The Suicide Teen Case

To my horror I read in the newspapers that Lori Drew has been indicted in the case of Megan Meier's death. If you remember, this is the case of a teen girl who commited suicide after her Internet boyfriend broke up with her and told her that the world would be a better place without her. It happened to be that this boyfriend wasn't really a "boy", but a character created in the Internet by a neightbour, Ms. Lori Drew. A little of quick history, it is said that Megan and Ms. Drew's daughter were friends until Megan decided that the Drew girl wasn't good enough for her new group of friends and dumped her. This upset the Drew girl, who told her mother. It is said that Megan spread malicious rumors about the Drew girl too. Other parents would say to their kids:

"Hey, that Megan is a bitch. Don't pay attention to her."

Personally, I would say to my kid:

"Don't get mad, Baby, get even."

Ms. Drew did what she believed to be the best, or who the fuck knows what she believed, but she wanted to get even. So she did what every fucking body in the Internet does: she created a character to do her job. She sought a way to get to Megan the way Megan got to ger daughter and then give her a taste of her own medicine. It wasn't like she went out there to kill the girl, that the girl did by her very own, and maybe even with the moral support and emotional help of her parents. Indeed Ms. Drew did a very immature thing, but if people would get indicted for being immature, then everybody should be in jail. However, this woman is getting indicted for something more than the 90% of the Internet users do: create an Internet personality. Seriously, what's so fucking wrong about that? Look at the Facebook, for instance: there are people with more than one profile, putting all kinds of fake pictures and even harassing other users. Are they getting indicted? No. Furthermore, do users go killing themselves? No, and if they do, nobody cares. Everybody knows there's a degree of lying in the Internet, in everybody you meet, and even if they are completely honest, you don't believe all they write because most people lie, and you have no means to get to know the truth. If Megan wasn't aware of this or wouldn't admit to it, it was much her own problem.

I believe that if they go prosecuting Ms. Drew, they should go one by one prosecuting everybody who uses the internet creating bogus profiles and saying mean stuff to people. I could put up a list to help, if you want. But all that is bullshit. They are merely trying to fry Ms. Drew for something that was entirely a Meier fault.

I wonder, what would have happened if Josh were real. Would they indict him? Based on what? Because at the end of the day it's all about Megan killing herself. But what killed her? "Josh" breaking up with her or more her low self esteem, which Mrs. Meier aknowledged her daughter suffered from since her childhood, to which added as defusing devise her own mother not listening to her? The "Josh" character made her cry, but her mother's unability to comfort her, talk to her was what ultimately sent her upstairs to hang herself. How can a decent parent watch his or her own kid struggle with low self esteem and do nothing?

If you ask me who killed Megan Meier, I have an answer for you: The Meiers.

I hope fervishly that Mr. Drew gets absolved of this ridiculous indictment.

Lost of Trust on the Media

Open up the e-mail news sent by CNN and you will find an article regarding the case of Megan Meier, the teen girl who hung herself in the closet because a phony boy told her that the world would be a better place without her. Perhaps, if you check my last entry on the subject (it was some days ago), you'll see I quote the New York Times (I remember because I misspelled it "New Jerk"), where "Josh Evans" was a product of Lori Drew's imagination. Something like her very own "Harry Potter" (save the wizardry), who would do her work at avenging Megan's mean behavior against her daughter. There was a whole unfolding about the bittered up relationships between the Meiers and the Drews, something like a Montescue and Capulet family rivalry going on.

Today the CNN talks of this matter and now Josh is no longer Ms. Drew's but something like a collective character, who's password went from hand to hand through a number of people who toyed with Megan. It speaks of several teens mistreating her through the façade of Josh, and an 18-year-old woman typing the deadly words "the world would be a better place without you". There's also some other information (the Spirit of Rugby knows where the paper got it) that gives a new light to the role of her parents in the fight. And I quote:

When Megan's mother returned home, she found her daughter crying at the computer. After reading the messages, she criticized her daughter for using inappropriate language, Banas said.

Telling her mom that "I can't believe you're not on my side," Megan ran upstairs and hanged herself, Banas said.

How does the Prosecuting Attorney, Mr. Jack Banas knows that? Then, how can the Meiers blame the Drews when they themselves didn't help their kid?

But this is not today's topic. Today's topic is the need for "sensationalism" in the media. It seems is no longer the accuracy of the information what matters, but the scandal in it, the impact in the reader. Matters such as the dropping employment rates, the eroding fo the wages, the ever growing levels of poverty world wide, the corruption in the Government and other power entities. Hunger is not as striking as Britney Spears' bald head or a crying Lindsay Lohan. Who cares for the debate over the war budget? So what if it has rose disproportionally in the past years when you can either be clicking at Paris Hilton in jail? Now, what's the truth about such a puntual, small matter as Megan Meier. Not like the suicide of a teen is dismisable, but fuck it, compare it for a moment with the teens and preteens KILLED in war? Pulled into suicide bomb missions, starved to death, worked to the bone, forced into prostitution. What's the death of some personality challenged teen compared with the kidnapped kids sold out as slaves for pedophiles, for child pornography and child prostitution? Well, all that is sad, but it's not "sensational", and therefore it's not "selling". Besides, such things can be counterproductive because maybe some smuckety-smuck has a Mongolian child chained to a cage in the basement for his or her own amusement.

