Who the fuck is Lori Drew?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Apparently I've been out of the Internet news loop, From what I know, some weird adult is going to federal court for causing a kid to commit suicide over MySpace bullying?

Who are these people and why should we care?

[Maxus]

The name sounds familiar...

I think the story goes that this mother took it upon herself to contact her daughter's rival over myspace or facebook or something. And present herself as a charming young teenage guy. She kept up the charade for a while, until the girl got seriously emotionally attached. So she was naturally crushed when the mother revealed the truth.

You could google the story. Here's the first link I turned up.


http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/0 ... indic.html

[Crissa]

It was seriously creepy.

Adults blew a child's dispute into a huge thing, resulting in her death. The adults responsible were unrepentant and uncharged with her death.

-Crissa

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Here's a discussion we had on Nifty about the case, complete with links (many of which still work).

[Cynic]

Jesus I read this a year or two ago. I was fucking creeped out to all hell. It's probably one of the lesser tools that have caused me to recede from social networking as a whole. I'm less on im, blogs, whatnot.
I mean, Lori Drew or whoever didn't change my life. But shit like this and my own shiite just can't have me bother anymore. I keep up with usenet every once in a while and check up forums such as the Den and read newspapers and perfunctorily read a /. or digg link if I'm bothered.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It was seriously creepy.

I was fucking creeped out to all hell.

What I don't get about this is the 'outrage' factor. From what I've gathered, it seems to draw an emotional response/level of caring out of proportion to other crimes.

Note that I'm not justifying what happened, I'm just wondering why this case in particular pegged the public's outrage-o-meter.

[Cynic]

It was seriously creepy.

I was fucking creeped out to all hell.

What I don't get about this is the 'outrage' factor. From what I've gathered, it seems to draw an emotional response/level of caring out of proportion to other crimes.

Note that I'm not justifying what happened, I'm just wondering why this case in particular pegged the public's outrage-o-meter.

It was on a large nerd newspaper and the article was what 3-6 pages in length and went into serious details. It's written like a reader's digest piece.

If it was a news story it might not have creeped me out. What creeped me out was the article itself.

Seriously give me Mcveigh's crime and all the details in 6-8+ and all the gory details and I'll hunt you down for doing it. Don't do it. Because i don't want it. Because I don't like that shit. because it would creep me out.Because I've used too many becauses here. yeah that was too much faux-anger/real-anger there. But I think I might have proved a point.

[Bigode]

I think it's also in part for being a new kind of crime: somewhat like "yes, the interbutts can kill you" (at least if you're a child, which might sound more worrying instead of less).

[Crissa]

I think quite a bit of the outrage comes from that adults preying on children are a serious taboo in our society.

What makes it worse is that the adults are not only unrepentant, they didn't get charged with a crime - because making a conspiracy to lie to a child who isn't your own to the point that they're willing to commit suicide is somehow not a crime.

-Crissa

[ubernoob]

I think quite a bit of the outrage comes from that adults preying on children are a serious taboo in our society.

What makes it worse is that the adults are not only unrepentant, they didn't get charged with a crime - because making a conspiracy to lie to a child who isn't your own to the point that they're willing to commit suicide is somehow not a crime.

-Crissa

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

[Maxus]

I think quite a bit of the outrage comes from that adults preying on children are a serious taboo in our society.

What makes it worse is that the adults are not only unrepentant, they didn't get charged with a crime - because making a conspiracy to lie to a child who isn't your own to the point that they're willing to commit suicide is somehow not a crime.

-Crissa

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Dude, I just totally lost respect for you.

[ubernoob]

I think quite a bit of the outrage comes from that adults preying on children are a serious taboo in our society.

What makes it worse is that the adults are not only unrepentant, they didn't get charged with a crime - because making a conspiracy to lie to a child who isn't your own to the point that they're willing to commit suicide is somehow not a crime.

-Crissa

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Dude, I just totally lost respect for you.

Fair enough. I'm pretty callused and at this point in my life I've lost most of my respect for the human race as a whole. Not to say that I'm directly better, but the vast majority of people should be shot IMO.

[Maj]

Note that I'm not justifying what happened, I'm just wondering why this case in particular pegged the public's outrage-o-meter.

Because the prosecutor who didn't bring charges essentially said that the case fell into a legal loophole.

Whenever someone dies and there's 'no way' to prosecute them, people get really mad because the law isn't on their side. In the case of internet stuff, I can understand that - my sister is the victim of a cyber stalker and under California law (where she resides as a student), they can't call any of the harrassment illegal, thus there's no investigation into who's behind the threats, horrible eMails, and online impersonations. The only thing she can do is keep telling myspace and facebook that the stalker has opened another account to harrass her from.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

That's the exact reason why I've been mostly keeping a low profile on the internet. When you are free of the risk of being socked in the teeth for things you say, people tend to be raging cocks.

