Friend Game Article

Friend Game by Lauren Collins:


-Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl, a volleyball player, and a Chihuahua maniac

-Committed suicide which is known as the Myspace Suicide Hoax

- Megan committed suicide after an exchange of hostile messages with a boy who had befriended her on Myspace.

- Her suicide was not a hoax, rather it was precipitated by a hoax, involving a box named Josh Evans

- Josh Evans was a fake, a cyber- character created by neighbors of the Meiers

- "Like many teen-agers, Megan and her peer carried on an online social life that was more mercurial, and perhaps more crucial to their sense of status and acceptance, than the one they inhabited in flesh."

- Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from Myspace

- It wasn't until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down had created "Josh" in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan's

- "As Megan got older, she demonstrated a worrisome volatility. Megan could come in a room and be happy, and something could affect her and she would just switch."

- Megan was taken to a psychiatrist during third grade after admitting that she wanted to kill herself

- In eighth grade, Megan's parents switched schools and that's when she began to ask permission to have a Myspace account so that she could chat with her new friends

- Tina and Ron agreed to allow Megan to open an account with strict restrictions: "1. your dad and I are the only ones who know your password; 2. it has to be set to 'private'; we have to approve the content; 4. we have to be in the room at all times when you're on Myspace."

- "The purpose of Josh Evans, according to the Drews' testimony, was to ascertain whether Megan was making nasty remarks about their daughter, whom Megan had previously called a 'lesbian'. Initially a police officer wrote in a report that Lori Drew had "instigated" and "monitored" the account; she now contends the report is inaccurate, and has asserted that she merely agreed to the idea, which was run from their dining room."

- Josh's components were carefully chosen to exploit Megan's vulnerabilities

- Josh was "exactly what Megan was looking for" and everything he said it what she wanted to hear. Megan begged her mom to let her add this guy, and eventually she gave in and Megan became friends with Josh on Myspace

- "On October 16, 2006, Megan went to school, where she passed out invitations to her fourteenth birthday party, which was to include a game of flashlight tag around the neighborhood. At 3:20, Tina picked Megan up at school and dropped her off at home. In the basement, Megan immediately logged on to Myspace. Tina had to take Megans' sister, Allison to the orthodontist, and, before she left, she told Megan to get off the computer. Ron had worked the early shift and was upstairs taking a nap."

- From the orthodontist office, Tina called Megan to check on her. Megan was crying. She admitted to Tina that she was still online, and that some kids were mocking her.

- "When Tina got home, around five o'clock, she found Megan in front of the computer in a state of superheated distress."

- "Tina and Megan argued, and Megan ran up to her room, bumping into Ron on the stairs. After about twenty minutes, Tina had a 'godawful feeling.' She went upstairs to Megan's room and found her in the closet. Megan had used a clothe belt- Tina had just bought it for her at Old Navy- to hang herself from a closet organizer."

In this incident, an innocent 13 year old girl became the victim of suicide due to the hoax that was place before her.