It may not be illegal, but it’s still disgusting.
Kasia November 19th, 2007
I can’t summarize this right now. I should be working, but I saw this and it made me so mad I had to post.
What the **** kind of mother creates a fake MySpace account to fake out her daughter’s friend or former friend, poses as a teenage boy who’s interested in said friend or former friend, manipulates the girl (who by the way has emotional problems) into trusting “him”, then starts posting nasty messages about the friend or former friend, which culminate in the girl committing suicide?!
I don’t know what transpired between Megan Meier (the girl who committed suicide) and her former friend. I don’t know precisely what the other girl’s mother said to Megan posing as Josh, or vice versa.
But I do know that this kind of **** is NOT how you teach your child to act. And this unnamed mother involved her daughter in the hoax.
I don’t care whether it’s legal. I care that this is an absolutely inexcusable way for someone who’s supposed to be an adult to behave. If the daughter had cooked it up and carried it out, it would still be cruel, but I could say “Well, she IS only 14.” There’s a reason we have diminished culpability for things you do before certain ages. It’s because society says that you’re young enough, have had little enough opportunity to develop your judgment, that we shouldn’t hit you with the full force of the law.
But if this woman has a 14-year-old daughter, even assuming she was a verrrry young mother, she’s almost certainly at least 30. Odds are she’s pushing 40. She is quite old enough to know better.
Well… how do we think there are cruel kids in the world? Because they have Saints for parents? Apples and trees… apples and trees.
Lord help us all.
It breaks my heart-on so many levels.
You’re not old enough to remember the big cheerleader drama:
Girl A makes the cheer squad. Girl B doesn’t. Girl B’s mom hires a hitman
to kill Girl A’s mom, so Girl A would be so distraught she would quit the
squad.
Nice, huh?
This was in the 80s or 90s, in Texas.
True, Cris. Very true.
TBS: no, I don’t remember that. I would differentiate, however, by saying that is (a) clearly illegal, and (b) outright sociopathic. This situation is a little different; the mother seems to just be walking that fine line between incredibly self-absorbed and immature on the one hand, and borderline sociopathic on the other.
I think the distinction for me is the level of harm intended to be caused (as opposed to the actual level of harm caused). In this case, the mother apparently didn’t mean for anyone to be actually physically hurt, just made a reeeeeally bad series of decisions. In the other case…well, whacking someone’s mom is sort of the poster case for intending harm…
it’s simple, because parents are trying to be their kid’s best friends now.
it’s sad it really is. i think more people need to understand that they shouldn’t tolerate cyber bullying and that they can get that bully to stop if they report them. but like anyone reads the terms of use anyway.
In the town where I live, a middle school was vandalized horribly. We’re talking a break-in with lewd words painted on the walls, computers smashed, etc.
The culprits?
Parents of middle-school children. Evidentally they were upset with the principal and/or a teacher. This is how they handled it.
Similar things happen on the baseball diamond of little league players when parents throw tantrums and threaten umpires. Or when there’s one set of parents whose house turns into Party Central because they won’t say “no” to their kids or anyone elses. (In fact, there’s a couple of interesting lawsuits in the works around here because of boys whose friends’ parents enabled them to flout their parents’ rules, including leaving the state.)
You see this more than a little: Adults embracing the stupid melodrama of adolescents. I think it’s a symptom of adults who refuse to mature or consider the consequences of their actions.
Half the world is below average on the bell curve…..when the average is consistently dragged down, when lack of civility is the norm and even encouraged in the media, when cheap shots and one-upmanship are the preferred communication tools, we may have a lot to look forward to from the future generations…..
Can I raise my kids in a bubble?