“Megan Had it Coming” blog author is Megan’s tormentor, Lori Drew
Again, my suspicions were correct. The author of the Megan Had it Coming blog is not a teen. Though I didn’t mention it explicitly in my previous post, I thought that it might be Lori Drew, the woman who tormented Megan Meier via the “Josh” MySpace account. And it is.
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In this post, Lori talks about the “dark side” of Megan Meier in more adult-like terms, along with details of her involvement in the creation of the Josh profile, and her relationship with the Meier family pre- and post-suicide.
One big revelation was that this prank was not entirely invented by Lori, but rather a reinvention of an earlier prank performed by Megan herself on Lori’s daughter. She doesn’t go into details about what Megan’s form of MySpace “torment” entailed, but apparently it was enough for her parents to ban her from MySpace.
But most interestingly, we finally get to hear what her rationale was for doing what she did. And the answer isn’t surprising. It was to “protect” her daughter by creating this account to “keep tabs” on Megan and hopefully prevent further “attacks” on her daughter. And, as we all know, to eventually “give her a taste of her own medicine.”
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Lori clearly still thinks that what she did is right. Her inability to truly recognize and comprehend what has happened and feel remorse for what she did is absolutely disgusting.
Before, we thought that we were getting a glimpse into teen society. Turns out that we’re peeking into the psyche of a woman who is so completely obsessed with her daughter — and, I would bet, teen culture as a whole — that she is able to convincingly portray herself as a 16-year-old both for the “Josh” profile and the earlier Megan Had it Coming posts.
I don’t know what the word is for someone like that, but it certainly isn’t “parent.”
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Parents do not meddle in the social situations of pre-teens. If your daughter is confronted with a bully, you teach your daughter how to avoid and deal with that person/situation. No matter how bad it is, how cruel it is, you continue to teach her lessons in confidence and perseverance. You don’t bring yourself down to kid level. You don’t try to prevent it from happening. Because later on, in the real world, you won’t be there to do that.
The only lesson that Lori has taught her daughter is that revenge, deception, gossip and snooping are A-OK ways of getting what you want. Not to mention the larger lessons in demonizing one’s “enemies” and glorifying oneself — both terrible and terribly ineffective practices (just take a look at the state of our union).
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Most surprisingly, Lori seems positively unable to imagine how she would feel if the reverse had happened. Maybe because if she did she would be so repulsed by the behavior of her theoretical counterpart that she wouldn’t be able to go on.
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For more, check out Danah Boyd’s post on the matter.
