have put the problem behind you; I don't see any reason to look them up just to try to find some sort of rapprochement that isn't likely to be possible or helpful."

* Reading the Meno Dialog pretty much cured me of Platonism at an early age.
** Behavioral therapy for ADD

Twenty-five, fully clothed at the moment, because I'm at work, though I've been known to read and post to ML in pretty much every state of dress or undress. The only poster here that I've ever met is Gursky, whom I went to college with, and I have no idea if he's met anybody else from here. So my reality is tenuous at best. Although Serge has my home address, which I suppose could be used against me should it come to that.

I'm finding it interesting the way that the talk about this story keeps drifting from it being the parents of the other girl who were behind this, to it being the mother. And it's the mother who gets the worst of the discussion. The mother's first name, but not the father's, is posted, the mother's business address, but not the father's is given, the mother is the one who gets the worst insults and attacks - people have called her the "mother from hell," but no one has similarly talked about a "father from hell."

The only poster here that I've ever met is Gursky, whom I went to college with, and I have no idea if he's met anybody else from here. So my reality is tenuous at best.

You know your own reality. You're reasonably confident of Gursky's reality. But for all you know, everyone else here (me included) could be a sockpuppet being run by Fred, a forty-year-old perv in Muncie, Indiana. Best not to even speculate on what he's wearing.

Best that you assume it's so. (Since I know neither you nor Gursky and I don't know anyone who does, I just have to ask -- Hey, Fred, how's the weather in Muncie? It's snowing here, and that's going to change to freezing rain tomorrow.)

The story of the Life and Death of Jesse James above (#355) reminds me of why we claim that various scam agents don't really exist. For example, Sherry Fine appears only as a signature line on letters that come from Robert "Adjudged Conman" Fletcher's literary agencies (operating under a variety of names) in Boca Raton. She, and any number of others, always post from the same ISP. And they have no other existence than as signatures on those letters. No one reports "I had lunch with Sherry Fine." No one named Sherry Fine entered her cat in the Boca Raton Ugly Cat Contest. There's nothing. No one who's met her. No one who's seen her. She has no interests. No hobbies. No job history. Nothing. Just a signature line on a form letter.

Real people meet others and make impressions and do things and talk and make mistakes and remember conversations and live in the world. Fakes ... don't.

The mother's first name, but not the father's, is posted, the mother's business address, but not the father's is given....

That isn't strictly true. Both have been widely published on the 'Net.

The mother is the one who made the police report, and is the one who talked to the press.

Was the father one of the posters to the fake "Josh" account? Unless he was the unnamed part-time employee, he hasn't been identified as one of the four known posters.

James @ 360: "Real people meet others and make impressions and do things and talk and make mistakes and remember conversations and live in the world. Fakes ... don't."

By their social gaffes shall ye know them?

Thirty-seven, wearing woefully mismatched flannel pyjamas (Happy Bunny bottom vs leopard print top). Working from the sofa on a snow day with a cat interfering with my mouse hand. An uncertified figment with however a useful history of online embarrassments to vouch for me.

Leah @ 304

Actually the thought that keeps coming to mind, havign read your account, is 'psychic blowback - don't these people know it's corrosive?' - meaning, to me, that they're going to end up at least as damaged as anyone they've done that too.

57 (just), and dressed because I'm at work. (Usually fully clothed when I'm here, anyway, although there have been times when I couldn't sleep and came online.)

(Teresa, I still have hot pepper seeds for you from LACon. They'll be good for another couple of years.)

Dan, #354: If/when you feel like having another go at therapy, the Kink-Aware Professionals List would be a good starting point. At this point, I would be looking there as well if I wanted a therapist; while I'm not kinky per se, my lifestyle and attitudes are sufficiently non-mainstream that I'd worry about the same thing.

30, wearing combats and T-shirt and two pairs of socks (and underwear, lest I be accused of not being a pervert) and slightly real.

