The girl who hanged herself after fictional myspace boy’s insults
This is an update on the prosecution of the mother who helped her daughter make a fake myspace to torment another girl. The fictional boy wound up saying some pretty mean things causing Megan, the tormented girl, to hang herself.
I don’t agree with those of you who feel meaningful conversations over the internet are equivelent to those had in person, but I find it impossible to deny that criticism, no matter how disembodied, does have a strong effect. For example, has anyone else heard about the woman married via second life (who had never met her ‘husband’ in person) who tried to kill him in real life after catching him snuggling on a couch in second life with another woman? As a society, we’ve developed thin skin when it comes to enduring criticism and jealousy, in my opinion. Even through the medium of a screen, which desesitizes us to gory CSI’s and brutal war films, can our fragile self esteems be crushed with flippant words exchanged via myspace.
Something else interesting to consider is the punshment. The newcaster mentions that the mother faces 3 years in prison and a fine of $300,000 if convicted with the full sentence. Nothing is said about the daughter. Should she be punsihed for her role too? Is the court’s punishment of the mother satisfactory? Should it be more or less severe? To what extent can we police the internet — it’s a task that seems even more overwhelming than the way our country has been trying to play policeman of the world. How can we possibly have justice online? If Megan’s case is pursued, shouldn’t they all be?
19 Responses to 'The girl who hanged herself after fictional myspace boy’s insults'
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First of all, this is pretty ridiculous. I can’t agree more that disembodied insults are incredibly effective still… Anyways, I wanted to say that I think my online conversations would be the same as embodied conversations because I try to imagine my self in the room with the other person. The way I see it, there is no physical activity involved, other than the moving of my vocal chords, versus the moving of my fingers across a keyboard. However, I guess I see Dreyfus’ side of it too: In vocal conversation, pauses can be very awkward, whereas in online conversation, it’s not terribly strange to pause to surf the net or whatever you may do. So with this obligation to stay speaking or listening constantly, we put ourselves at risk of saying something we might not mean. So yes, I guess something is lost when we converse via text, and it is that risk. But then my question is, is this necessarily a bad thing? What’s wrong with getting rid of the risk? I don’t believe that it could effect us much. It would probably only have a drastic effect on someone who spoke through text since birth.
Gautam Srikishan
1 Dec 08 at 11:53 pm
Oh, and in response to the law questions towards the end: I have no idea why the daughter isn’t being punished as well. That is, I’m assuming that she’s 18 or over, and in that case, she should very well be treated as an adult and held accountable for the crime. As far as the internet patrol goes, I don’t think it’s realistic to try and set up some internet police group. Like you said, we can’t fully police the world yet, perhaps it’s better to take of that before we try the internet. Further, there are certain measures taken to keep things on the net safe, to an extent. Privacy policies help to keep sites from releasing any information on you, there are blocking devices on social networking websites to stop a certain person from spamming you or what have you.
Gautam Srikishan
2 Dec 08 at 12:01 am
Is there a difference between internet mediated interactions and intercorporeal interactions? Certainly. One is mediated by the internet, the other isn’t. No one denies that, not even Clark.
The issue is: what difference does it make? Dreyfus says that you lose risk on the internet because you lack a body, but clearly that is wrong, and this case is a perfect example of the risks we face on the net.
On the other hand, this kind of terrible prank wouldn’t work in face to face interactions; it only works because personal identity isn’t tied to bodily identity on the net, so you can assume another persona. The internet, because of the unique kind of technology it is, makes these new kinds of social relationships possible. Dreyfus admits that these new relationships are possible, but says it is a Bad Thing because it takes something away from our common humanity.
But Dreyfus is just plain wrong. Our humanity is always there, no matter where we are or what mediates our interactions. The fact that it was online doesn’t make a difference, and it definitely doesn’t undermine our humanity.
How many kids kill themselves every year because of bullying and tormenting? I’m sure it is far more than this one high-profile case. The government says about 8 teens in 100,000 commit suicide each year, and bullying is one of the leading causes of depression and suicidal thoughts among that age group.
In other words: bullying and suicide are something that teenagers are already dealing with. The reason this case is high profile is because it is novel just in the sense that it was online, and the family drama that comes with the mother’s involvement. The online aspect of this case is interesting only because some naive people (ahem, Dreyfus) might think that the internet doesn’t come packaged with all the dangers we face all the time as normal humans going about our lives; this case serves to remind us that the risks and problems of everyday life don’t go away because you are just staring at a computer screen.
Daniel Estrada
2 Dec 08 at 11:32 am
Twice in your reply, you state that Dreyfus is wrong without really explaining yourself. First, you reject the notion that the lack of corporeality on the internet results in decreased risk. If I were to post racist comments on forums frequented by members of the New Black Panthers, the worst that could happen would be a verbal rejection of my statements. If I were to walk into a room filled with the same people and make the same comments, my life would, potentially, be at risk.