Then again, if the elections come, papers rub their hands together because then everything is about the newest gay senator or lawmaker. Who has the dirtiest, most illicit-sex-stained file. Mark Foley, Larry Craig... who else is there to trash? I am not a Republican, the Spirit of Rugby forbids! but I find it utterly distasteful to attack people based on such superficial, personal matters instead of targetting political positions, decisions, work capabilities and such. Sure Mr. Foley did wrong by targeting teens as his potential sexual partners, even if he never did anything actually physical with them (though then again, if he wasn't having sex with them, and the guys gave their consent, I really don't see the harm. No pictures asked, no actual sex, just flirting... these kids already do that with their peers). Sen. Craig... really, how can anyone really say he was cruising? Okay, he plaid guilty and that makes him look guilty. Yeah, I notice the cynism in it. He wasn't even soliciting, if that was his intention. These men weren't underage, so what was the harm of it? Two consenting adults.

BUT it's sex, it's gay, it's "in the closet", it's forbiden, it's dirty and brought forward. The media wolfs on the unprotected vulnerable victim, leaving behind nothing from a defiled carcass, reducing human to a bundle of shame that will have to seek live under a rock in order to escape the stigma. No it's not a matter of them seeking out this, it's a matter of the media taking on meaningless weak points, human features that make these men HUMAN, and exploit them, make them everybody's business, debase them meanwhile ignoring the facts that, not that extraordinay and catchy, do affect the lives of many.

Yes, the truth is inconvenient, but more than that, it's boring, and boring doesn't sell. How in the fucking HELL can be two versions (if not more) so different from a same fact? No investigative reporting. Nobody really cares for the truth, because truth is nobody really cares for the death of Megan Meier. Megan is just a bone to get the juiciest story regardless of how real or not it is. People will after chose which version they like the best and declare it "truth". And the colapsing markets? The housing problems in New Orléans? So the poor "niggaz" who survived the flood can't rent a place where they used to live because no one can pay those prices. Well, they are poor or black, so who cares? Send them to Mexico, after all, the US is getting all the "excedent people" from the Mexican's right? Let's have the Cajuns and Sin Citizens populate Juarez, León and other places down there, right? They are not Hillary Duff, so who cares about them? The Government doesn't so why should the press?

This is the world in which we live today, and I'm deeply ashamed and disappointed on it.

Teenie-Hoax

Okay, I had my news-comment of the day, but here we go, I find yet another thing about which say a thing or two. (This will most likely also go into an entry in Locky the Bunny, as a lot of people with that mentality stumbles around it.) Still scrolling down the New York Times (^_^ I just mispelled it New Jerk. hihihi) I saw this article titled "A Hoax Turned Fatal Draws Anger". Well, I thought it was about something in politics, so I merrily sauntered into the article, when what do I see? but it's about some stupid teen girl who killed herself because some fake guy in the internet told her he hated her. The girl, 13, got a boyfriend, a character created by a 47 year old neighbour woman, who most likely thought of herself as Malcom's Mom, so she "avenged" her daugher after this other teen told her that they would not be friends anymore. The girl and the fake guy flirted and then the guy became mean and, after being massively attacked through the blog of the boy, she decided to hung up herself in her closet. People is mad at the woman who created the guy and want to burn her alive, so to speak. The parents of the suicidal girl threw a temper tantrum. Everybody has opinions and they are all heated about it. Now, lets clear up some things:

1. Indeed, a MOM has SHIT to do in "avenging" her kids' social life. If the girl broke her friendship with her daughter, her daughter should take the chance to deal how to deal with situations and people like that. When a friendship is broken, trust me, in any case is better broken. I have broken friendships myself, either because we no longer have common topics, or because I consider the other person or the group to be toxic. Happens all the time. Now if she felt like she wanted to give the girl a taste of her own soup, well, that's much her problem.

2. Everybody knows there are bogus people in the Internet. It happens. People create them to protect their own identities, and well, for a miriad of other reasons that concerns only to them. You can't blame this woman for creating a character and playing it according to what she feels. Everybody has the right to do so, and so does she. If the girl put her hopes on this character, much her problem. She should have grown up.

3. I have not heard that this character had forced the girl to commit suicide. If she did, it's her fault, the teens, and if you want to blame someone else, blame the parents for not coaching her properly. She was a desperate attention seeker, from what I gather, who exposed herself to rejection and/or ill attention. It was her who decided to end up her life. It was here to did it. It was not the character, nor the woman behind it. In any case, the parents should think about what kind of environment they created where their disturbed daughter prefered death to crying her heart out to them.

It's easy to blame others, but it's hard to shoulder our own mistakes, right? The teen years are not easy, and the parents should think about what they did when, knowing they had a kid who depended so much on the acceptance of others, who talked about suicide, they let it happen. Did they spent more time with their kid? Quality-time? Or sending her to the shrink was considered enough and "good parenting"? Why the kid turned to the belt and the closet instead of mom and dad? Why did she let her affect her so much? What kind of support, self-assurance she had? Did mom and dad where there everyday talking to her about how beautiful her eyes where and how she was a pretty person insider, how life has many changes, many tasks and tests that makes us better people? Did they teach her how to take criticism, that she should not mind ill words that she knew fake because what matters is what she feels, what she believes and the worth she gives to herself?

Yeah, yeah, burn the immature neighbour mom, who seems to be an aging woman stuck in teen-years, a raging person or a psychopat, but she did nothing. If it would have been not the fake character, it could have been someone else. The teen was unbalanced and set to defuse any time. So, should you stone the real kid, a real teen who would have found her clingy or hypocritical and actually say it in her face, fight with her and then have all his friends bitch at her? The boy was a bogus, but the situation was as real as any she could have run into, and evidently she had the inclination to overdramatize everything.

I have no part in this, but I stand with Ms. Lori Drew, even if I think she should do a little bit of growing and giving her kids in adoption to people who know how to be parents. Ms Lori is responsible of NOTHING regarding the death of that kid. You are pointing fingers at the wrong parents.