I haven't (knowingly) met any of the core trust network of frequent posters here, but I have two degrees to TNH in two directions I know of - neither of them mutual strong vouches, though.

Farah Mendlesohn would probably vouch for my existence, or at least the existence of someone who uses the same identity tokens as this post does and hasn't disclaimed them - connecting the two up provably is yet another problem.

Lindra: (I am not any authority). I can't see any reason ML would have a policy to forbid your commenting. It seems to me that if one is allowed to read a discussion, one ought to be allowed to make reply.

It also seems to me that such a philosophy is in keeping with the mindset of those who run the place.

I'm amused in that I seem to be the only person here who falls, exactly, on the age at hand. Which age seems both perfectly normal, and absolutely unbelievable. In so many ways I feel the same age I ever was, and in others; not the least.

Dan Layman Kennedy: I don't know, and probably says, "something" about me that such things as the underlying source of iado (and any other number of martial arts) bothers me. I understand the lethal purpose of them (and western fencing, and the rifles, pistols, etc.). Is it the apparent disconnection/artfulness of it that gives you pause, that it's so spare that it's not immediately evident that it's origins are questions of lethal force?

Terry Karney @ 342/343:

By all means let's sheathe the bladther.

But thanks all for a fascinating insight into the role of ukelele players in Japanese martial arts.

Who can carry a tune?

And who will fall amid tiny bubbles?

All at [you knew this was coming] the Don Ho Dojo.

P.S. I vouch for my fifty-seven sockpuppets, and they for me. Top that.

Why is this necessary when our moderators can see IP numbers? Unless a lot of us are using their publishing firm's proxies?

As to the other questions.... Does a blanket count?

Teresa: Do you want pepper seeds? I have six varieties from this year.

Anaheim/California (very good flavor, variably hot. Never more than could be made into rellenos).

Sichuan.

Pasilla

Cayenne

Cascabella (moderately hot. A couple of them in eggs made a very nice omellete)

Chile de Arbol/Thai.

The sichuan, cayenne and anaheim were all very productive. The pasilla was very tasty, but scant for fruit.

I'm making hot sauce from them.

Pyre @ 368: "Does a blanket count?"

Depends: are you using it as a cape?

Ursula L @ 359: By reports the mother was the ringleader: created the phony account, and recruited the others as help. (Also she was the one quoted on that incredible Megan-was-suicidal-anyway excuse.) I haven't seen anyone claim the father did squat in the "Josh" conspiracy, and I wonder how much he actually knew about it before too late. But his workplace has been very much posted, with its address and phone numbers and email addresses, and its website's page on him has been taken down.

Bill @ 370: If it were red, I might, except for the risk of violating Cory's trademark.

But it's black, with grey printed Chinese dragons, and technically it's a quilted comforter, so its capeness might lack something in dramatic drapability.

Terry Karney: Is it the apparent disconnection/artfulness of it that gives you pause, that it's so spare that it's not immediately evident that it's origins are questions of lethal force?

That's very well-put. It's such a quiet art, all tea-ceremony elegance and precision, that then it's all the more disconcerting when someone breaks it down and says "And this bit's where you flick the blood off the blade before you resheathe it."

Lee, thank you for that link. I was aware that there were lists of that kind out there, but was at a loss to even try and frame a Google query on it. Much appreciated.

#362: By their social gaffes shall ye know them?
Unfortunately, that may be my inadvertent strategy to establishing existence.

The problem with anonymity is that the anonymous person faces no real negative consequence to being a complete jerk. Unfortunately, this is a problem to the community, not to the jerk. Certainly, no one could have constructed Josh if we had to identify ourselves at all times. However, there's, alas, nothing about using your real identity that prevents social gaffes.

Anonymity also has its good uses. Sometimes, the best way to get truth out is to do it anonymously. (e.g., whistleblowers who are trying to avoid retribution.) That there seem to be more jerks than whistleblowers is beside the point.

