Journalists Can't Hide News From the Internet

Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review discusses the issues surrounding the recent tragedy involving a MySpace user. A newspaper reporting on the story didn't name the woman, citing concerns for her teen daughter. Bloggers went nuts, and soon uncovered the woman's personal information. Niles writes: 'The lessons for journalists? First, we can't restrict access to information anymore. The crowd will work together to find whatever we withhold ... Second, I wonder if that the decision to withhold the other mother's name didn't help enflame the audience, by frustrating it and provoking it to do the work of discovering her identity.'"

There should be a law against people who do this

Whether this was a real story or not, that woman did no one any harm; if she did Megan any harm, that's for law enforcement to deal with, not the rest of us.

By digging up her personal information - for which no one had any real, legitimate use - much less posting it online - these bloggers have negligently put this entire family's safety at serious risk.

Yes, information wants to be free blah blah blah - wait until the media puts the unwanted spotlight on you for some minor b.s. (that most of us don't even care to read about) and some Jezebel-esque nutball digs up your personal information - including where you live - and puts it out there for any unbalanced, easily enraged headcase to come dot your forehead with a 9mm shell. Or maybe they'll stalk and kidnap your kid instead.

These bloggers ought to have their information put out there by law enforcement - as convicted criminals. Aiding and abetting, for starters, then implied terroristic threats.

Here's the kicker, folks: when you put up the personal information of one person in the house, you put everyone ELSE there, at risk. Even their neighbors.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

What about "outing" alleged criminals? Long before a person is convicted of cleared of robbery/rape/murder/etc. charges, their name and picture (from which the rest of their personal information can be easily found) are in the public eye for all to see and judge, whether they are in any way guilty or not. A public record is as good as a criminal one.

IMO all arrest records should be sealed until a conviction is reached, and should be erased and destroyed upon acquittal.

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Outing alleged criminals is downright crazy. I've had to rethink my views on outing spammers because of that.

You're right, of course - arrest records should be sealed until a verdict is reached, and then destroyed upon acquittal. I wonder what religious ri

there wasn't going to be a trial

and there is fuzziness about guilt here, the perpetrator is known and fixed

the local da was not going to press charges

with all the heat, they say now they are going to review the case

given that, the victim's parents decided to go public, against the advice of their lawyers, for exactly this effect: wide public knowledge and shaming of the perpetrator, and to warn people about what kind of mainpulations can go on

Re:there wasn't going to be a trial

Good for the parents in at least taken this public, if there is one redeeming factor out of all of this.

The fact is, there is no FUZZY issue of guilt here - the fucking shit is clear as crystal - these adults were abusive towards a 13 yr old child w/ severe mental problems.

Re:there wasn't going to be a trial

Guilty of not being very nice, sure. Guilty of much criminal? I don't know, depends on what was really said and done. You can say a lot of mean and hurtful things without it being criminal at all, or at most a misdemeanor. She may have had severe mental problems, but were they publicly known? From the sound of it, even her mother didn't realize the seriousness of her condition. Were they being really mean to her or would she have gone equally off the cliff when her first boyfriend broke up? One thing is to pass moral judgement on them for the deception, but you also need to take a reality check on how much they truly contributed to her suicide. If all it took was a fake profile and someone she'd never met in real life, it sounds to me like she was ready to jump already. Or maybe I'm just a cynic because I had worse and got through. It's just that if I think of all the people in my class and how much some of them was hurt at times, we'd have several suicide victims at that rate. Yes, punish those that make other people's lives hell, but don't punish them for other people's inability to cope with normal live. I've seen some of both...

These people weren't outed.

Read the story [stltoday.com], and note who filed a police report. They put themselves on the public record a long time ago.

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Ummm... you want arrest records sealed?

"Officer, my husband never came home from work yesterday - I want to lodge a missing person's report"
"Sorry ma'am, he's not missing."
"Then where is he?"
"Sorry ma'am, I'm not allowed to say. That information has been r

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

The public's right to know what government is up to and free speech.

Except the public doesn't have the right to know everything that happens. That is often times cited when a journalist wants to go on a fishing expedition for embarrassing things that celebrities may have done. Which usually is that a couple are sleeping around or may be getting married really isn't something that the public has a right to know about.

The essence of the publics' right to know is about public issues and the portion of private ones which would enable them to be better informed on the way that public policy should be formed or how to avoid somebody else's tragic mistake. Neither of those are served by finding the name of those that weren't already named in the article.

