Comments on People Suck

And fake people suck even more.

ohhhhhh. shit.

That's sick.

Unbelievable.

speachless here

Sadly, the only unusual thing about this story is that it was her friend's parents who perp'd the fake ID (sorry if I've spoiled it for anyone). Other than that, it's business as usual on the internet, which - on an interpersonal level - is a cross between Oz, Lord of the Flies and Wild Kingdom. The mom was smart to supervise her fat, insecure, low self-esteem daughter's underage foray onto MySpace, but, like the toddlers who drown themselves in the toilet the one time their parents leave them alone, she shouldn't have ever, ever, ever been left unsupervised. Since the mom made the dubious choice to let her on in the first place.

There be monsters. Nowhere in the modern world (and don't anybody say - except on the floor of Congress or the House of Lords - because there's no comparison) are people more willing to be more hurtful and vicious with less provocation than on social networks on the internet. Frankly, most 13 year olds aren't mature enough to deal with it. So they shouldn't be allowed to.

This sounds like a completely fabricated story, exactly the type of thing posted in MySpace bulletins, a big hoax. I think it might be well intentioned, to warn people of the danger of this type of thing happening, but at the same time there are at least an equal numebr of people getting ideas from this story about how to mentally torment other people, about how to "better" do this type of thing... and the same is true even if it's true. so, where does that leave us?

It's sickening. ADULTS did this. Shudder. To think how much that little girl suffered in her last hour. It makes me want to puke.

Dan, though I sometimes give you grief for publishing stories of hurt kids, thank you *so* much for posting this.

As the father of a nine year old girl, it is very useful for me to know that this sort of horrific shit goes on out there. We carefully monitor our daughter's internet activity but will do so more intelligently now thanks to this posting.

Thanks again.

It sucks when some adults are never able to grow out of a junior high mentality. This whole situation is fucking sad, and hopefully karma will truly be a bitch to the "unnamed" family.

These are the situations where it would be nice to believe in some sort of divine retribution/justice.

Was this written for elementary kids?

There's probably no legal recourse, but I personally kinda wish someone would publish the unnamed parents' names. Let them suffer the social consequences of being known as the kind of people who would taunt a 13-year-old girl to suicide.

Incredible. I hope the few people who know about the involvement of those parents start spreading that information far and wide. If they can't be prosecuted, that family should at least be subjected to the fury of their appalled neighbors, who would hopefully make life miserable for them. And hound them right out of there.

How charming is it that the family goes running to the cops everytime they suffer minor vandalism.

Boo hoo, they ruined our foosball table. Boo hoo, the father ruined our front lawn.

Waa, waa, waa. Fuck them.

ah, Suburbia...

@13 -- read the comments after the article. Someone has found the parents' names.

As depressing as this story is - and while it's a very tricky area, I do definitely think that the people behind this should be nailed in some fashion - there is a bigger issue here, which is : the way that these insults affected Megan.

Yes, she was young. Yes, she had some other issues to contend with. Whatever. As long as we live in a society filled with the kind of (equally depressing) people who have commented on the story (on the St. Charles site), we will get nowhere NEAR a situation where insults and the like will be seen for what they are - utterly irrelevant garbage (which, despite their intentions, is what 99% of those comments amount to as well.) Because as deplorable as the actions (and outcomes) are, it's no different than something like the Imus debacle, or similar situations. It all boils down to this : "They called me a NAME!" When you get older, sometimes it means you get to sue people. For those who haven't quite achieved that level of "enlightenment" yet, sometimes it leads to incidences like this one.

So - if you want a REAL reason why people, as a species, suck - it's because they're not smart enough to get beyond that.

If it were my kid, "un-named family" would be "un-named stiffs in morgue".

I feel so, so sad for that girl.

But I don't think cynicism or some call for revenge is the best answer (though completely understandable).

Instead, here's another possible response: commit an act of kindness in protest. Bonus points if it's for a kid, a stranger, or done in complete anonymity. Mega-bonus points if you try (try!) to make it a daily habit.