#372: If it were Cory's trademark, if you asked him nicely, he'd let you use it. It's probably xkcd's though. (However, asking nicely may still work.) I almost went to a Halloween party wearing goggles, a red cape, a mylar balloon. Then I realized that no one at that party would get the reference. I ended up going as "Special Forces Soldier Charlie Brown" instead. (This is what happens when you can't commit to a costume.)

Thirty-seven. Right now, I'm at home in sweats because my employer decreed that all its employees use their vacation days to take this week off. I attended Viable Paradise X. I've bumped into Teresa, Patrick, Jim and Debra at various cons. I also spent a terrific weekend with them at the VPX reunion. (HP7 spoiler: Guvf cnentencu srryf yvxrf jung nyy gur tbbq thlf va gur abiry qb gb pbaivapr rnpu bgure gung gurl npghnyyl ner jub gurl ybbx yvxr.)

ethan @ 358... So my reality is tenuous at best. Although Serge has my home address, which I suppose could be used against me should it come to that.

You young fool!
Bwahahahah!!!

John Chu @ 374: "I almost went to a Halloween party wearing goggles, a red cape, a mylar balloon."

Um... exactly where was the balloon positioned?

Around here the reason for the "almost" would be getting stopped on the way by people wearing police costumes.

The xkcd stick figures don't appear to be wearing clothes (other than hats, capes, oven mitts, & such accessories), which on one hand simplifies making Halloween costumes and on another hand creates a challenge for the non-anorexic trying to resemble the characters.

Waved goodbye to 40 some while ago. I read & post in many states of dress, but for much of the year at home just wear a sarong, adding t-shirt & sox if it gets chilly. Perversion? Hmm. Opinions differ; nuffink illegal under current law.
Back in 2005, Neil Gaiman visited Australia, something I'd been hoping for for quite some time. He was in Sydney for only one day, with two events. It was the date I'd been booked in for day surgery for some months before I'd heard he was coming, so I missed both. Quite frustrating that was. Then fate also conspired against my attending the Sydney Writers' Festival last year where he was again. Am starting to wonder if meeting him is Something That Will Never Be. He would probably have been the only personal connection I'd have to much of this group. I'm not part of 'fandom' in Oz, and have never travelled to the Americas, so I doubt I've met the majority of y'all. There are a few other Australians who've commented here, some from other cities & states, but even if we did cross paths in Sydney, I wouldn't be using this ID in public. If you were at certain events in the Sydney Olympics or Royal Easter Show we may have been in the same crowd.

I do, however, keep a blog, email addresses and accounts at some sites under this name which have been around a fair while, and have commented, non-trollishly I hope, using it across quite a few places. I haven't disclosed this pseudonym to friends IRL. They know of my online presence and addresses under my main name, used for Serious, Weighty, and Official Communications as well as personal ones with them.

I only blew in here on the "wanker wind" very recently, so I don't have any clue who any of you are in person, though I recognize a few authors whose work I've read. I've seen Neil Gaiman at one talk/book signing (Dreamhaven Books, MPLS, 2005?) and another talk at the Walker art center earlier this year (I think - it was cold, so it could have been late '06) but he still doesn't know me from any other fan, I'm sure. You can track me down on the 'net by variations on my current handle, and I posted in the Wanker thread a link to some "prose" of mine that has more ID in it. Heck, follow the trail long enough and you might actually know me from somewhere...

Oh, 32, at work and thus recently trained not to discuss state of dress/preferred personal activities...

Gotta run, darn conference calls.
Later,
-cajun
P.S. Therapy can help if you find a doctor who works well with you. It sucks when they go and pass away on you, though...

HP7 spoiler: Guvf cnentencu srryf yvxrf jung nyy gur tbbq thlf va gur abiry qb gb pbaivapr rnpu bgure gung gurl npghnyyl ner jub gurl ybbx yvxr.

yby!