This is not to say that online interaction is without risk; if you are chatting with friends, family, colleagues, or anyone who actually knows you, there is a chance that the things you say will be used against you just as they might be offline. If I post inflammatory comments on a message board and use my real name as a username, perhaps a neighbor who happens to be on the message board will set my house on fire. The major difference between online and offline interaction with respect to risk is the potential for risk reduction. Offline, there are few interactions that are truly without risk; online, I could post on 4chan with reckless abandon.
Luke Kaiser
2 Dec 08 at 12:17 pm
You are being foolish if you think you can’t be tracked down on the internet. Period. It makes it less likely, especially for casual observers to threaten you physically from the distance of cyberspace, but it can happen. Even rubico was outed from behind the apparent anonymity of /b/.
Yes, the conditions of risk change, but they can also change in real life. I am less likely to be fatally shot if I wear a bullet proof vest, etc.
But I am talking about much simpler situations. When you apply for a job, it is very likely that your employer will search your name, and any potential aliases you use, and they will find all sorts of stuff (and hold it against you). It is absurd to think there is any principled barrier between online interactions and offline interactions; they bleed over all the time, in unexpected ways, and can haunt you for the rest of your life. As Clark would say, it is a promiscuous boundry; if so much of what is important to a persons life crosses that boundary without hesitation, why should we continue to think it is a meaningful boundary at all?
Daniel Estrada
2 Dec 08 at 5:39 pm
I can see how it does take away from our humanity though. If we apply this to a different case, say one of a online relationship, then I feel some of that humanity is taken away. You can’t reach out and touch someone through the kind of technology we have today (I know, crutches and shoes) but then again, “whatever hugs do for humans, cyber hugs won’t do.” I generally don’t like what Dreyfus has to say, but I can’t deny that. So in losing our physical ability to touch someone, I would say that we lose some form of humanity.
Gautam Srikishan
2 Dec 08 at 6:26 pm
Personally, I think the mother who did the “crime” if anything should be punished for identity theft. I think it is rediculous that they hold her accountable for the suicide of the girl. I think the mother of the girl who commiteded the suicide should have been a little more observative of her daughter. In no way should the girl who’s mother did the typing be punished. All this is, is a large scale of hazing that goes on every day. Yes it hurts feelings, but it’s a part of life. I think it’s rediculous to punish the mother. If thats the case any person who has a fake screen name, or has claimed to be somone else on the internet all need to have the same punishment brought on them.
Austin Maske
2 Dec 08 at 7:46 pm
@Dan
I suppose I was overzealous to imply that the internet is completely anonymous and impenetrable. Surely, there are ways to circumvent much of its protection. Even allowing this, however, there still exists a gulf in risk between online and offline interaction. Yes, someone CAN track me down using my online information. Will they? Probably not. “Trolling” in real life usually doesn’t end as harmlessly as it does online. The fact that negative outcomes are less likely indicates that there is less risk involved. It is the base level of risk that I am talking about, not the modified level. You can encase yourself in eight inches of reinforced steel and not have a care in the world (other than eating and breathing, but you get my drift), but that kind of absurdity probably isn’t necessary for similar online interactions.
Online and offline interactions, as I said, CAN bleed into one another. The significant thing is that offline interactions CAN be far less risky given only a few simple precautions. To reach a comparable level of security in real life, a much greater exertion must take place.
Luke Kaiser
2 Dec 08 at 9:05 pm
Austin: I’m not sure if you watched the video, but the mother helped the girl make this myspace, well aware of the intentions at hand. I can’t see how you think this is not punishable- it’s like pitching in some money to help your friend buy a gun, when you know the gun won’t be put to good use. I mean sure, the idiots who made the myspace probably didn’t have the intention of killing anyone, but it was still a very wrong thing to do. Also, how is it that it could be identity theft? The persona they used for their myspace was non existent, so that’s out of the question.
Gautam Srikishan
3 Dec 08 at 2:15 pm
I don’t think their intentions were “hey lets make this girl commit suicide!” they just wanted to get even because the girl who hanged herself was being mean to the girl who made the fake myspace. And the Identity theft would be the same as making a fake I.D. If you go out to a bar and get caught drinking underage and show the cops your fake I.D. it a felony, because it’s identity theft. Sure the picture they put up is a real person, but all the information on the card is fake. Its the same thing with myspace. You could get a picture of any average Joe off the street, but as soon as you start putting false info up then it kind of goes over that void of fake i.d. but then we run into the problem no “police” on the internet, as long as you are not really controlled on the internet these cases will arise
Austin Maske
3 Dec 08 at 3:28 pm
This seems like a case in which people really, really want to assign responsibility for something terrible that happened - in this case, a girl senselessly killing herself over internet squabbles. It is, as Dan said, an alarming example of the power online communication can have on some people; obviously, the antagonist’s opinion mattered greatly to the girl in question. The important point, I think, that must be stressed is that it was the girl who made the decision to end her life. Her mother, regardless of her role in setting up the girl’s MySpace page, did not play a direct role. You can trace things back as far as you want, but the enduring truth is that it was the girl’s decision and not that of anyone else.