Whenever I get it into my head to do this, I feel SO MUCH BETTER about the world. Time to give it another go.

I don't cry easily, but that got me.

Fuck.

Natalie, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that not only were you older when the internet came out but that also you have no kids of your own. Oh, and that the internet somehow terrifies you. You know, because it's causing people to commit suicide EVERY DAY. Very business as usual.
And anyone under, what 18?, should never be allowed on. EVER. Because if you leave them alone for a single second they'll get molested and their identities will be stolen! Millions of unsupervised kids go on MySpace every day without these tragic results. This was a rare event perpetrated by knowing adults. You don't seem too concerned with them though, since (oh noes!) the mother left her kid alone on a computer for two seconds!
Although good job on backing up your own statement about people being hurtful and vicious on the internet. I especially like the part where you felt it was necessary to call this poor girl a "fat, insecure, low self-esteem daughter".

The F-word (f-a-t) is so much worse than the C-word, or ANY other word, to a teenage girl. This story sent me screaming back to my own days of crying, WEEPING, in the shower because of that damn word. My poor mom didn't even know what the hell to do with me.

I can only imagine what's like for girls in this day and age Lindsey, Paris, and America's Next Top Model. Eep.

Interesting the Vladimir's comment (no.7) is verbatim to a comment on the story at that website...

@23 - ironic huh.

Am I the only respondent who thinks these people are all a bunch of crazy white trash? Adults tormenting children and vandalizing each other's property? All this story is missing is a meth lab and adult diapers. The article itself reads like it was written by an 8th grader. Many of the posts on the page indicate that the respondents actually think they are replying directly to Tina and Ron Meier. The whole bunch of them are dumber than a bucket of mud.

I had it rough in grade school, and in reading this, I am remided of some of the terrible things that happened. This story is horrific. Everything about this makes me feel awful.

What. The. Fuck. Reiterating everyone else's rage, I know, but still. I'm actually shaking right now, thinking about this. What kind of ADULT gets it into their heads that this kind of thing is ok? And the mother didn't even feel "that guilty" about it. What the motherfucking hell is that?
There should be some sort of test before you're allowed to have children or live around them, asking whether or not you would torment a 13 year-old girl fighting body image issues and depression till she hangs herself. If you answer yes, not only should you not be allowed in society, you should also be hanged.

Get off your computers, kids, and join the real world. It's bad enough to be judged personally by your peers, but to be judged on the Internet for everyone to see is insupportable.

The insecurity genie is out of the bottle. Critical thinking has been exterminated. No, you cannot be the Olsen Twins or Brittany Spears or Zac Efron - you can only be yourself - thin/fat, dumb/smart, rich/poor.

Madison Ave has met their goal in rendering you 'mad' - both in the emotional sense and in the insane sense. Truly these are the times when the phrase "get a life" means exactly that.

Get out of your house and meet real people. Deal face to face. Your filters are set way too high. The imperfect ironically are seeking perfection.

Not that there was any danger of this happening, but no way am I allowing my daughter to have a MySpace page now.

I've never been sexually propositioned on Myspace. I must be doing it wrong.

What are you wearing, Abby? (rustle, rustle)

I have to say I'm disturbed by the lust for retribution. The name and address of the woman who set up that Myspace account is known, and spreading across the intertubes. I'm sure hundreds of packages of dog poo and hate mail are on their way right now. But what does that accomplish?

If Lori Drew commits suicide too, who does that help? What if some nutjob murders her? What if they get the wrong house?

It's apparent that lots and lots of people got the password to that Myspace account. Unless Myspace keeps better logs than I think they do, there's no way on earth to discover who sent the messages that drove Megan Meier over the edge. Which message was it?

What if you're the teen who sent that last one, and you know it, and then something happens to the Drews? How much further is this poison going to spread?

It's a sickening and tragic and horrible story. How much more sickening and tragic and horrible do you want it to get? How is that going to help the Meiers?

That is fucking terrible. There aren't words in English to describe the moral depths these people sunk to.

