Cyberbullying

To me, a true profile is one that honestly represents the person using it. If the person is pretending to me another identity, this does not equal a "true" profile. Also, if people are lying about details of themselves even if they are actually representing their own identity, this is also untrue.
I think it is now very difficult to make sure something is true. It's hard to trust any profile on the Internet for its face value. In my opinion, the original concept behind facebook made it a little bit more difficult to create a new identity on the Internet. To create an account, a person had to have a valid e-mail address from their college. I always liked this; it let me know, or at least think, there had to be some validity here.
As far as this case goes, it scares me! It scares me first and foremost to think that there is a grown adult out there sick enough to play with a child's mind. That knowledge is frightening. Because of this, I think the mother who created the false profile is entirely at fault. Megan's mom called the police when she was alarmed, but there was nothing they could do. Even if the mother didn't think or mean to cause Megan's suicide, her irrational, illogical behavior enabled it. Megan had no way of knowing her myspace friend Josh was simply her classmates mother. The mother, however, having a teenage daughter of her own, knows the mental instability of teenage girls.


The trolling idea is startling to me. People get on the Internet and totally disregard other people. By them simply being "profiles" or even just names and stories on the web, they lose all sense of being human. They are not treated with the respect and dignity that people are in other forums.