Its soft news journalism that reports on things which wouldn't be interesting had it been done by normal every day people.

In this case, I think that the bloggers in this case ought to feel really badly about having engaged in this sort of shenanigans. At this point, the woman had been reported to the sheriff's office, and there is a possible suit in the future. What they've done is managed to harm everybody involved in this that isn't already dead. Even then, I get the feeling that they would have pissed on her grave if they thought that could make a better story.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

What about "outing" alleged criminals? Long before a person is convicted of cleared of robbery/rape/murder/etc. charges, their name and picture (from which the rest of their personal information can be easily found) are in the public eye for all to see and judge, whether they are in any way guilty or not. A public record is as good as a criminal one.

IMO all arrest records should be sealed until a conviction is reached, and should be erased and destroyed upon acquittal.

What a brilliant idea -- let's give the police the power to arrest people, throw them into jail pending trial, and not tell anybody.

The justice system needs transparency in a free and democratic society. What you're proposing has been done by all of the most oppressive regeimes in history as a way of making people "disappear". And while publishing an innocent persons arrest in a public manner may damage their public image, it's also a way to ensure that said person gets the best possible opportunity to defend themselves within the community. People who are secretly jailed never do.

Yaz.

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What a brilliant idea -- let's give the police the power to arrest people, throw them into jail pending trial, and not tell anybody.

Good job on totally misunderstanding the original poster's point.

He was not proposing that the police "not tell anybody" -- only that the decision to release the information about an arrest be up to the accused at least as long as the accused had not been

No, you're confusing two different things

It's not an "either/or" situation. We aren't choosing between complete transparency vs. no transparency whatsoever.

The goal is a fair and structured hearing, and punishment or acquittal based on the laws, decided by a jury & judge as impartial as possible.

With no transparency, the police can ignore the laws, and you might never see a jury at all.

With complete transparency, any "interesting" crime will be first judged by the public, based on third and fourth-hand information with no legal repercussions for errors (it's not *perjury* when the local rag prints gossip and rumors that are dead wrong), and the jury will be tainted by exposure to this mess, and the accused will be punished by the public even if acquitted by the legal system.

Think the public has no real power to exact punishment? You don't even need vigilante gunmen, though that can happen. No laws need be broken, though they might be. But "the public" includes your boss (soon-to-be former boss?), your neighbors (and their kids), the checkout person at the grocery store, your mailman, the guys at the bar, the technician from the phone company, the plumber, the teenagers at the mall, the pizza delivery guy, everyone. If your face is all over the web, if your home address and home phone are all over the web... well, first of all, they'll be all over the web for the rest of your life, because this stuff doesn't go away. Secondly, most people won't even say anything (they'll just stare after you as you leave), but you come into contact with hundreds of people... some of them will probably do something. Some people will actively seek you out to punish you, because vigilante justice is awfully tempting... I'll bet that's already happening with this family.

With the "power of the internet", now they don't just need to worry about getting snubbed by the people on their street. They have to worry what percentage of the, say, 2 million people who've seen their address and phone number will actively contact them. 0.01 percent? Mom, there's 200 people at the door. They want to talk to you and dad. Are my numbers too low?

So yeah, we need a balance.

This story is horrible and sad, and I want everyone to read it and realize that the online world is real, and in some ways it's more dangerous than the offline world. You can do things you'd never be cruel enough to do to someone's face, and cruelty has real consequences.

But I don't want to know where this family lives.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

In Norway, we have that limitation: The media is not allowed to divulge the identity of an accused, unless the person is already a public person or there is another compelling reason (suspicion of false arrest would likely be counted as one).

We do not seem to have much of a problem with false arrests; the only problems I know of are the usual ones of the prosecution sometimes going "gung ho" (wanting to convict SOMEBODY no matter what, to save face) and occasional abuse of the "Police can put somebody in detention for 24 hour before pressing charges". Overall, it seems to work fine, and the hiding of identity from media publication seems to only be positive.

Eivind.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

A number of Wikipedia users were "outed" by the website Perverted Justice (PEEJ). Not one of the users was what they said it was, and it named a few users (including myself) as supporters of child molesters. Eventually, PEEJ retracted the statements, but only very reluctantly.

