Sugar Cubes

I thought we all need a reminder.

Personal sites suddenly very public in aftermath of Pennsylvania killing

It’s not the first time MySpace has had a surreal role in popular news stories. At times it’s been a colorful sounding board, at other times space for a grim eulogy.

Earlier this summer, Zach Stark, a gay 16-year-old from Bartlett, Tenn., made headlines when he wrote in his MySpace blog about his parents’ decision to send him to Camp Refuge, a camp aimed at setting homosexuals straight. Gay rights activists picked up on Zach’s blog and rallied to his side, protesting the group running the camp, Love In Action. Earlier this month, a federal judge upheld the state of Tennessee’s prosecution of Love In Action for running a mental health facility without a license.

And in September, New York college students Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez died in a well-reported wave of heroin overdoses. Both had MySpace profiles. Friends and strangers visited to leave notes of condolence, as well as a few scathing diatribes against the way heroin use had wasted two young lives. Both girls profiles’ contained numerous drug references.

That same month, on the MySpace profile of 19-year-old Taylor Behl, friends and strangers posted pleas for the safe return of the Virginia college student before police made the gruesome discovery of her body.

While the news may not have a long shelf life, these online profiles do. New messages from friends still appear on Maria’s MySpace page every so often. So do spam ads from the clubs she used to frequent.

On Taylor’s profile, friends relayed condolence letters strangers had sent them. Several MySpace tributes to Taylor’s memory have been created. Since returning from Camp Refuge, Zach erased his old blog and the comments from strangers, but still updates readers of his situation. “I miss my old life,” he wrote in a recent entry.

Sometimes a MySpace profile is created after a news story takes place. Hoax profiles are often created for celebrities. The Olsen twins, for example, have numerous entries pretending to be them on several different networking sites.