There is good left on the internet, but it's few and far between.

[Bigode]

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Dude, I just totally lost respect for you.

What? Don't we have an obvious excess of human beings right now? Why not desire to get rid of the weak instead of the strong? Even if we don't get forcibly ridden of many of us anyway, is your desire a crappy life for as many people as everyone happens to wanna raise (crappily)?

[RandomCasualty2]

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Yeah, no shit.

"Someone on the internet made fun of me! Time to go kill myself."

Seriously, if you can't deal with someone insulting you on the internet, then you can't deal with much of anything that you're likely to encounter in real life.

[ubernoob]

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Yeah, no shit.

"Someone on the internet made fun of me! Time to go kill myself."

Seriously, if you can't deal with someone insulting you on the internet, then you can't deal with much of anything that you're likely to encounter in real life.

More like:

"Some boy I've never met doesn't like me any more? What will I do"

...but, you get the picture.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Adolescents are more sensitive about these things than adults. And I believe that's the core of the outrage. The Darwinian argument might apply for adults, but we're talking about somebody whose brain is still developing. Lots of people are angry and depressed when they're 13.

[Surgo]

I don't know about anyone else, but the thing that really got my outage-o-meter up was the fact that it was an adult preying on a kid.

[Crissa]

The legal loophole is 'judicial ignorance'.

There's nothing really special about any of these things aside from the fact that prosecutors, police, and judges fail to take using machines as merely a mechanism and not a new crime.

We don't make up new crimes every time someone dies to a new and more creative weapon - it's still murder. Why we have to make a new crime when someone hacks your computer instead of your fax machine or hall copier is beyond me.

Abuse is abuse, whether you used a stick or a computer; whether it was your child or not. The result was death in this case. Stalking is stalking, whether you're phone-jamming or myspace jamming. It should make no difference.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Yeah, no shit.

"Someone on the internet made fun of me! Time to go kill myself."

Seriously, if you can't deal with someone insulting you on the internet, then you can't deal with much of anything that you're likely to encounter in real life.

More like:

"Some boy I've never met doesn't like me any more? What will I do"

...but, you get the picture.

Except it was neither of those; and when the boy turned out to be fake, her RL friends turned against her to enforce the ruse.

It was child abuse, pure and simple. Had some adult done this with a telephone or in person, they'd be in jail right now.

-Crissa

[ubernoob]

I don't know about anyone else, but the thing that really got my outage-o-meter up was the fact that it was an adult preying on a kid.

Adolescents are more sensitive about these things than adults. And I believe that's the core of the outrage. The Darwinian argument might apply for adults, but we're talking about somebody whose brain is still developing. Lots of people are angry and depressed when they're 13.

This I can firmly stand behind. The girl had her own problems to take her own life, but preying on kids *is* fucking terrible. The mother should be prosecuted for preying on a kid. The suicide is a separate issue that the mother is only tangentially related to IMO.

[RandomCasualty2]

Abuse is abuse, whether you used a stick or a computer; whether it was your child or not. The result was death in this case. Stalking is stalking, whether you're phone-jamming or myspace jamming. It should make no difference.

I admit I don't really have all the details in this case. As far as I can tell, it was a matter of someone inventing a false myspace ID, pretending to be some guy, talking to this girl, then not liking her anymore. Then posting some insulting remarks somewhere (not really sure where, I suspect either a forum or on their myspace profile).

Is there any more to it that I'm missing?

The insulting remarks could be libel, but if they're on a public forum or the person's myspace profile, they're not criminal. At most it may be some harassment if it turned into an email war of some kind. But beyond that I'm not seeing any kind of serious crime.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think it's a slight stretch to call it child abuse. I don't think that Lori Drew targetted Megan because she was a kid but because she was trying to get some weird revenge for her daughter.

It's the difference between some thug smashing a kid in the face with a baseball bat because the kid stole some of his drugs as opposed to just wanting to feel big and bad.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Frankly, any child that will commit suicide over something on Myspace doesn't deserve to be in the gene pool. We've got enough humans to trim some of the fat.

Yeah, no shit.

"Someone on the internet made fun of me! Time to go kill myself."

Seriously, if you can't deal with someone insulting you on the internet, then you can't deal with much of anything that you're likely to encounter in real life.

See, I disagree completely. I don't deal with literally a FRACTION of the horseshit that I have to put up on the internet. I think the internet is WORSE than real life.