But seriously... re: the 'how real is the Internet and how seriously should we take things' angle -- in Germany we've had a couple of Columbine-like incidents, and also some threats. A lot of times the kids involved had posted to the internet, often to a German site similar to MySpace. Sometimes they've blatantly discussed their intentions, sometimes they've 'merely' written things such as glorifying Columbine. What's interesting to me is that other students have noticed these types of posts, gotten alarmed, and notified the police or school officials. There's a debate going on about school security, how the police can best respond, and so forth, but ...yeah, the internet is real, or at least it's safest to assume so.

My daughter (almost 16) is currently going out with someone she met on that internet site I mentioned. He doesn't go to her school or even live in our town. His internet persona seemed nice, but of course we were concerned about how legitimate it all was. He communicated to her that he'd be delighted to meet us (i.e., the parents) and have us meet him, and things have turned out well. But even before the Megan incident, all the possible problems involving chatrooms, MySpace, etc. have given me several grey hairs. The worst thing parents can do is not be aware about what their children are doing on the internet -- keeping in mind that their children could be perpetrators or victims. If I found out that my children were involved in cybermobbing, they would have their computer privileges removed faster than the speed of light.

Ahem. I'm in my late 40's, fully dressed, and nobody here's ever met me IRL, to my knowledge. (But if anyone's ever in the Düsseldorf area, I'd be delighted to meet up. Fully dressed.)

All this talk of degrees of separation (my daughter met Neil Gaiman at Helena last spring, does that count?) and online relationships, and suicide, leaves me wondering if Jim or Doyle ever met the woman who went by the fandom name T'pauer, who was my first close online friend. She was an E-room charge nurse in Boston, but also worked in New Hampshire the last couple of years of her life. Those two years, she went from health disaster to employment disaster to combinations of both (notably a needle stick involving an end stage AIDS patient) before committing suicide in a place and manner she had described in detail to a wide group of online and 3D friends from Trek fandom and the ADDult community.

We tried, boy we tried, to talk her out of it, online, in person, on the telephone, but there were just too many highly probable ways for her to die, in pain, after long illness. One of the people I had met in person went to her funeral; I guess it was quite a deal.

Take from that what you will; to me, it looks like the diametrical opposite of the MySpace case.

(For the record, I've given away sufficient personal information, here and on lj, to find me via Google Earth. 55 and, at the moment, sitting here in an ankle length long sleeved fuzzy night gown).

Lindra, I have never seen anything from Our Hosts or any front page commenter saying that minors aren't welcome to comment here. In fact only your forthright honesty has revealed you to be one; remember "on the internet no one knows you're a dog"? (And they mean an actual canine; it's a reference to a Spider Robinson story.)

I think Teresa judges people by the content of their posts (and the key question there is "is it civil?") not by their real or perceived age. I am not Teresa, nor Patrick, nor any of the FPCs; I'm only reporting what I've observed.

Bruce 357: Mindspace reserved. Please use appropriate keywords to call it up; I won't remember, since I have ADHD myself.

Lee 364: BLESS you for posting that! I know someone who really needs it. (I'm not going to look at it now, since I'm at work, but I will later.)

Pyre 367: I've joked with my bf about him being my uke-lay-lay. (Makes it shocking I forgot how to spell the damn word.) He wasn't familiar with the correct Hawai'ian pronunciation of 'ukulele', though, so he didn't get it.

JESR @ 380... All this talk of degrees of separation

Did I tell you how quickly that takes me to Doctor Who, and to Ingmar Bergman?

...the woman who went by the fandom name T'pauer, who was my first close online friend.

Long ago I knew a nurse who went by the name of T'Pehr. Same person?

James @ 383... I knew a nurse who went by the name of T'Pehr

"What's your diagnostic?"
"Blood fever."
"Again?"

James D. MacDonald, was she from Southie, and did she have a brother who was a career Army officer?

