Jezebel: hell is other people

Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings: Day 4

Megan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:20:00 EDT

Sonia Sotomayor, dickish Senators and questions about whether judges can be wise and/or Latina (keep in mind: Republicans confirmed Clarence Thomas) without disenfranchising whiny white men remain, so we're back in the comments, when we can bear it.

Girl Scout Robber Stefanie Woods: Sociopath? Or Helpless Victim Of The Terrible Disease Of Painkiller Addiciton?

Moe — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Stefanie Woods is a photogenic 18-year-old whose crime spree has captivated idyllic Palm Beach. If Law & Order taught me anything it's that she's also a sociopath. But see if you think I'm giving humanity too much credit: it all started when Woods, a part-time model, started chatting up a nine-year-old Girl Scout selling cookies outside a Wynn Dixie. Then she had a friend grab the kid's envelope of $168 and ran back to her car. (This crime was convicted as petty theft and has been referred to in media reports as a "ripoff" but I am pretty sure there are states in which you'd call it "robbery," especially if her name had been so curiously spelled by a non-Caucasian parent, but whatevs.) Okay, then she came back to the same grocery store, and bragged about what she'd pulled off. Then she gave the finger to news cameras. She declared her lack of remorse before a camera.

She told a judge she was a drug addict who had taken Xanax, Ecstasy, OxyContin, heroin, coke and LSD, to which the judge replied, "If all that is true, you should be dead," a statement that becomes immeasurably more accurate without its preambulatory clause. She also: skipped out on a Denny's bill — Denny's! thank the deities for poetic justice — and stabbed her boyfriend with a pocket knife and keyed his car...Oh, I don't know, maybe she's just a worthless drug addict. Anyway now she's finally going away, to juvi, and apparently also "crying," and definitely also sporting a fresh set of highlights. Who knows, maybe she will become even more famous in prison. The Mumia Abu-Jamal of our Generation. Then I can die.

Some videos:

Paris Hilton Of Palm Beach Has A Problem [NPR]

Girl Scout Cookie Thief Sentenced [Fox 29]

"You Should Be Dead" [Palm Beach Post]

The Part Where She Skips Out On A Denny's Tab [CBS 12]

Videogum Weighs In [Videogum]

"I Don't Know, Doesn't Everybody Like Money? [Fox 29]

"If Ian MacKaye Were Here, He Would Grab That Frappuccino Out Of Her Hand And Smash It Over Her Head And Say, 'Chill Out'" [Metatribes]

Lori Drew Indicted For Inviting Megan Meier To Touch Her "Snake"

Moe — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Lori Drew has been indicted! (We totally want to marry the California courts today.) The Los Angeles feds have indicted the Missouri mom who masterminded the MySpace hoax that led 13-year-old Megan Meier to hang herself on charges of fraud and conspiracy in a case that probably has some... interesting First Amendment implications! But whatever, we are generally satisfied. Lori Drew, who created a fake MySpace profile for a 16-year-old named "Josh Evans" and used it to fuck with Megan in retaliation for ending her friendship with her daughter, has yet to speak up for herself, but every time we think, "Just leave her alone already," someone else speaks out with another testimonial to her shittiness. Today we learn a little more about "Josh"'s flirting technique.

Classy!

Neighbor Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case [TheSmokingGun]
Women Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case [AP

Earlier: Previous Megan Meier posts can be found here

Megan Meier's MySpace Hoax Tormenter: "I Just Wanted It To End"

Moe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:30:00 EDT

Remember back when MySpace tormenting mommy Lori Drew was the worst person in the world? Well, she still is, and here thanks to this morning's Good Morning America we have her 19-year-old co-conspirator Ashley Grills finally confirming it. If you never followed the story: it roughly goes: a thirteen-year-old hung herself after a distressing series of MySpace encounters with a boy she had been "friends" with; the suicide-inspiring boy turned out to be the fictional creation of Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend down the street, the insane saga eventually made its way into the New Yorker and eventually it seemed that maybe Ashley, not Lori, was the mastermind for the hoax. Here Ashley admits she writes the message that drove Megan to hang herself, but says she did it because she knew the joke had gone too far and wanted to erase the account. And why did she think it had gone too far? Because Lori Drew was trying to get her to set up a meeting with "Josh Evans" so that they could show up and laugh at her! [ABC News]

Megan Meier: Just Your Average, Small Dog-Loving, Depressed, Bipolar, A.D.D. Suburban Babi

Moe — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

The New Yorker becomes the latest media outlet to reexamine the Megan Meier suicide this week, and despite this topic not exactly being underexposed, it's a thoughtful, texture-rich story about a girl who sounds so insanely normal you sorta wonder how the fuck you would go about raising yourself as a teenager. (Ooooh, answer: stealing your kids' mood-altering meds, duh.) Not innately insecure/nerdy/un-self-confident, Megan was a daddy's-little-tomboy (she fished, threw frogs, etc.) who had a sassy attitude tempered by a very kind streak — "for years she had served as the self-appointed guardian of a blind boy at her school, leading him through the hallways between classes." But her angst over her chunky legs began in kindergarten, and by middle school she was taking Celexa, Concerta and Geodon (a bipolar disorder drug.)

