TruthScape.com - The TruthScape Soapbox - Issue #1

The old expression that “the pen is mightier than the sword” is starting to have a particularly ugly online equivalent, as more and more people discover that the keyboard can be more brutal than either of those instruments. I’ll start off with a summary of the tragic tale of Megan Meier.

Megan Meier was a troubled 13-year-old girl who had battled weight problems, attention deficit disorder and depression, but she was turning her life around. There were still some ups and downs, including an on-again / off-again friendship with a girl down the street who was the daughter of acquaintances of the Meiers’, which had recently been off again. But overall, things were going great for her, and her happiness increased even more when when she met Josh Evans

**Megan Meier**
(*Original image source*)

A 16-year-old boy whom Megan described as “hot”, Josh contacted Megan on MySpace and asked if he could be added as a friend. Megan’s mother, Tina Meier, carefully supervised what her daughter did online; Megan’s account was private and only her parents had the password, so Megan could only add Josh if her mom agreed. She did, cautiously, because it was obvious that the attention from the boy was making her daughter happy, and monitored their relationship from that point on. Josh told Megan that she was pretty, and that was a big deal for a girl who had problems with self-esteem.

But after a few weeks, their relationship started to sour. Josh told Megan that he didn’t know if he could remain friends because he had heard that she “wasn’t very nice to her friends”. Things got worse from there. Josh started sending increasingly nasty messages to Megan, and even worse, started sharing with others his correspondence with her.

Things came to a head on a day in late October, 2006. Megan was on her MySpace account and getting upset at what she saw; Tina had to take Megan’s sister to the orthodontist and told Megan to log out, but she didn’t. Tina called from the orthodontist’s office and found Megan even more upset, but still refusing to sign out. A few minutes later it was Megan on the phone, crying and telling Tina that people on MySpace were posting “bulletins” about her, calling her a “slut” and saying that she was “fat” and more. Tina again insisted that Megan log out right away.

When Tina got home the situation had escalated to Megan and Josh Evans firing nasty instant messages to each other. Tina was furious because Megan hadn’t logged out, and made Megan get off the computer. Megan was upset and hurt, over what Josh was saying, and also because she felt that Tina wasn’t taking her side.

While Megan went upstairs to cool off, Tina started making dinner. Twenty minutes later, Tina felt like she should check on her daughter. She went upstairs and found that Megan had hanged herself in her bedroom closet.

Megan’s parents, Tina and Ron, were obviously devastated by what happened. After her death they tried to contact Josh Evans to tell him what had transpired, hoping that he would learn from this incident that words can be deadly. But they found that his MySpace account had been deleted. Perhaps he had been a troubled kid himself who never imagined what would happen as a result of his cruelty. Or maybe his parents discovered what he was up to, and had the account pulled.

They received much support from their neighbors on the block, and also tried to comfort the local family of the girl who had had the rocky relationship with Megan. They told her that despite the problems, Megan had valued their friendship. The incident brought the two families somewhat closer; the Meiers attended that girl’s father’s 50th birthday party, and agreed to store a large item for them in their garage.

Two months later, the truth came out—and if there’s anything that can possibly worsen your own child commiting suicide, this would have to be it. The Meiers found out that Josh Evans had never existed. It was a fake account that had been set up by adults to try to get close to Megan, to find out what she was saying about their own daughter. Yes, it was the parents of the same girl that Megan had been occasional friends with. The same people whom the Meiers had gone over to comfort after Megan’s death. The people whose foosball table was in the Meiers’ garage.

If there’s any possible sympathy to be had for the perpetrators of this horrible act, it appears that while “Josh Evans” had always been about deception, it had never been intended to be something that would be harmful to Megan. But it soon got out of control, as the keys to that account were shared and other people started sending nastygrams under the cloak of anonymity. And then matters got even worse as a result of the typical escalation of a war of words.

At this point, I am sure some of you are saying, “okay, sad story, but what does it have to do with RuneScape?” The answer is, “a hell of a lot more than most people realize”.

This is not just about MySpace, or one girl, or a couple of horrible, vindictive and heartless parents. This is about how the consequences of treating people cruelly on the Internet can have serious repercussions—effects that may be far-reaching and far beyond what the person who is sending a message intends. This is about how words can kill.

The very same sort of nastiness and abuse that goes on in MySpace also occurs in nearly every other online community. I have seen lots of it first-hand, in RuneScape and elsewhere. Not only are people mean to strangers, they often behave hatefully towards their “friends” as well.