The problems here are that:

a. What happens when the bloggers get it wrong? Let's say they accidentally type in the neighbour's address. Some poor bastard who had nothing do with the issue gets targeted.
b. The bloggers are by and large anonymous also. It's sheer hypocrisy for them to hide behind a blog pseudonym and publish someone else's details.
c. There is a reason we don't have martial law. Vigilantism is never a good move, mistakes are made, it bypasses due process and the right to a fair trial, innocent people are hurt. That's why Western democracies have the legal system they do: sure, it ain't perfect, but I'd rather us have a legal system that let uninformed bloggers pass judgement and mete out punishment.

Whatever, stalking mods

When someone posts your address online over an alleged crime or slight, and you're the one whose tires are slashed or who has to confront a crazed gunman breaking down your door, you'll understand.

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When someone posts your address online over an alleged crime or slight...

When Curt and Lori Drew filed charges against the Meiers (the victim's parents) for destroying the foosball table that they had asked (after their sick "prank" had driven the Meiers'

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I am highly skeptical of any claims that a disappearing online friend could drive someone to suicide unless there were already some very, very major issues where just about anything else could also have that result.

It wasn't a "disapearing online frien

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

When someone posts your address online over an alleged crime or slight, and you're the one whose tires are slashed or who has to confront a crazed gunman breaking down your door, you'll understand.

Has this happened to you or anyone you know? If not, stop the fearmongering.

There were several cases in Britain where The Sun or other quality magazines started to publish pictures of pedophiles. Too bad if you happened to look like the guy. Chances were you were soon hurting.

But of course, the lynch mob can also be just a tad stupid - but what can you do if you're the one running from it: British vigilantes mistake a pediatrician for a pedophile [salon.com].

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

It happened to me.
I was a witness, my personal info got to the criminals (probably through their attorney) and soon thereafter the threats started. I armed myself for a few months after that and was very careful where I went and I was very detailed on where I was going, how, and when I was expected to show up (or get back home) to my friends and family.

Now I'll think twice before volunteering to be a witness again.

.haeger
 

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

You're providing to me an example that you saw on the internet? Reread what I wrote: Has this happened to you or anyone you know?

As a matter of fact, yes. A family friend was named as a suspect in a well-publicized political murder case, by the media. Despite his being cleared of any possible links to the case, he was still ostracized by his neighbors as a "criminal with mafia connections". Now, do tell... what exactly was your point? You have asked me if it has happened with anyone I know, and I have given an example. So what will you do now besides calling me a "liar" and going back to your belief that is more or less "Lions don't exist because I have never seen one in real life myself"?

What was exactly your point when you asked this silly question? That it happened to "someone else", so it was not your problem? How apathetic or shallow can you get?!!

Was your brilliant argument that, it can "never happen to you"? I am pretty sure, that is what all those people thought as well, *till* it actually happened to them.

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

Has this happened to you or anyone you know? If not, stop the fearmongering.

How about Richard Jewell [wikipedia.org]? And this was the responsible media that did this to an innocent man. Imagine if that happened today with the virtual lynch mob of bloggers that are out there.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

I gotta go with the first comment on the linked article:

In reference to the first example, does information excluded by journalists for ethical reasons and then found by bloggers suggest that ethics should change? I hope not.

I find very little credulity in the "You can't hide the truth from us" self-righteousness espoused by many of the bloggers involved in this. They merely saw what they could gain from the situation, not what was ethically or morally right.

Cringeworthy. But sadly, amongst many niceties, what I've come to expect from the "blogosphere" (cringeworthy name, in itself). Self-righteous vitriol and hyperbole seem far too common. "We're the new journalists, your ways are outdated." Bleh. In the rush to try to be the next big thing, seems "stopping and thinking" is an impediment to "first to publish/be pinged/trackbacked/make the Top 100 on Technorati/get on as many blogrolls as possible".

Just because we *can* do something...

...that doesn't mean we should.

It's an old saying, but no less truthful for it. Modern technology makes communication, data storage and research into effectively free commodities. These things can be used for many constructive purposes, but a natural sid

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Law enforcement REFUSED to deal with it. And let's face it, laws and how they are enforced is very political. It's not unexpected for a vacuum to be filled.

That law enforcement didn't do anything is no excuse for vigilantism. If law enforcement doesn't

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None of the points you have listed make ANY difference. AT ALL. Or have YOU forgotten "innocent until proven guilty"?

