About a year ago, a teenage girl killed herself after being bullied by a boy she met and had an online relationship with on the social networking site MySpace. After her death, the "boy" was outed as the young girl's adult neighbor (the mother of one of her friends) working in conjunction with a network of bullies to extract revenge on the girl for wronging her daughter.
In the wake of the "crime" (which isn't actually a prosecutable crime at all), the mother in question set up a site called "Megan Had in Coming" expressing no remorse whatsoever for her actions and insisting she meant no wrong and isn't at fault for the girl's death.
Enraged by her lack of remorse, a group of online vigilantes joined forces to encourage a homegrown terror campaign against the woman. They changed the answering machine messages at her home and work to cruel prank messages about the suicide, got her husband fired from two jobs, have encouraged clients and neighbors to ostracize the family, have thrown stones and bricks in the woman's windows and have encouraged pretty much everyone on the planet to make the family's life a living hell in the name of revenge.
Three questions:
- This tragedy was born of revenge in the first place. Is it right to continue the cycle by demanding revenge for Megan's death?
- Were the actions of the woman in question those of "a responsible adult"? What about the actions of those harrassing her? How about Megan's parents, who have encouraged the harrassment and have even engaged in it themselves on a few occaisions? It was Megan's parents, after all, who let a 13 year old girl have a relationship with a 16 year old boy over the internet...
- What do you think of the idea of "Revenge" in the first place? Is it warranted? Productive? Does it ever end?
Discuss
More Information:
YouTube - Megan Meier Story 2 YouTube - MySpace Suicide: The Megan Meier Story
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