I don't know where she was from or anything about her family. I do know that at one time she was planning to study to be a Doctor of Osteopathy (DO). I don't know if that ever happened.

As I say, this was a long, long time ago that I knew her. Thirty years or more. Was her real first initial "M"?

No, her name started with J, different person entirely. I just wonderedif you'd run across her because she'd been active in fandom in the NE for a long while, and because she'd worked in emergency medicine in New Hampshire for a while (starting thirteen or fourteen years ago, when her regular job got borked by mergers and reorganizations).

Lindra @346:

In the absence of any guidance from the owners of this blog, I'd say that you can be as young as you like as long as you're not being immature.

Which, based on your comment and the thought behind it, you're probably not.

Welcome. Do you write poetry?

Abi @ 388... you can be as young as you like as long as you're not being immature.

Nyah nyah nyah...

On the original topic: The Smoking Gun has gotten hold of the police report... the police report filed by Lori frelling Drew after it came out locally that she was behind the Josh character.

"Drew approached the sheriff's department last November, after "the neighborhood...found out her involvement in Megan's suicide and her neighbors have become hostile toward her and her family." Drew, the report noted, wanted the neighborhood tension to be documented in case any of her property was subsequently damaged."

Apparently she went "banging on their door" to talk to them, despite being advised to leave them alone, because it would have made her feel better.

I'm not going to trust myself to type anything else. Assume full disemvowellement and disemconsonance.

Bill #390: I'm not going to trust myself to type anything else. Assume full disemvowellement and disemconsonance.

The shorthand I use for this kind of situation is "Please insert 1.3 terabytes of profanity here."

Bill @390: Oh, [redacted]. Just how [redacted] can that [redactingly] [redacted] [redaction] [redact]?

I mean, seriously. [Redactionary redactment].

The lady Drew has some serious synaptic disconnects ... contacting the Meiers in spite of being told not to, and thinking it would relieve her of responsibility?
Oh my aching clavicle.

My favorite part of that was when she said the exchanges became "sexual for a 13 year old" and yet she continued. So, how is this not subject to child predator laws? Seriously? Because that seems.... predatory?

(29, dressed, and went to the same college as someone here, but not at the same time... so I think you're all figments of my imagination)

EClaire @ 394: "My favorite part of that was when she said the exchanges became "sexual for a 13 year old" and yet she continued. So, how is this not subject to child predator laws? Seriously? Because that seems.... predatory?"

Seriously... and knowing how insecure Megan was, I have no doubt in my mind that any introduction of sexuality came from fakeJosh. Can't you just see three Mean Girls giggling in front of the computer and egging each other on?

LFD sure sounds like a victim here. A victim of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

I just wanted to drop a quick note, as the poster formerly known as e/m/a/n/y/m/t/o/n/s/t/i, to the kind folks who responded to my tale of woe (Teresa, Piscusfiche) that the silent friend coincidentally rang me yesterday and after having it out with her, I suddenly feel human again. Turns out Martin Luther King Jr was right.

(I'm changing identities after it suddenly dawned on me, with a discordant clang, that the ex knows that old id, and is capable of searching via google and interfering with my privacy.)

#387 JESR No, her name started with J, different person entirely.

Then let's lift a glass to absent friends.

pj,

Actually the thought that keeps coming to mind, havign read your account, is 'psychic blowback - don't these people know it's corrosive?' - meaning, to me, that they're going to end up at least as damaged as anyone they've done that to.

yes, definitely. i so don't want to give details, but for a year, a couple of years back, a person decided that i was hir enemy, & the thing keeping hir from the happy life zey was meant to have.

in the end, people who care about people, rather than using them as ammo or props in the great story of their struggle, tend to have better friendships.

Bill@ 395: and knowing how insecure Megan was, I have no doubt in my mind that any introduction of sexuality came from fakeJosh.

I'll bet good money it was for the purpose of the girl's daughter being able to call Megan a whore.