There's a large difference between the name being possible to find by going to the right places, and having it plastered all over the pla

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

If law enforcement isn't doing their job, then you protest against law enforcement, you don't take enforcement into your own hands.

how do you protest against law enforcement? Yhe whole purpose of this recent publicity was precisely to push law enforcement into action by stoking public outrage.

the world is not a court of law. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal standard, not a moral one. There is no question about this woman's actions, or her identity. There are no significant facts in dispute, only legal and moral culpability. And yes, individuals and communities do have the right to judge moral culpability for themselves, with or without your permission.

No sympathy

There should be no sympathy for those who pose as fictitious characters only to create malice and havoc in others lives, whether it's online or in real life. I'm unsure if this woman will have charges brought upon her, but it wouldn't be unreasonable, imo. The simple fact she even did this shows that she's not even mature enough to have kids. Unfortunately, she'll probably plead "insanity" and get away with it.

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Are you kidding? The girl died because she committed suicide. She chose to end her life. Basically, she was mentally ill. She could've killed herself for a thousand reasons. This family's only crime is being a bunch of hateful jerks.

If new any new laws com

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I'm the parent of a special needs child who gets far more verbal abuse than this stupid girl ever would yet she's not trying to kill herself.

That's probably because special needs have nothing whatsofuckever to do with depression and mental health. Indeed,

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The woman stalked and harassed a mentally unstable child, the mentally unstable child killed herself. I don't think the woman is guilty of murder but I hardly think she's innocent. She's a real piece of fucking shit, murderer no, guilty fuck yes. Now unles

More like....

...that in a big enough group, there'll always be some asshats to publish anything. Even if you can't stop them, why help them?

People love solving a mystery

And hiding information that can be found just makes people want to discover it. What right does another person have to this information that I don't? I doubt people were angry, just curious.

Simple problem

Tie a rock to them and toss them in the water. If they float, they're a witch. If they sink, they're not a witch. Repeat as necessary.

jokes on them

Don't worry, in 10 years time when the blogging generation is attempting to climb the ladder, we will have untold piles of dirt on them from their emo highschool years.

Re:jokes on them

Presidential elections in twenty or thirty years are going to be hilarious.

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Presidential elections in twenty or thirty years are going to be hilarious

In twenty or thirty years, we'll see people like that hillbilly in the RIAA case who had never used the Internet as president, since they're the only ones with no videos on YouTube. I'm not sure hilarious is the word I'm looking for...

Re:jokes on them

And some folks wonder why Slashdot posters do so anonymously, or use aliases.

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And some folks wonder why Slashdot posters do so anonymously, or use aliases.

Not everyone.

 

A novel idea...

Here's a more novel idea... Don't even print the things that don't need to be printed. Anytime Myspace in particular or the Internet in general can be connected to a crime || suicide || nuclear war the press goes nuts with the idea. There is no story here other than a girl committed suicide, like hundreds of other troubled teens. Yes, it's a horrible phenomenon, but it's no story in itself. The journalist could have written about the suicide phenomenon (which goes back as far as history does) but that's not interesting. Myspace-assisted suicide apparently is.

The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA!

More information from a less hysterical view (compared to the bloggers' accounts) is available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/internet.suicide.ap/index.html [cnn.com]. There's also a video clip including an interview with Megan's parents.

This is a pretty messed up situation. The woman mentioned in the article summary is the mother of an ex-friend of Megan (the girl that committed suicide), and posed as a boy ("Josh") on MySpace trying to keep tabs on what Megan was saying about her daughter (Megan's ex-friend).

Whether the woman created the "Josh" account is not up for debate-- it's from the police report*. Likewise, whether she pretended to be interested in the 14-year-old girl is not debatable. What is debatable is whether she was the person logged in to the "Josh" account when the taunting messages were sent, especially given three people from her family posed as "Josh", and were complicit in the deceit. Complicating matters, Megan's mother said the Wrong Thing At The Wrong Time to Megan, by the mother's account, minutes before the suicide. (It's abundantly clear she will never forgive herself for this.)

As I said, it's pretty messed up. Were the mainstream media right in concealing the identity of the woman? I'm not so sure. It seems to me that too many times identities have been concealed, preventing true community backlash against perpetrators. It's clear the woman was at least partially culpable-- she didn't accidentally make the Josh character fall in love with Megan. On the other hand, the local community is already shunning the woman and her family, so is Internet Outrage really accomplishing any more?