Luke Kaiser
3 Dec 08 at 4:25 pm
I completely agree with Luke, point fingers all you want, but I don’t think you can put that kind of blame on anyone for someone else killing themselves. The girl obviously had issues to begin with.
Austin Maske
4 Dec 08 at 11:13 am
Now why didnt this girl look into a minimal amount of investigation? maybe to see if this myspace has legitamacy. Well according to another article on the same case i found this.
“Megan, a girl who had battled attention deficit disorder, depression and a weight problem for much of her young life, believed him, despite her mother’s warnings to be cautious.”
So she wasn’t stable to begin with, so her emotional fragility is more responsible. But hell i dont even answer phone calls if i dont know what the area code is or have an idea who it could be. I have always been creeped out by the myspace/facebook ‘friend’. Unfortunately, there are always going to be naieve poeple who will just talk to anyone who seems to care about them, even if they dont know them.
Ben Tondera
4 Dec 08 at 6:12 pm
ok well this girl was young, right? i mean i don’t know her age, but i’m assuming she was in jr. high or an underclassman. which means that her ability to assess risk was less then say, ours, which isn’t even fully developed yet. in addition she was more naive than an older and thus more likely to be taken advantage of. even before knowing about her emotional fragility, i understood that for her to commit suicide over the comments, she herself had to originally have been more vulnerable to criticism than the average girl. however, it was instigated by the mother and her daughter, and that should definitely not go without punishment. teenage years are an especially vulnerable time for everyone, and for an adult, a mother no less, to target that is unacceptable. why the girl didn’t get punished i don’t know, because she should definitely be reprimanded in some way, if not prison. i have no idea why they didn’t punish her, but they should.
Elena Solomon
4 Dec 08 at 10:02 pm
Children don’t get punished in cases like this. Why? They feel that if the mother was unable to be rational as an authority figure, she should be punished, and the law feels that the girl could have been pressured into the situation. Yeah, maybe the daughter could have been punished, but that would have require to prove that she was independent in her actions, and for the record, the victim was 13, so we can assume the girl was likely 13 or 14. That also ties into the fact that people see the daughter as not entirely source that could be as emotionally fragile as the other girl. So she was easily impressionable by her own mother.
Ben Tondera
5 Dec 08 at 12:15 am
This would be an interesting one to talk about in ethics next semester. I have a pretty solid memory of my life as a 13/14 year old, and I think I was pretty responsible and reasonable. I think if I bullied someone in that way, I should have been responsible. Had the mother been uninvolved and taught her better, who have been responsible? It seems ridiculous to me that 14 year old have these get-out-of-jail free cards. Ben mentions that Megan had some psychological issues, but why does that make it any better? Should society cater to sensitive people or simply allow natural selection to take its course? How is the emotional bullying of a girl with psychological disabilities any different from physically bullying a paraplegic? It’s not.
Rebecca Spizzirri
5 Dec 08 at 2:49 am
I would have to stay that the antagonizing mother is partially to blame for the girl’s death. She should have foreseen that something bad like this was going to happen. She herself being a mother should know how fragile and vulnerable a young child’s mind is. No matter what happens was the mother in the wrong? I say yes because firstoff she was impersonating someone she was not which is strictly aganist MySpace policy and second she repeatedly sent threatening communications to the girl which is also aganist MySpace rules. Her daughter seemed to play less of a role but she (in my mind) should still be held partially responsible.
JD
5 Dec 08 at 2:29 pm
As a society, I think we’ve been slow to keep up with the internet. We should have done more to anticipate possible situations like this, and had rules in place to deal with the legalities involved. The internet is a little like a child who’s grown up beyond our abilities to restrain it. And it’s acting up.
But this is just what we should have done. With the situation we have, I think there’s nothing wrong with punishing the girl and her mother under the law. Just because the internet acted as a buffer between the perpetrators and the results of their actions, just because they weren’t tormenting her IN PERSON, doesn’t change the results.
Calli Leventis
5 Dec 08 at 10:21 pm
I think this case really draws attention to internet bullying. Obviously this is a little different, but its comparable to the hot guy liking the average or geeky girl, who turns out to be playing a rather mean spirited joke on her. I personally hadn’t heard of this ever resulting in a person’s death, but don’t think it out of the realm of possibility. I believe the girl should be prosecuted. Fuck her age, her bitchy attitude and involvement in the death of a girl should be enough to prosecute her, it not as an adult, at least in juvenile courts. The mother deserves a much harsher punishment, I would say 25 years at the least. She’s a hateful mean bitch who should have known better. As for policing the net, I dunno how it was done, but it should be done carefully and cautiously, so that it isn’t abused.
Jason Blumstein
6 Dec 08 at 12:08 am