Megan Meier's MySpace Suicide Crossed the Line

Megan Meier was an average thirteen-year-old girl from Dardenne, Prairie, Missouri. She was an eighth grader who studied at the Immaculate Conception School. She and the daughter of Lori Drew were very good friends but had a falling out. They were very good friends and enjoyed talking to boys on My Space, a popular social networking site.

Megan however suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and was on medication. She may be like any other teenager. But due to her condition, she was more mentally fragile.

Lori then decided to create a fraudulent account for Josh Evans. He was a fictitious boy who supposedly came from a broken home and loved music. He befriended Megan and acted like an online boyfriend. He flirted with her and said the right things to get her to like him.

Megan was in heaven for a while until Josh decided to make a 360-degree turn. He called her fat and called her a slut. He posted online messages which made Megan feel bad. He even told her that the world would be better off without her.

Megan had hung herself. She died the next day. The Meiers were devastated by the incident and tried to find this Josh Evans whose account was promptly deleted upon Megan's death.

The parents later found out that the truth that Josh Evans never existed. Josh Evans was a creation of conniving neighbors Lori Drew, her daughter and Ashley Grills. They took turns writing messages to Megan and they drove her over the edge.

This has distressed the Meiers to the point of separating. It has been about two years and the Drews and Grills are pointing fingers at each other. Though these people may later feel sorry for their crimes, one thing is certain. Megan Meier is dead and nothing they do will ever bring her back.

My Opinion

I feel that there are times when the line is crossed. There is a fine line from pulling off a harmless prank such as a prank phone call or sticking a "kick me" sign on someone's back and this kind of sick behavior. The mother and daughter should get some therapy. There is obviously something wrong with them.

I am personally annoyed by people who are fakers. These people either impersonate a celebrity or create a fictitious identity. My friend did that once. He posted a picture of a girl in Friendster and tried to flirt with people. I told my friend that this was a bad idea and eventually he deactivated the account. I am amazed by the number of fake accounts out there. Many of these fake accounts are pretending to be famous people! Imagine finding a My Space account or any social networking site account of your favorite celebrity such as The Rock, Brad Pitt or Madonna and finding out you were victimized by a faker.

The purpose of social networking sites is to gain new friends, get reacquainted with old ones and to interact with people from all over the world. However some people pervert this and use it for personal gain and for hurting other people. They defeat the purpose of these sites.

I wish the social networking sites would be stricter in getting people's identification. It is so easy to pretend to be someone else or to create a new identity altogether. The sites should get something like a social security number and a credit card number to verify you. People below the legal age should also not be allowed to make accounts in social networking sites as I have heard of people being swindled and raped because the youngster fell victim to an older person's scheme.

I wish the ones responsible for this heinous crime would rot in jail. It is unfortunate that the law in many countries is not equipped to combat cyber crime. I wish laws would be updated to combat the crimes of the future. For those concerned please write to your congressman about this.

I fell sorry for Megan's family that they had to lose her in this way and would no longer have her this Yuletide season. This incident was totally preventable had some people come to their right senses. It isn't a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina or a California earthquake. It was a hoax that went too far.

Megan died too young too soon. She could have done a lot of things in her life. But all her hopes and dreams were shattered because some people chose to do the wrong thing.

© TheChosen1. Review is published in other sites under the same name

Sources: CNN and Fox News

Also published at Ciao