* Unintentionally leaked by CNN, and transcribed by a blogger using frame capture.

Re:The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA!

It seems to me that too many times identities have been concealed, preventing true community backlash against perpetrators.

Identities are concealed, as in this case, to protect the accused from community backlash. Folks often forget that the accused have rights as well. Forgeting to protect those rights, and encouraging a community backlash before they've had their day in court... Well that's headed back to bad old days of lynching and vigilante justice.

Re:

Identities are concealed, as in this case, to protect the accused from community backlash. Folks often forget that the accused have rights as well. Forgeting to protect those rights, and encouraging a community backlash before they've had their day in court... Well that's headed back to bad old days of lynching and vigilante justice.

I can understand that, certainly. However, in this case, there wasn't going to be a day in court. The DA originally decided not to pursue charges. Only after the recent attention have they decided to review the case. What does the community do then?

Re:The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA!

I don't think you understand how the system really works. There are only two situations where "innocent until proven guilty" applies: 1) if you are illegally downloading copyrighted content(*), 2) you are smoking pot to stick it to the man. Then, even though what you are doing is against the law, you're innocent even though they caught you with a lit bong in one hand and adjusting your stylish pirate eye patch with the other while waiting for the latest Britney Spears album to upload(**). In all other cases the masses, I mean the self righteous, uber-sleuthing, information freedom fighters have a god given natural right to be entertained and proclaim guilt ignoring the processes of the courts.

* - and then the claim that the bits on the wire spontaneously arranged themselves into a valid TCP/IP bit stream due to a quantum interaction of the large hadron collider and the heliosphereic current sheet, is considered a rock solid defense beyond both reasonable doubt and the preponderance of the evidence.

** - yes, Britney Spears, even though everybody on the entire planet realizes it's the same shit they record companies continue to put out and nobody wants to download it let alone buy it. Other than you and your hundred million best friends that is.

Innocent until proven quilty

My my, you sure seem eager to convict and sentence this woman, and not just the woman but her entire family.

Odd that if the RIAA wants to publish the names of people downloading, naming and shaming, people are against it, but in this case naming and shami

Depression

That is a serious depressing story. Playing with someone like that is awful. I feel the fact the Drews were not going to be punished in any way to be sort of unjust but I'm sort of uncertain of this mob mentality is really how to go about it. Sure public shamming and the economic and social ruin of their lives seems about right but what happens when someone takes it a step further? It's so mixed up.

Its a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

What disturbs me the most isn't that there are random assholes on MySpace (or the Internet, for that matter) taunting people (I don't like it, but assume this -- 30 milliseconds on any FPS multiplayer server desensitizes you to that). Nor that a girl committed suicide (which is sad). Nor is it that some wacko blogger decided to post public information in an act of vigilante blog-justice (which is indeed very strange and unsettling). It's the implications of the comments on the jezebel blog [jezebel.com]. The comments on the other linked sites in the article are similar. It is clear these people (do they represent a typical American cross section?), have this attitude like: "if its on the internet it must be true exactly how it is printed. I want blood NOW!" No critical thinking. No common sense. No reality testing. Just pure reactionary tooth-and-claw emotion. It is the worst sort of groupthink one can imagine (wait, sounds a little like another popular internet forum I know about...oh, nevermind). A couple examples. One blogger writes "I'm not a vengeful person when it comes to my own life, so it always surprises me that my first instinct when I hear of these things happening to others is to plot murder." Oh really? Good to know. How about "If there was a loving God, so many people would be sterile. The parents playing 'Josh' [the fake MySpace account] are a good example." It actually makes slashdot seem like a pretty reasonable, organized, dare I say, civil place. Its a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

This is a scary story

Not for the details involved but for the slashdot reaction. a lot seem to be in support of the naming and shaming.

That is nice, would they be just as supportive when the RIAA deciced to publish their names for illegal filesharing and they get expelled from their schools, told to leave their jobs, asked to resign from their clubs?

There is a reason we put the law into the hands of the legal system and have deciced that lynchings are wrong. The simple problem is that of where does it end.

Say that this woman's daughter now commits suicide, is it then right for her family to publish the bloggers personal details? Publicly try them on the internet?