I would normally post a blog linking this story, but I've got to wait until tomorrow morning to do it. IMO it's that bad. I can't imagine sending any friends to bed having read this.

7. Also, in light of #23, if it's fake, then WTF is with the two photos on the page? Would a prankster go that far, to find two people, a mausoleum and balloons and take pics for effect? Those two people don't look like actors.

"Was this written for elementary kids?"

Almost. All mainstream journalism is, as we are taught, to be simple, relatively direct and written at an 8th grade diction/reading level. This aggrivates me at times, but I understand why that's the standard directive for basic news. Perhaps you're more literate/have a higher IQ/are less dyslexic than than the person next to you, but that doesn't mean he/she doesn't deserve to be able to read the local paper.

No words, except to say that after reading both the article and most of the comments thereafter, I am ever so thankful my parents left the Midwest. What an utter cracker-barrel eatin', bible-thumpin', fucking culturally dead-endin' wasteland.

I'm having a hard time buying this one. If this really happened it would have hit mainstream media. MSM totally gets off on this kind of shit.

If it is real then those "parents" will get what's coming to them. Everyone does.

People do suck. And speaking as a once fat teenage girl and still fat adult: I'm not really surprised by this too much, although it is a little bit surprising that the parents were involved.

And people in the real world suck too. I got fired today! Yippee! Apparently I'm a worthless piece of shit unless I'm kissing ass and sitting in a chair in a cubicle for 10 hours per week! Right on!

Why was every sentence a paragraph?

am I the only one who thinks that this would have happened anyway? people in the rel world suck too!! like 38 said.....
it's very sad, yeah........ but anyway, does anyone think that the main problem here is the myspace account? really????

#40:
Remember 'peer pressure'?

I'm always surprised when people criticize revenge by saying things like "will that bring X back to life?"

That obtuse viewpoint shows no understanding of the motivation and intent of revenge. Do you really think anyone commits an act of vengeance because they honestly believe it can resurrect a corpse? It's done for entirely different reasons. You might as well address those.

42, firstly if anyone deserves to deliver revenge it's the Meiers, and they contented themselves with destroying a foosball table. Secondly, Fnarf is talking about all of the rest of the world that has read this story and now wants to see something bad happen to the other family, and he brings up some very good points about that. It's very easy to fall into a mob mentality after reading this, and it's wise of Fnarf to recognize that and question it.

The other family, particularly the mother, was completely rotten to do this especially in light of their supposedly friendly relations. They'll probably be hounded out of town now that this was in their paper and the locals could easily find out the name without it being spread all over the internet. The rest of us, reeling from how fucked up it is, still need to keep out of it.

A story from St. Charles on The Slog! I'm so proud!

Sadly, this is typical of the St. Louis area. Adults still ask you where you went to high school, and will judge you if you went to "the wrong one".

Also, keep your head up Kristenbell.

Thanks for posting this, Dan.

There isn't anything I can say that hasn't already been said here, so @39: That drives me crazy too, but handy for identifying shitty writers who can't string together more than three sentences without suffering a breakdown.

@ 39 & 45 - the article's author is one Steve Pokin, and he calls his column "Pokin Around." That alone is a big clue to the quality of his writing. Besides the one-sentence paragraphs, he also divides clauses into separate sentences, e.g., "Ron says Tina was as vigilant as a parent could be in monitoring Megan on MySpace. Yet she blames herself."

I hate to say this, but I know a few adults who seem capable of just this sort of juvenile maliciousness and participatory aggression. As if adolescence isn't hard enough, some parents feel the need to contribute to the often unbridled cruelty which sometimes occurs. It's sickening.

Of course, some kids are absolute brats, too. But how can they grow out of it with role models such as these?

@41 exactly!!!!!!!
peer pressure is an issue, in myspace, at your local high school, at the swim team.... everywhere. and if this kid got so upset because she was insulted, etc... well, it probably happened all through her daily life. and it was too much for her. that is the sad part.
the fucked up part is adults preying on a teenager that is also taking medication because she's known to be depressed... these people are the problem, with or without the internet.

Sad story, shittily written.