Parents Tina and Ron, who met in second grade and married just out of high school, come across as unimpeachably sympathetic as ever; they reared Megan in a friendly subdivision free of laundry poles and aboveground pools and when she seemed to be striving for the "instant maturity look" too early, they enrolled her in a Catholic school where she wore a uniform and stopped "paying attention to her hair as much" and "worrying about undereye concealer." Then came Josh Evans...

Playing on Megan's susceptibility to underdogs, Josh's creators endowed him with a pitiable bio: "when I was 7 my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother...poor mom yeah she had such a hard time...finding work to pay for us after he left." His ambitions also seemed tweaked to Megan's desires. His answer to the section "Goal you would like to achieve this year" was "meet a great girl." The girl he was looking for happened to have long brown hair, like Megan. As for weight, Josh answered, "DON'T REALLY MATTER."

You guys know the rest of this story; and if you don't decide to kill 15 minutes reading apt descriptions like this of Megan's tiara-face:

She stared directly at the camera, screwing her lips into the half-sulky, half-silly, exactingly lip-glossed pout that— whether designed to suggest vampiness or simply to mask the indignities of orthodontia— is a upiquitous affectation of american teen-age girldom.

And this of MySpace, where Megan's handle was "Megan Babi", as Times Square circa 1977:

MySpace, with its cluttered layout, can suggest an online incarnation of the broken-windows theory — surface disorder begetting actual chaos.

You should at least know it ends on a somewhat hopeful note:

Hi . . . you might not know me . . . but [my friend] used to live in missouri and be friends with your wonderful daughter . . . [we] get made fun of too. being called whores etc . . . etc. but we're doing everything we can to stop bullying . . . because we dont want something this terrible to have to happen to anyone again . . . we're going to counciling . . . and i think we're really gunna start to make a difference.

Annals Of Crime: Friend Game [New Yorker]
Earlier: If You Can Handle A Really Depressing Teen Suicide Story Right Now
Are The Parents Who MySpace Tormented Megan Meier Ready To Atone?

The Suicide That Proved We Are Still A Nation Capable Of "Shock"

Moe — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:30:19 EST

In the 13 days since we first heard word of the case of Lori Drew, the mother whose Myspace hoax drove 13-year-old Megan Meier to suicide, pretty much every major news outlet seems to have covered — including Doctor Drew himself, who appeared pretty disgusted by the whole thing on Monday night's Anderson Cooper 360. Today the New York Times weighed in, and it quickly shot to the top of the newspaper's Most Emailed list. The story itself hasn't gotten much more complicated since — Megan had been fighting with her formerly close friend; she switched schools and cut off the friendship; the friend's mother set up a fake MySpace account under the guise of a cute boy named Josh and went to work befriending Megan only to suddenly de-friend her with random assertions that she was a "shitty person" without whom the world would be a better place; it all checks out; it all ended up being in a police-penned account Lori Drew herself gave an officer. What has changed since the world learned about the story, according to the Riverfront Times, are the lives of Curt and Lori Drew:

The day after the article was published, a prank caller dialed 911 and reported a murder at the Drew residence. "I looked out into my front yard and all I saw was nothing but St. Charles police officers with shotguns and bulletproof vests," says Trevor Buckles, who lives in the house next door to the Drews. "It was kind of scary." Pete Kriss, another neighbor, says at first he worried that people might mistake his house for the Drews' home and is glad the address is posted online. "Now they know exactly where it is," he says.

But although their pictures, phone numbers and satellite images of their houses have been posted on the internet, no one knows where the Drews are.

Neighbors say they haven't seen the family in days and have no idea as to their whereabouts. A person answering the phone at Coldwell Banker Gundaker in O'Fallon, where Curt Drew worked as a realtor, said Drew was no longer with the firm and quickly hung up.