Innocent until proven guilty, presumption of innocence, trial by jury. My how quickly these ideals seem to be forgotten when blogging is involved. Note that when it is the other way around and some blogger gets exposed "slashdot" has shown an almost fanatical support for the sancitiy of privacy.

A few months ago slashdot had a story about internet driven vigilantism in South-Korea where this kind of naming and shaming is claimed to be far more common, the odd thing was that then the general attitude seemed to be that this was an extremely bad idea.

So how come that some slashdotters now support it? Is it the magic of the word blog? The idea that the MAN was outwitted, freedom by all means and damn the consequences?

Should the dutch teens who stole items from an online game be named and shamed? Should the blogger who published this info have every part of his private life put on the web for all to see?

Since this is a suicide where the whole community failed, why aren't they all being named and shamed. Why not print a list of all the people involved, everyone that could have talked to the girl, made friends with her, and publish them under the headline, "where were you!".

Some people seem to think that blogs are a magical something, they are not. They used to exist before, they were called pamphlets and people with enough motivation would write them and print and distribute them and say in them what they wanted in the name of "The truth".

They were back then the perfect tool to incite the mob. It is on paper, therefore it must be true, lets lynch them.

A few years ago in england a woman's house was attacked because the mob thought she was a pedofile. The evidence was clear as day, she had a sign on her door that said so "Pediatrician".

Consider this, if this woman is guilty of the suicide, then is any suicide that follows the publishing by the blogger the guilt of the blogger? What if the blogger is outed and kills himself? Where does it end?

The community taking the law in their own hand, it sounds tempting and sometimes seems to be the only solution but it never works. The law often fails us, but we should then change the law, not simply ignore it.

But think of this, do you really want there to be law that puts people to blaim if they said the wrong thing to a person who commits suicide? Better not mod me down, it might make me commit suicide.

Should society decide who needs to be punished? I would dearly love to name and shame every drunk driver out there, everyone who ever hurt someone in an "accident" that could easily have been avoided.

Before you support naming and shaming, ask yourselve wether someone else might not have you on their list.

Blame Darwin or Megan's Parents

My thinking is less focused on the idiot "adult" who did this scam as it is on her parents.

Megan did not survive long enough to reproduce. Fault? Blame Darwin or Megan's parents. Take your pick. Or, perhaps parents in general nowadays.

Let me explain. Megan had problems and felt bad about herself? Why? (actual question, not a setup) She was beautiful. Where were her parents? How in the fcuk could a beautiful girl like that grow up not believing, *knowing* she has value.

I tell you waht (sic), when I felt bad about myself going through puberty, and kids do, I was *corrected* by my parents. Corrected as in almost short of discipline in a way. I was corrected for not thinking. That was followed by a very understanding and thoughtful teaching by my parents. They did what they were supposed too do and taught me self respect, correct body image (with what I had to work with) with proportional value in what a pimple actually means in the grand scheme of things. What an adult should be thinking.

It is unfathomable to me that what someone said could bring a person to suicide. And, I blame Megan's parents. Megan, at 13, was on psychotic drugs? WTF!? Sure, the "adult" who perpetrated this scam needs psychiatric help but the suicide I put on her parents.

My son was only on loan to me. And I took my parenting job very seriously. It was the most important achievement I was tasked with as a human being. On a scale of 10 with parenting on top, even paying the mortgage falls in at about 2. Nothing comes before raising a child. At least for me. (Thank you Mom and Dad).

What I returned was a happy, well adjusted, contributing member of society. Someone who thankfully doesn't understand the need for plastic surgery. I guarantee there's nothing, not one thing you could say, even as a teenager, that would even bring him close to suicide. Knowing my son, I suspect you're more likely to get a polite and understanding "thank you" after rejecting him than any other response. He understands that rejection, in the long run, is a blessing. Why didn't Megan understand this? Their little snowflake is gone. And I blame them; they can blame Darwin and you can think whatever you want too. As far as I'm concerned, they fcuked up IM,NOH,O.

-[d]-

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Explain to me where the crime is.

Because that glove fits the other way around too. If someone doesn't break the law but "wrongs" you somehow, just go and blow the horn until everyone and their dog talks about it and cries bloody murder, so the police has t

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Fantastic take on this. I agree whole heartedly. Except that I'd throw her on the mercy of the fiery internet. Don't you hate how /. doesn't have an edit button? :- )

Regardless, whether she burns in this life or the next I have no doubt that she'