No wonder America is dumb and getting dumber, when newspapers hire reporters who can't write a coherent sentence.

85% of the people who contribute to Slog, write better than this guy.

When you're writing for an audience in The midwest, and in Missouri, and in the St. Louis area, and in St. Charles specifically, you have to SERIOUSLY dumb down your writing. Short sentences with small words work best.

Whether the story is true or not, I can't say, but it does look like there's an obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for,
"Meier, Megan TaylorDardenne Prairie
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) October 19, 2006
Section: Classified Advertising Edition: Five Star Late Lift
Page Word count: 157
ID#: 1000861011"

@40 & 41:

Oh, please don't be so naive as to pull out the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument here.

Here is Barbara Coloroso, who has written extensively on bullying:

"The ability to inflict pain anonymously, and with such a wide audience to reinforce the humiliation, often emboldens the cyberbully to inflict far greater damage to the target than would have been imaginable in a face-to-face encounter.
... bullying in cyberspace can multiply the humiliations and magnify the damage."

Where else but on the internet could a whole family contribute to the bullying of a child? The damage they did was swift, deep, and utterly thoughtless, because all they had to do was type words onto a screen.

Parents should definitely be wary of their kids' online activity.

Wow. That's really fucked up.

@43

I agree others should stay out of it.

Just pointing out that one of the most common rationales against vengeance is a completely empty one - I don't think revenge has ever been about 'bringing someone back' or 'erasing the tragedy.' Who'd believe that? Certainly not these people.

Yeah, I'm not convinced this is the act of profound moral depravity everyone here seems to think it is. It's really sad and fucked up, and the adults who perpetrated the fraud should probably suffer the societal fallout for their actions, but you know what? People are mean, kids kill themselves and, honestly, unless she had a glandular disorder or something, Megan's parents were partially responsible for her depression because they let their 5'5" daughter get up to 195 pounds. That's not physically healthy, and the social consequences are a cultural reality.

While this was certainly sad and fucked up, it's irresponsible to talk about changing the law because of it.

Legislating a statutory baseline for kindness sets a terrible precedent.

God, the name of the street the Drews live on is "WATERFORD CRYSTAL DRIVE". In addition to everything else, that is just beyond tacky.

@ 54: Exactly. Revenge is all about "an eye for an eye". Its about settling a score. I hurt, now you hurt -- preferably worse than I do. And thats a very powerful motivation that is difficult to reason with when you are in the grips of it. Some people with a certain degree of self-control can be talked out of revenge, and some just plain can't. Or don't want to be.

And I have to say, personally, that I don't know if I could have settled for wrecking a foosball table. I applaud the parents for their remarkably constrained expression of rage and grief.

@ 55, depends on what laws they want to change. According to the article they want to make it so that the other girl's mom could be held accountable. Sounds reasonable to me. Why is that "fucked up" to you?

Ya know kids kill themselves because idiots like 55 seem to think the cultural stigma against overweight people is perfectly fine because hey, it's unhealthy. So is smoking. So is drinking excessively. So is DIETING too much. Yes she wasn't at necessarily a healthy weight... but it might not have been her parents, might have been her GENES. Some people are SUPPOSED to be bigger, and there is no shame in being the weight nature intended you to be. What's fucked up is that you think it's all right for ADULTS to torment a girl who already has difficulty fitting in because of this culture's fed up attitudes towards depression and beauty because hey, "people are mean and kids kill themselves." Let's all just sit back and watch.

For sure definitely a sad story, but am I the only one that thinks the mom should've known something was up earlier? Def not trying to blame her, but I always thought it was pretty easy to depict fishy myspace accounts?

oops, meant "detect" not "depict"

What's fucked up is that you think it's all right for ADULTS to torment a girl

Show me where I said that.

the cultural stigma against overweight people is perfectly fine

Show me where I said that.

Let's all just sit back and watch.

I'm pretty sure what I actually said was, "[the people who did this] should probably suffer the societal fallout for their actions".

But that's okay -- you just go ahead run in little circles and act like an asshole. That I will sit back and watch.