And in the case of games like RuneScape, it is often not just words, but other actions that can be just as bad. I can’t even count how many times I have met people or read stories about players being tricked by those they thought were friends, backstabbed by clan members, scammed out of months of hard work, and worse.

I’ve been criticized in the past for referring to those who engage in these activities as “sociopaths”. And perhaps that is indeed too harsh, because while this behavior is anti-social, it may just be that those who engage in it refuse to consider what the impact might be of their actions. They don’t think about the fact that the person they are betraying could in fact be a fragile 13-year-old trying to turn his or her life around. They don’t bother to take a minute to think, and to realize that the other players are not computerized NPCs using AI; they are not just pixels, they are real people.

It sickens me to see people try to excuse their inexcusable behavior by saying “it’s just a game, not the real world”. When you call someone a nasty name, the recipient who reads and feels hurt is a real person in the real world. When you backstab a clan member, the betrayal is felt in the real world. When you scam someone out of an item worth 50 million gold, that is months of hard work down the drain, time and effort invested in the real world.

Another good lesson to learn from Megan and “Josh Evans” is that when you run into a nasty person in the game, don’t always assume that he or she must be a “stupid obnoxious kid”. While kids can indeed be horrible to each other, teens and adults have every bit as much capacity to be awful as kids, and in some cases—like this one—they can be a lot worse.

Based on my experience dealing with the larger RuneScape community, I have absolutely no doubt that this editorial will result in the typical spate of knee-jerking comments from ignorant people who are desperate to write off this whole matter. They will stick their heads in the sand, call me “reactionary”, make excuses and do whatever else they can to allow themselves to stay in denial and avoid the issue.

Some will say that it is Megan’s parents’ fault that this happened, despite the fact that her mother was supervising her about as well as can be expected of any parent. To suggest that this is their fault is literally adding insult to injury. Sure, Tina could have made sure that Megan logged off before she took her other daughter to the orthodontist; she made a mistake. Are you perfect? Only someone who is grossly lacking in not only real-world parenting knowledge but simple human decency would even suggest that the parents are to blame here, but I guarantee that I will hear those comments anyway.

Others will say that this situation is “not typical”. They’ll point out that Megan was troubled, and so it’s not the fault of the “Josh Evans” instigators that she died, because she would have tried to commit suicide based on some other situation anyway.

This, however, misses the point entirely—she didn’t commit suicide based on some other event, she did it because of this one. Does anyone honestly think that the perpetrators here would have tried to hire a real 16-year-old “hot” Josh Evans to get close to Megan in the way they did this online? Or that if they had, that they could have gotten away with it? I certainly do not. It is precisely the anonymity of the Internet and the ease with which one can lie and misrepresent oneself to others that makes situations like this possible. And that’s why people must learn to be both less trusting and more kind to others online.

Does this mean that if you call someone a “noob” in RuneScape or scam them out of some gold that you are going to cause them to commit suicide? Probably not. But the fact is that just because you are a 22-year-old who has a strong self-image and can brush off nasty comments or scamming, that doesn’t mean your victim is. Even if you don’t push that person over the edge, you could still do lasting emotional damage.

Any of that sound vaguely familiar? It should, because it describes a nearly identical situation that exists today in RuneScape. There are lots of rules, and an age restriction, and a prohibition against sexual content—they are all easily ignored or bypassed by thousands kids and young teens. The only purpose they serve is to keep the lawyers happy at MySpace and Jagex respectively, while Jagex blissfully promotes the game via an Official RuneScape Handbook sold through elementary school childrens’ book clubs.

Everyone in every online community needs to start taking more responsibility for how they treat others. We must move beyond a culture that says it is okay to abuse, deceive and hurt others because “it’s only online”. We need to remember that there are real people behind every MySpace page or RuneScape character. We must start to realize that what we do online affects real people, and that goes doubly when we are in a gaming community populated largely with children and teens.

If you won’t take a step towards greater respect and reasonable treatment of others out of a sense of decency and consideration for them, then think about from a more selfish standpoint. What would it feel like if you found out that a child had committed suicide as a result of something you did? Do you think that the parents who created “Josh Evans” will ever be the same after this, will ever have any peace, or be able to live normally? If they have any conscience at all, they will be haunted by this every day for the rest of their lives. And what about the impact of this on their own daughter?

It’s high time for decent people to take a stand and make it clear that online abuse and bullying will no longer be tolerated. Do your part, and help spread the word.