The New York Times did manage to reach Curt on the phone, and he declined to comment. So it's tough what to make of it. The small details that have fleshed out the personalities and motives of the Drew family don't paint them in any less cruel of a light, and none of their neighbors or friends — save the anonymous author of a twisted blog called meganhaditcoming, if it is not in fact a member of the Drew family — seem to have spoken out in their defense. Maybe they have nothing to say. Maybe they are still recovering from the big rush of shame the general public's outrage has unleashed. Maybe they're too far gone. I'd hazard to say, based on the evidence, that the eighteen-year-old employee that assisted Lori Drew in the hoax is too far gone.

But now there's really not a lot more to say but, you know, love your neighbors. Yes, the town passed some law criminalizing online harassment and columnist Steve Pokin continues to use his space to argue for tougher legislation regarding internet threats; I'd like to think the power of stories like these will be more effective than the prospect of $500 fines at deterring those who might otherwise be tempted to go too far in tormenting someone on Myspace.

And finally, I know the Meiers are legally separated now and have even filed restraining orders against one another; my experience covering messy divorce cases tells me this is probably mostly tactical, but still. If it's idealistic to think experiencing the country's love and empathy for them might help bring them back together and encourage them to finally move on, okay then, I am an idealist.

A Hoax Turned Fatal [New York Times]
Broken Lives On Waterford Crystal Drive [Riverfront Times]

The Megan Meier Police Report: There Are (Almost) No Words

Moe — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:30:00 EST

The Smoking Gun has finally unearthed the Megan Meier police report, which is to say, it unearthed the police report filed by one Lori Drew, in response to the "hostility" and "tension" she felt in her suburban St. Louis community after Meier, her 13-year neighbor, hung herself in the closet in despair over having lost the affections of a 16-year-old suitor on MySpace and everyone found out that the 16-year old was actually an elaborate hoax cooked up by Lori Drew to fuck with her. The record states: "Drew wished the current tension in the neighborhood be documented in case any of her property is damaged." Even though it's a police report, you can tell from the way it's worded that reporting officer Edwin Lutz is thinking, "Lady, you have got to be smoking something to come complaining to me."

Drew felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel "as guilty" because at the funeral she found out "Megan had tried to commit suicide before." Drew explained the neighborhood has recently found out her involvement in Megan's suicide and her neighbors have become hostile toward her and her family. Despite the recency of the suicide and several neighbors recommending she not confront the Meier family (especially on Thanksgiving), Meier stated she and her husband attempted to contact the Meier family three times, "banging on the door" although Mr. Meier had already told them to leave. Drew wished the current tension in the neighborhood be documented in case any of her property is damaged. Further, Drew insisted on contacting the Meier family to "inform them of what she knows." Drew stated she "just needed" to tell them to relieve herself of the "responsibility" and apparent guilt.

Okay, a few things. One, there are some screws loose here. The "empathy" screw, indeed, and definitely also the "forseeing the consequences of my actions" screw, and miscellaneous others. It's really difficult to reconcile the story with the intentions and impulses of a rational person, and there's a lesson in here for the kids, too; if a person bullies or alienates or torments you, it's 99% guaranteed he doesn't have a good reason. The best reason he could probably think up is peer pressure to conform, and that's worse than sheer craziness, which seems to be what we're dealing with here.

And since that's what we're dealing with there really is probably no satisfaction to be had, which is why I hope you "Burn in Hell" advocates out there have cooled down and seen the case for what it is: a reminder to treat people in the way that makes them want to treat others better. I'm not sure how you do that with Lori Drew, but I can think of a few methods that are probably not productive.

Megan Meier Police Report [The Smoking Gun]

"Megan Died Never Knowing This Young Man Didn't Exist"

Moe — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:00:00 EST

The story of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who killed herself after being abruptly dissed by a MySpace suitor who turned out to be the sick creation of her ex-friend's mother, has hit the national news circuit full-force. Friday's Anderson Cooper 360 brought us footage of her MySpace profile — "Wait for the one who turns to his friends and says, 'that's her'," reads the headline — and above the parents tell Matt Lauer how it all happened on Today. The story also made GMA and The Morning Show, but no one as yet has named the mom who masterminded the sadistic hoax on TV — though above Megan's mom says the woman "asked me to stop" after the initial newspaper story ran last week, because pretty much everyone in town knows who they are. (You can even make out their names on a police report shown on the CNN clip.) "I flick 'em off whenever I see 'em," the Meiers' next-door neighbor tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The newspaper does identify the couple, Curt and Lori Drew. The Drews do not comment.

Are The Parents Who MySpace-Tormented Megan Meier Into Killing Herself Ready To Atone? Um...

