[BRIEF NOTE] The Megan Meier tragedies
Jan. 23rd, 2008 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLauren Collins' recent article in The New Yorker, "Friend Game", is one of the best articles dealing with the Megan Meier suicide controversy.
Briefly put, a mother in a suburban Missouri town created a MySpace profile of a teenage boy to watch a neighbour's child, Megan Meier, and gave it to two teenagers to watch her behaviour. Megan entered into a fairly close relationship with the online profile, but one day the people behind the profile began to attack her to the point that a virtual mob began sending her insults. This prompted her suicide.
Once her parents found out who was behind it, a neighbourhood feud, a very damaging police report was made by the mother, one Lori Drew, and a FBI investigation ensued. In November, after a Suburban Journals article that revealed the whole story, bloggers were able to discover the identities of the people who had created and maintained the MySpace profile, and a high-profile Internet campaign against the Drew family began. It doesn't look like anyone involved will be prosecuted, but so far Internet vigilantes have managed to destroy Drew's marketing business, her husband has lost his real estate job, the Drews' daughter has (depending on the source) either left school or gone to another school, the family may be forced to leave a neighbourhood populated by people who seem to hold them in contempt, and the damage to their reputations is almost surely fatal.
There may be something fitting in a woman who managed to use the Internet to destroy one family finding that her own family has also been caught up, but that said, the whole episode leaves few people--not Lori Drew and her associates, not the Internet vigilantes--in a good light. Can the only lesson that can be taken from this sad story be that social networking can be dangerous for people who don't take care of themselves?
Briefly put, a mother in a suburban Missouri town created a MySpace profile of a teenage boy to watch a neighbour's child, Megan Meier, and gave it to two teenagers to watch her behaviour. Megan entered into a fairly close relationship with the online profile, but one day the people behind the profile began to attack her to the point that a virtual mob began sending her insults. This prompted her suicide.
Once her parents found out who was behind it, a neighbourhood feud, a very damaging police report was made by the mother, one Lori Drew, and a FBI investigation ensued. In November, after a Suburban Journals article that revealed the whole story, bloggers were able to discover the identities of the people who had created and maintained the MySpace profile, and a high-profile Internet campaign against the Drew family began. It doesn't look like anyone involved will be prosecuted, but so far Internet vigilantes have managed to destroy Drew's marketing business, her husband has lost his real estate job, the Drews' daughter has (depending on the source) either left school or gone to another school, the family may be forced to leave a neighbourhood populated by people who seem to hold them in contempt, and the damage to their reputations is almost surely fatal.
There may be something fitting in a woman who managed to use the Internet to destroy one family finding that her own family has also been caught up, but that said, the whole episode leaves few people--not Lori Drew and her associates, not the Internet vigilantes--in a good light. Can the only lesson that can be taken from this sad story be that social networking can be dangerous for people who don't take care of themselves?