I have to say I'm disturbed by the lust for retribution.

You're not the only one. I wouldn't have even needed to read the article for proof people suck; the comments threads there and here tell me everything I need to know. Everything from blame the fat kid to licensing parents to death threats.

Not all adults are as net savvy as they should be, and it seems like the parents took reasonable precautions here. Perhaps the only thing they might be faulted with is not getting their daughter better counseling earlier.

But there is a special place in hell for the lying, bullying fuckwads who tormented this poor girl. At least a "kid" bully can claim being young as an excuse. Adults who perpetrated this conspiracy (getting other kids to participate, doing this at length) deserve everything that's coming to them.

Hopefully their kids will end up feeling traumatized, drop out of school, that kind of thing. Wouldn't bother me one bit.

The article says "She had attention deficit disorder and battled depression. Back in third grade she had talked about suicide." Is there any doubt this girl was on prescription drugs? These have consistently been linked to child suicide.

Yes, it was horrible what those neighbors did to her, and they should be prosecuted. Still I cannot help but think she would be alive today, if it weren't for our society's insane overprescription of pharmaceuticals.

there are a few crimes here: fraud (impersonating someone else), willfully seeking to cause emotional distress (varies from state to state).

not only that, but if you rob someone, and accidentally kill them in the process, you are charged with murder. it would seem that a similar type statue might apply.

we are outraged by this because it is outrageous.

of course revenge won't bring her back. when people say this it is to temper the one seeking revenge to consider the situation in it's entirety. of course they don't think it will bring her back. but bringing her back is supposedly the only thing that will bring peace. so if there are negatives associated with revenge, perhaps they are not worth the price.

finally, this girl was in a sad state, as evidenced by the mother's constant monitoring of her online actions. is it common that 14 year-olds cannot go on to myspace without total supervision?

For those of you saying you think this story is made up or some sort of "urban legend," the mother of the deceased did a 45 minute interview on the radio last night. She created the myspace with her daughter, knew the password, and only allowed her daughter on the account when she was there to monitor it. According to the mother, the daughter didn't even know the password, her mom or dad had to log in for her. The night she died was the one time where the mom left the house in a hurry before making sure she had logged off.

@52: The internet provides an opportunity to deliver verbal abuse anonymously. However, one can only "inflict pain anonymously" if the person receiving the abuse is stupid enough to care about what strangers think. Why should it disturb me that some faceless subhuman says this or that?

why should you care? maybe you shouldn't if it anonymous. but if you are 14, and you think you know the person, and they are intentionally inflicting emotional harm, and they are including via bulletins people who you do know in the real world... then you might care.

Well, to all of those who say that this would have happened despite the MySpace thing... maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn't have. I know that when I was that age, socially awkward, and depressed... people who were mean to me to my face regularly did not bother me as much because I could hate them and tell myself that they were just horrible. It is much more powerful and awful to have somebody you think is your friend, who has continually made you feel better about yourself, tell you those things, and it doesn't matter whether you have met them in person or not because they can still make you feel.

Besides, the real issue isn't the fact that this was done. If the kid did it on her own, that would be one thing. Kids torture each other, that is what they do. It sucks, but that is kind of the reality of existence for most people that age. But... if they are both kids they are on even ground with each other. But to put adults against a kid? Kids can be cruel but an adult can destroy better because they have more power and knowledge. And, they should know better. Whether it would have happened or not otherwise isn't an issue here, because it has happened. And, it happened because adults encouraged and taught other kids to gang up on a kid who had no clue.

People are mean, kids kill themselves and, honestly, unless she had a glandular disorder or something, Megan's parents were partially responsible for her depression because they let their 5'5" daughter get up to 195 pounds. That's not physically healthy, and the social consequences are a cultural reality.

Give me a fucking break. Her weight had nothing to do with this.

When I was a little younger than Megan, I endured a lot of abuse from my peers. I had terrible skin and teeth, wore dorky clothes, listened to the wrong music and watched the wrong movies. I also happened to be very awkward, shy and sensitive.