Moe — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:30:29 EST

This is Megan Meier, who is now dead. She hung herself at age thirteen after the parents of one of her former classmates used MySpace to create a character named Josh Evans, who spent a few months flirting with her before abruptly turning on her and calling her a "slut" and a "bad person" etc. etc. And while we generally try to do this job without actually performing what might be termed "fact checking" — you know, because sometimes actually talking to people makes them harder to villify! — we felt compelled, in this case, to attempt to call Curt and Lori Drew, the Missouri couple fingered by internet sleuths as the perpetrator of the torment. Not surprisingly, the phone rang and rang.

So I called the school I assumed Megan Meier had attended with their daughter, Dubray Middle School in O'Fallon, Missouri:

Me: Hello. I was wondering if this is the school Megan Meier attended?
Secretary: Who is this?
Me: I work at a website called Jezebel, and I was just calling because our readers were very interested in the case.
Secretary: I can't say anything.
Me: I was just trying to figure out what the schools were doing to teach kids about how to stand up to bullies, or to teach parents how to instill in their kids the ability to ignore mean people, stuff like that.
Secretary: I really can't say anything.
Me: Seriously?
Secretary: I'm sorry I can't say anything.
Me: Don't you care?
Secretary: I can't say anything.
Me: Oh, fuck you then.

Dear secretary: I am sorry. That was so unnecessary. Also, who do I think I am, Michael Moore?

Anyway, then I had a conversation with Steve "Pokin Around" Pokin, the columnist who broke the story of Megan's tragic story after her aunt called him up upon reading his slightly-less-disturbing tale of a teenage Myspace tormentor who eventually got charged with "littering."

Steve didn't really want to go too deeply into things, though he claimed that he was pretty sure not naming Curt and Lori drew was the right decision, to which I said, "Um, those fuckers will be named SOON ENOUGH." And when I asked him whether the Drews — he confirmed the names, though I'm not sure he meant to — seemed ready to take responsibility or atone for their actions in any way, he said, "I don't know. All I know about that is in the story."

I'm thinking that's a "not so much."

Now, the laws don't hold them responsible, though I'm pretty sure the laws would find a way of holding them responsible if they happened to be Allah-worshipers, though that's neither here nor there. In the end, if these people are just plain evil, the only thing you can do is try and teach your kids, "Hey kids, this is evil, so please do think about that next time you see a popular kid fling a booger on some harmless fat kid, or whatever this generation of kids do to pointlessly torture their peers, and fail to call him out on it."

In other news, Pokin informed me that Megan's parents were being interviewed this afternoon by CNN, so we'll watch for them in hopes they at least get their chance to pass this lesson along.

If You Can Handle A Really Depressing Teen Suicide Story Right Now...

Moe — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:30:34 EST

These people are Tina and Ron Meier of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri. If you hadn't heard of them yet, they used to have a daughter named Megan. Megan was thirteen, awkward and overweight, though everything had been picking up since she'd lost 25 pounds and met "Josh," a sixteen-year-old by on MySpace. Josh was hot, and friendly, and told Megan she was pretty without asking for her number or her measurements or anything sleazy like that, so Ron and Tina allowed their daughter to add him as her friend. And all was well, until right around Megan's fourteenth birthday she got a message from "Josh" saying he'd heard she was a not a good person. Then one day, Megan spent the whole day frantically alternating between posting MySpace messages and running around the house sobbing. Tina and Ron didn't know what was going on until Megan ran upstairs to her bedroom, and fifteen minutes later, Tina followed. Turned out she knew how to hang herself.

Naturally, "Josh" was a hoax profile concocted by some of Megan's "enemies." He'd been her friend only to call her a "slut" and a "bad person," etc. And oh, it gets so much more depressing: the "enemies" were neighborhood adults, the parents of a young girl with whom Megan had had a falling-out the year before. The St. Charles Journal, which brings us this story, cannot get any of the adults to explain why the fuck they would fuck with a child, but they do speak to the whistleblower, the single mom of another of Megan's classmates who had been encouraged to join in the Myspace mockery.

On the night the ambulance came for Megan, the single mother said, before it left the Meiers' house her daughter received a call. It was the woman behind the creation of the Josh Evans account. She had called to tell the girl that something had happened to Megan and advised the girl not to mention the MySpace account.

Anyway, there are no pictures of Megan, and the paper doesn't name the family responsible for all this torment, out of "respect" for their daughter, nor does it name the single mother, out of respect for her anonymity and community decorum, which on one hand is understandable but on the other hand, actually fuck that. Fuck your community, fuck any hope for cordial ties with those people, and ex-friend of Megan's, fuck your parents. One age group's peer pressure is another age group's "I don't want to be the bitch who talked to the newspaper."

START SNITCHING.

That's all.

A Real Person, A Real Death [St. Charles Journal]