Adults dupe teen into MySpace-assisted suicide

[AlexM]

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If I had to distribute blame for the death of this child it would go like this.

60% parent of the child (at least)- why is your 13 year old overweight and taking medication and using myspace.

5% The child - she took the rope and hung it around her neck.

35% to the retard family that started the MySpace account.

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FYP

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FYFYPP

[CORed]

As sad and disturbing as this story is, and as vile as the behavior of the family that trainwrecked the girl is, I don't quite see where there is a crime, or any law that you could pass to make it a crime that wouldn't trample on free speech. Do we really want anybody that posts a flame on a web site to be subject to prosecution?

OTOH, there is probably cause for civil action: Libel, invasion of privacy, maybe wrongful death, but again, I'm more than a little uncomfortable with holding somebody responsible for another's suicide. It is tragic that the girl chose to take her own life, and the behavior of her friend's parents was despicable, but I think it's a pretty dangerous concept that anybody, even somebody who behaved badly, be blamed for another person's suicide. While I can understand the parents' wish to see something that resembles justice here, I'm not quite sure what that would be.

[AlexM]

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Thanks for writing this out. If not, I would have had to be the person pointing out how igorant that statement was.

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Yes, how ignorant to assume that people's actions are their own responsibility.

Seriously, wtf is going on in this thread. The stupid myspace parents are responsible for making a stupid choice that was intended to make the girl feel bad. It was retarded and cruel and immature. It led to that girl feeling severely depressed immediately after. But what she chose to do with that depression was completely her own doing and had nothing to do with the myspace family.

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I paid someone to kill my wife. It led to that assassin wanting to kill my wife. But what he chose to do after he got paid was completely his own doing and had nothing to do with me.

[SoloAJ]

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To say that depression results of being overweight and that it can't work the other way is silly in my mind.

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Good thing I never said that.

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Entertainme: Food issues often come with depression. (It can be a form of self medication.)

AlexM: This is backwards. Depression comes from being fat. Yes, lots of depressed people eat, but we're talking about a child here and there's no way that she got depressed before she got fat.

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Am I missing something here everyone?

And please note, the italicized part is lunacy. You're a good troll. I got sucked in.

[Zutroy]

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Thanks for writing this out. If not, I would have had to be the person pointing out how igorant that statement was.

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Yes, how ignorant to assume that people's actions are their own responsibility.

Seriously, wtf is going on in this thread. The stupid myspace parents are responsible for making a stupid choice that was intended to make the girl feel bad. It was retarded and cruel and immature. It led to that girl feeling severely depressed immediately after. But what she chose to do with that depression was completely her own doing and had nothing to do with the myspace family.

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I think the problem is that this girl wasn't right chemically/emotionally and didn't have the same reasoning skills that a normal person does. First of all, she was 14 with obviously little life experience. People at that age, not to mention girls in particular, are very sensitive and take things far too seriously. Secondly, she had a history of mental problems including depression and had spoken of suicide. Also, I haven't seen it mentioned, but in the article it says that the last message said something to the effect of "the world would be better without you" (in fairness I think that that last statement wasn't made by the parents.)

I agree that in general we all have to be responsible for our own actions and decisions and not blame others but I think that philosophy only applies to those capable of making their own rational decisions. This girl clearly had some mental problems and was very impressionable. If someone who you know is mentally disturbed and incapable of making good/rational decisions is standing on a ledge and you tell them to jump, are you responsible when they do?

[xorbie]

I think what AlexM is saying in his unnecessary belligerent fashion is that poor eating habits can certainly follow depression, but that in all likelihood a girl who is 13 and already weighs 175 (and used to weigh nearly 200 it seems) has probably been overweight for a long, long time and this has probably led to a lot of negative social consequences, which therefore led to depression.

For this child to be overweight due to bad eating habits from being depressed, the child would have had to have serious depression from a very early age.

And yes, the parents should notice at some point that Megan was getting overweight and stepped in. Period.

[GuyOnTilt]

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Thanks for writing this out. If not, I would have had to be the person pointing out how igorant that statement was.

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Yes, how ignorant to assume that people's actions are their own responsibility.

Seriously, wtf is going on in this thread. The stupid myspace parents are responsible for making a stupid choice that was intended to make the girl feel bad. It was retarded and cruel and immature. It led to that girl feeling severely depressed immediately after. But what she chose to do with that depression was completely her own doing and had nothing to do with the myspace family.

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I paid someone to kill my wife. It led to that assassin wanting to kill my wife. But what he chose to do after he got paid was completely his own doing and had nothing to do with me.

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What's your point? That the assassin should not bear responsibility here? Or claiming that legality equates to morality?

I would say the same thing about this scenario as the myspace suicide. The husband is responsible for what he actually did: hiring someone to kill his wife. The assassin is responsible for the actual killing. Both are wrong. There would obviously be legal ramifications here, conspiracy to commit murder and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure.

[Alobar]

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I agree that in general we all have to be responsible for our own actions and decisions and not blame others but I think that philosophy only applies to those capable of making their own rational decisions. This girl clearly had some mental problems and was very impressionable. If someone who you know is mentally disturbed and incapable of making good/rational decisions is standing on a ledge and you tell them to jump, are you responsible when they do?

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yeah exactly. Sometimes the "choice" that GOT thinks people are making, they arent actually making, because they don't see any other options to choose from. It annoys me when people who are of a different mental state cast their own mental state onto someone else. Sure its obvious to us that she chose to kill herself because we can easily see not doing it, or the girl who goes back to the BF that beats her is choosing to do so, because to us, she obviously doesnt have to. But that doesnt mean they see it as a choice, they are suffering from mental illness or the trauma of extreme abuse, who the [censored] knows whats going on in their brain, its not like she calmly and rationally went "gee this really sucks, I feel humiliated now, guess I better go kill myself". She was purposely driven to the edge, and then reacted. Its a pretty easy to see cause and effect to me.

[O Fen�meno]

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I don't care about the blame game but one thing is certain: unless this family is even more retarded than they already appear, they're obviously moving, soon, and in Witness Protection Program style. Certainly stories of this made their way around the neighborhood but now that it's circling the globe it's gonna be bad times for them when inevitably their info is leaked and random people seek out vigilante justice on them, as even people in this thread have indicated being open to.

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i really really really hope this happens

[GuyOnTilt]

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yeah exactly. Sometimes the "choice" that GOT thinks people are making, they arent actually making, because they don't see any other options to choose from. It annoys me when people who are of a different mental state cast their own mental state onto someone else. Sure its obvious to us that she chose to kill herself because we can easily see not doing it, or the girl who goes back to the BF that beats her is choosing to do so, because to us, she obviously doesnt have to. But that doesnt mean they see it as a choice, they are suffering from mental illness or the trauma of extreme abuse, who the [censored] knows whats going on in their brain, its not like she calmly and rationally went "gee this really sucks, I feel humiliated now, guess I better go kill myself".

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If you agree (not saying you necessarily do) that people should be morally responsible for their own actions except in cases of mental illness or severe emotional instability, then how does the blame suddenly shift over to the last person to impact their psyche (seems borderline arbitrary; straw, camel, etc)? Why wouldn't it logically be shifted to the chemical imbalance itself?