However, the worst peer abuse I've ever seen was directed at a girl I met while in high school. Her peers even hurled death threats at her. She was pretty, thin, smart, wore perfectly decent clothes, and had passable taste in music, but she was also painfully shy and awkward.

Those are the only things that matter to bullies: the sensitivity of their victims (how easy it is to harm them) and the un-likelihood of the victims fighting back. Absolutely nothing else matters.

And, like Megan, my former acquaintance offed herself.

Oh crap. Sorry about the broken blockquote tag.

Megan's parents were partially responsible for her depression because they let their 5'5" daughter get up to 195 pounds. That's not physically healthy, and the social consequences are a cultural reality.

lol, Judah

@ 70, the adult DID know better, as evidenced by the fact that she called the neighboring teen kid (the one who had been pulled into it and ultimately let the girl's parents know the truth) while the fucking ambulance was still at the girl's house to tell the kid to keep quiet about the hoax. That woman is a sociopath.

IF an adult did create and post on the fake page, he/she/they should be outed at the very least to face public scorn, if not a law suit.

However, my guess is that the parents of the "ex-friend down the street" had nothing to do with the fake page. I'm betting it was *all* the ex-friend's doing and now her mother or both parents are claiming involvement to save their precious' rep and skin.

@68 Were you NEVER 13?! Sure, now, at 34, that shit rolls off my back. But at 13 the cruelty of other children was DEVESTATING. Peer approval is everything when you're that age.

And of course this has nothing to do, specifically, with MySpace. I didn't meet the interwebs til college, but every fucking day of junior high was a nightmare. And I know folks who took the same actions Megan did for the same reasons.

To imagine that a 13-year-old girl, depressed and socially awkward, should have been able to laugh off the insults of what she saw as her entire world is to be unfathomably naive.

What's more unbelieveable is the adult involvement. That shows a level of cruelty I can't begin to imagine.

well. . . at least she didn't go to school with a bunch of guns and ammo. but how incredibly sad and infuriating.

for ron and tina i would have no problem waiting til their neighbors left for work, then sticking the hose through a basement window for a fill up.

Internet. Serious fucking business.

Honestly, everyone involved in this story needs to grow the fuck up and get over themselves. Including the dead kid.

If there isn't currently a law that was broken, then it's time to add one. These folks (if proven guilty) should have to do some jail time. Adults vs. kids? Amazingly not fair => you go to jail.

@76 - "Were you NEVER 13?! Sure, now, at 34, that shit rolls off my back. But at 13 the cruelty of other children was DEVESTATING. Peer approval is everything when you're that age."

So why don't we, as a society, try to start FUCKING DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THAT SITUATION, rather than continually perpetrating the myth that it "must" be that way?

from a police report: Drew went on to say, the communication became "sexual for a thirteen year old." Drew stated she continued the fake male profile despite this development.

i thought sexual communication with a minor was illegal. could/should drew be charged for that if no other crime can be found?

This case is not yet considered closed. Your opinion may help to persuade these officials that if there isn't a law, there ought to be.

Prosecuting Attorney:
Jack Banas
300 N. 2nd St., 6th Floor
St. Charles, MO 63301

Tom Neer, Sheriff
County Sheriff's Department
101 Crossing Industrial Ct.
O' Fallon, MO 63366

You may prefer to find your representative:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

I believe we can make a difference. The Meiers asked a favor of us during a recent interview. "We want the public to write to the lawmakers" to ask that the laws be changed. This course of action may be effective. Most elected officials love nothing better than being re-elected.

Please see The Smoking Gun website regarding the numerous police reports. The perpetrator of this crime actually damns herself while trying to press charges against the bereaved father. The reports also illustrate that the vigilantism portrayed by the media as a maelstrom within the past week were actually incidents occurring from November 2006 until April 2006. But, hey, sensationalizing that fact allows you to continue classifying us all as SERIOUSLY Dumb White Trash in Missouri.

Please excuse the inevitable grammatical and spelling errors in the above post. Consider the (St. Charles County) source.