Cyberharassment

Read this. It's next week's NYT magazine about trolls and cyberharassment. Remember the story of the girl who killed herself over her myspace boyfriend? There was a post made on a forum attacking her after she died, which was later discovered to be written by the girl's best friend, Lori Drew. Or say they thought.

This post received more than 3,600 comments. Fox and CNN debated its authenticity. But the Drew identity was another mask. In fact, Megan Had It Coming was another Jason Fortuny experiment. He, not Lori Drew, Fortuny told me, was the blog’s author. After watching him log onto the site and add a post, I believed him. The blog was intended, he says, to question the public’s hunger for remorse and to challenge the enforceability of cyberharassment laws like the one passed by Megan’s town after her death. Fortuny concluded that they were unenforceable. The county sheriff’s department announced it was investigating the identity of the fake Lori Drew, but it never found Fortuny, who is not especially worried about coming out now. “What’s he going to sue me for?” he asked. “Leading on confused people? Why don’t people fact-check who this stuff is coming from? Why do they assume it’s true?”

Read the whole thing. I'm probably the most naive person, now that I think about it. I've got to quit believing this kind of stuff without question.