Cynics Unlimited

The high-profile suicide of Megan Meier has taken a sad political turn, as officials in her hometown attempt to transform grieving into governance -

City officials unanimously passed a measure Wednesday making online harassment a crime, days after learning that a 13-year-old girl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the Internet.
The six-member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier’s death.
“It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behavior never happens again, anywhere,” Fogarty said, adding, “after all, harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool.”
Several dozen people broke into applause after the measure was passed.

It’s time to inject some sanity into this hoopla. What happened to Megan was tragic but the “insults” she endured online were far from the worst abuse that floats around even on a standard political chat board.

More importantly, virtually no child doesn’t know what (s)he’s getting into when signing up for MySpace or other social networking services. With few exceptions, people join these sites to put their business in public view – typically referred to as “attention whoring” on chat boards. The copious clubbing pictures, artistic dedication, sad poetry, and vanity user groups are all a way of saying “look at me – embrace me!”. This interaction is no different from real world EXCEPT that it is easier to dupe someone via fake personas.

Should impersonation in itself be crime? It already is in some instances (particularly when dealing with business matters) but the enforcement of such a law wouldn’t have made any difference for Megan Meier. According to news sources, she hung herself moments after being rejected – still under the assumption that “Josh Evans” was a real person. The obvious question is “what’s stopping this from happening in real life?”. Back in the traditional FaceLife world, boys and girls both have long sought pleasure leading on “inferior” members of the opposite sex, with the singular goal of shooting them down as meanly and publicly as possible. Unfortunate victims of these public attacks suffer considerable short term embarrassment and perhaps some longer-term confidence issues, but the overwhelming majority do not commit suicide. The proportion of victims who kill themselves after enduring similar ribbing on an impersonal medium susceptible to impersonations is likely smaller.

Dardene Prairie officials freely admit that their feel-good law is not enforceable anywhere outside city borders. The 2000 US Census lists the town’s population as barely over 4,000 so internet users at large have little to fear … or do we? Nothing guarantees the passage of hysteria-induced legislature quite like a sympathetic-looking teenage girl whose life was ended pre-maturely by evil outside forces. Since news outlets tend to report these types of stories in clusters to create the impression of an epidemic (e.g. the string of “noose” incidents reported after the original Jena incident), several more net-inspired suicides will likely come to light. The resulting hysteria will of course sell more newspapers and could -more dangerously- result in more feel-good legislation on the city, state/province or national level.

But who’s going to decide what constitutes cruelty? How does one user know what another user can put up with? Is photo-shopping a picture cruel? How about catching someone in a lie and reporting it online? How will the law address issues of impersonation? One stolen password could jail the owner of a popular internet persona.

Popular culture and media may forever to serve as a scapegoat every time tragedy strikes a valued member of society and those who sat by idly seek to redirect their guilt. Most of these attacks will be narrowly-focused and forgettable but some, if not checked, could lead to serious attacks on our freedom of expression. The Megan Meier case was saddening, but exacting political revenge on the dog-eat-dog aspect of social networking will not prevent the next depressed teen from voluntarily leaving this earth.