Really, this whole thing is horrifying, and puches more buttons than I'm comfortable with. I remember (from very recent expierence, actually) how badly a first relationship ending can hurt, especially if the other person ends it- and that's not even considering how callously "Josh" went about it. And adding in a history of emotional problems, it doesn't take a genius to see how a situation like that could end. This woman had to know what she was doing. And while I agree that vigilantism is crossing the line, she deserves some sort of punishment. Besides losing a foosball table, I mean. The self-entitlement there is disgusting- she's the injured party in this situation? Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, she has personality issues. And the idea that she did it for the purposes of monitoring Mgean's thoughts on her daughter is crap. If that was her motive, why terminate the so-called relationship?

I avoid MySpace as a rule, mostly because chatspeak irritates me to no end. That, and I criticised a popular book series on my blog, and got flamed. I do have a Facebook, but almost never use it- it's just for the sake of keeping in touch with friends who go to other schools. And as for online relationships, I'm not *that* desperate, thankfully. I left my insecurity over being single back in ninth grade. Thanks to Lori Drew, Megan never got the chance to.

(by the way, I'm wearing socks, pants, a tank top, a sweater, a bra, and underwear. Oh, and glasses. I'm also sixteen, so if anyone's the perv here . . .)

For the record, I'm 47 next month and I'm always fully-dressed when I post here.

I spent about five years being an infrequent poster (but reader of almost everything, at least initially) in a newsgroup, a webmonger (exclusively about the newsgroup's main topic) and an IRC channel operator (spun off from the newsgroup). The web sites spawned real-world consequences, like account closures and threats from real lawyers (including one from a board member of EFA).

A few months before I finally walked away from the entire scene, a group of people from the newsgroup vilified me on the IRC channel for hours at a time, over a period of weeks. I was often the only op awake at the time, and as I felt that I couldn't use /ignore and retain my ability to protect the channel, I got to read it all. I'd go to bed, and when I woke up and scrolled back I'd find that it hadn't stopped. I was powerless to act because the rules for the channel explicitly stated that the operators could not ban, kick or silence people for the content of their speech...

The operators held fast and there was eventually a split, with the more rabid members going off to start their own IRC server.

The final straw for me was that thing with the pedophile, but that's another story.

#401 ::: Dave Hutchinson stated:
For the record, I'm 47 next month and I'm always fully-dressed when I post here.

I can't get the refrain of "You're never fully dressed without a SMILE" out of my head, now... and the mental image is something else, indeed.

Bruce@357: "I think you've adjusted reasonably to your own life and have put the problem behind you; I don't see any reason to look them up just to try to find some sort of rapprochement that isn't likely to be possible or helpful."

Good advice.

It is often that people want to look someone up like this because they're ready to let go of the stuff, and on some level they think that will make the other person willing to let go as well. Not always, but it is common.

But further questioning sometimes reveal that the client is actually making the other person's "letting go" as a function of their own completion with the past. What that ends up doing is making the clients well being a function of the other person accepting them. But their non-acceptance was what started the issue in the first place. Which is to say, the client is right where they started.

There isn't a lot of power in this approach because it really just enforces the situation that caused the problem in the first place. And even if the other person does decide to let it go now, something else could come up in the future where they disapprove, rendering the client back into the position of trying to get their approval, trying to get their acceptance, their understanding, their good graces.

And for some assholes, that just ain't gonna happen.

Which means the first thing that needs to be established for the client is a way to define themselves without being a function of this other person's acceptance. When the client can look at the other person without the filter that they need this person's acceptance, they can usually start to look at that person's behaviour more objectively and hopefully find whatever it is they need to let it go.

But it isn't uncommon for me to tell a client "It really isn't about them, because we can't change them. All we can do is change how you relate to this person given what they've done to you in the past and given they might continue doing it to you in the future."

Xeger @ 403... "You're never fully dressed without a SMILE"

Skirting the real issue again?

