We've all seen the story of a group of Florida cheerleaders ganging up on a fellow student. Their reason? The girl had made mean posts about them on MySpace. It seems every day brings a new case of violence, bullying or other crime facilitated by the Internet.
Today, I saw a unique case in The Seattle Times. This time, it was a grown woman allegedly contributed to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl. The story states,
"She allegedly helped create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist to convince young neighbor Megan Meier that she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans."
The girl later hanged herself after receiving cruel messages from the fictional boy. This is a strange case, to say the least. The victim's parents say they monitored her MySpace account. They also admitted that the girl sent mean messages back to "Josh".
The woman who allegedly impersonated Josh Evans will be charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization. The U.S. Attorney in the case says this is the first time the latter charge will be used in a social networking case.
To me, this seems like a long shot prosecution. If the victim's parents were monitoring her account, why didn't they stop what was going on? If they did not feel it was a problem then, why do they believe it contributed to her suicide?
Has any other reader seen this case? If you have any details or thoughts to add, I'd love to hear them.
Showing posts with label MySpace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MySpace. Show all posts
Friday, May 16, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
This Is The Problem With MySpace
A few weeks ago, I asked all of you to share an interesting story from the world of social networking sites. Within the first week, I had 9 stories. I quickly noticed that these stories had the same pattern. My friend Nabila writes:
"So my friend convinced me to get a MySpace account. I literally copied everything from my Facebook and threw it up there. All of a sudden, MySpace decides I'm one of the "cool new people" and plants my picture on the homepage. Over the course of the next 24 hours I have 5400 hits to my profile, 350 friend requests and about 130 emails. Out of control.
Granted most of the emails centered around the theme of "holy crap, you have huge boobs", but when you get a letter from a "friend" it's the thought that counts, right? Another good one was from a native Arabic speaker. He wrote, "I like you very," which mirrors the word order of Arabic. I particularly liked the email from the "remember 9-11" site, which said, "honka, honka, I want to squeeze your t*****s". Very classy.
Anyway, I was totally amused by the whole thing. Who knew a pink halter-top and red hair could elicit such a response? "
This kind of story why I'm leaving MySpace. Facebook is structured in a way that's conducive to keeping in touch with your friends. MySpace, on the other hand, is designed to "make new friends." The problem is, every scientific study on the subject says that to develop genuine friendships, we need real interaction. A "Merry Christmas" eCard posted on the message boards of 200 buddies just doesn't cut it.
MySpace users, how many of you have one or two people in your friends list who you've never met before? How many of you have not talked to that person since adding them? Ask the same question of Facebook users, and I would bet the result is much different. Do you want to meet people who "like you very" without ever meeting you, or would you rather know what happens in the lives of your real friends?
"So my friend convinced me to get a MySpace account. I literally copied everything from my Facebook and threw it up there. All of a sudden, MySpace decides I'm one of the "cool new people" and plants my picture on the homepage. Over the course of the next 24 hours I have 5400 hits to my profile, 350 friend requests and about 130 emails. Out of control.
Granted most of the emails centered around the theme of "holy crap, you have huge boobs", but when you get a letter from a "friend" it's the thought that counts, right? Another good one was from a native Arabic speaker. He wrote, "I like you very," which mirrors the word order of Arabic. I particularly liked the email from the "remember 9-11" site, which said, "honka, honka, I want to squeeze your t*****s". Very classy.
Anyway, I was totally amused by the whole thing. Who knew a pink halter-top and red hair could elicit such a response? "
This kind of story why I'm leaving MySpace. Facebook is structured in a way that's conducive to keeping in touch with your friends. MySpace, on the other hand, is designed to "make new friends." The problem is, every scientific study on the subject says that to develop genuine friendships, we need real interaction. A "Merry Christmas" eCard posted on the message boards of 200 buddies just doesn't cut it.
MySpace users, how many of you have one or two people in your friends list who you've never met before? How many of you have not talked to that person since adding them? Ask the same question of Facebook users, and I would bet the result is much different. Do you want to meet people who "like you very" without ever meeting you, or would you rather know what happens in the lives of your real friends?
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