A.J. Luxton @ 350, Terry Karney @ 366,
Thank you for answering me - I think I can safely act upon common consensus.

Xopher @ 381,

They could be dogs, or they could be monkeys. A roomful of them, one word each, add half again as many monkeys for every sockpuppet. They might not be at the stage of writing Hamlet, but they can certainly troll. It would explain why so many sockpuppets are easily disambiguated.

abi @ 388,

Thanks! No, I don't write poetry. I have tried, but I've always been unable to continue after a few lines. My first impulse is to very, very bad overwrought emotional blank verse, and I laugh so hard at myself for playing into the stereotype that it's impossible to continue.

As for the original topic, I'd like to say that I'm surprised by this, but I'm not. This is something I've seen over and over again for as long as I was in primary and high school, and contributed to my dropping out after the first day of year twelve. That was my breaking point. I can educate myself without the bitching, backstabbing, ostracism and going to the bathroom to the unmistakable tune of someone trying to bawl as quietly as possible in the next stall over, thank you.

I think one of the salient points is that Megan already transferred from being bullied at another school before this started, and though her mother might've been confident that Megan was doing better, that may not have been the case when 'Josh' started up. According to what I've read, she found out enough of the hoax to start tossing out names of various classmates who might do such a thing to her, so there was clearly an alliance, probably centered around the Drew girl, already being used against her. The idea of what the next day at school would be like probably contributed to her suicide.

In school I saw this pattern all the time: transfers midway through the year, quiet broken-down sorts, the ones leaving our school midway through the year just as ghostly as the ones coming in. We sometimes heard about the people who had left, but more often than not we never did. The incoming transfers sometimes lasted, sometimes they didn't, but we remembered what they looked like when they first came in, and we knew exactly how vulnerable they still were. Half of them transferred again within a few months. Everyone knew most of them finally had the breakdown they'd tried to avoid by transferring to our school in the first place. Sometimes where everyone could see. It wasn't pretty.

My personal experience is pretty standard: woke up on schooldays and wanted to die, wished that weekends would last forever, camped out in the library in an attempt to ignore all of it. It's only been recently that I've been able to unwind and know that I'm free, I'm not in school anymore and I don't have to go back.

A few commenters mentioned they wouldn't have liked to be teenagers with the internet around. I take the opposite view - it was the internet which saved me. I wouldn't be here without it. It can be misused, hideously, but it can also be the Good Side of the Force.

Following that, thanks to all of you who try to help us, forums or IM or blogs. We don't always come back to thank you, or show any appreciation for what you say to us - signing off in a huff is a classic response - but we do remember you, and more often than not, you do help.

Lindra... I don't think I said so before, but here goes...

Welcome to ML.

Lindra @ 406: god, you just brought high school back to me... every day I am thankful that I had the most incredible principal. She expelled me in autumn of my last year, ostensibly because of skipping school; but with the hindsight of years I saw she did it to save me from the bullies. She let me come back to do exams in the spring, which, high school being high school, were easy enough with a week of cramming beforehand. Because of her I not only survived, but graduated and was able to eventually go on to college.
I wish everyone in that sort of situation could be so lucky.

Lee @ 321 (sorry to take so long), it's not that simple, unfortunately. The comments I could deal with (although it dredged up a few things I could have lived without revisiting) but it moved into meatspace and got kind of ugly, and I've sort of eaten my seed corn for the year toughing-it-outwise.

Anyway, on the essential question of the day, 44, generally sweats or a nightshirt, and I know eight people here IRL, for various values of know.

#405 ::: Serge quipped:
Xeger @ 403... "You're never fully dressed without a SMILE"

Skirting the real issue again?

Better than the dressing down I'd get (for being in my dressing gown, no less!)

xeger @ 410... Better than the dressing down I'd get (for being in my dressing gown, no less!)

All right, nobody move while we garter the evidence.