Psychopathic bully girl guilty: Ms Carter, in the Chat Room, with a Cell Phone.
Something ended this week. It started long ago and had some turns. One turn led to his death. The other led to her guilty sentence for his death by suicide that was supposed to be part of a death pact between the dead party and the guilty party. Their paths were littered with over 1000 Face Book and text messages between them. Like an unwarned of movie spoiler, her Face Book posts leaked her plot out for anyone who cared to read or dared to intervene.
In 2014 Michelle Carter was 17 and Conrad Roy III was 18 when his trail ended in his truck, parked at a Kmart on July 13, 2014. After backing out of the pact, she harassed him like a common school yard bully. And then like a closest frienemy she attacked him for backing out of the deal, as if she were not already so out of there.
“And u can’t break a promise. And just go in a quiet parking lot or something,” she said from her screen to his screen. Was it an intimate whisper, or a shrill scream at a wayward child?. If he was guilty about putting his parents through this, she reassured him, they would do just fine. Maybe better, without a pathetic looser son? Poor patient Michelle even had to hold his hand and explain to him step by step, how to kill himself.
She had broken the promise sooner than a signature penned in her blood could have dried. Among her problems was a history as a self-cutter. She could easily have signed in blood. It started once upon a family vacation time in Florida,2012, but was pretty much a long distance social media relation from start to end. And she was dreaming bigger dreams for herself, all in living color. He, the depressed looser who had failed to die, just die, at least four previous times, could be of use. But only dead. Only then could she morn and cash in on the attention and condolences.
Without a whip, baton or stun gun this cyber-dominatrix in training commanded him back into the deadly fumes filling his truck there in the lot. Most cyber-bullyng lasts less than 6 months. Michelle had time to kill, she had two years. It is usually anonymous. Did she sign off with virtual hearts and kisses next to her name? A big, slow thug of a bully in jackboots could never compare to her finesse and clean hands. Cyber bullies often work as a pack species. Michelle was a one woman lone wolf bully straight out of her own central casting.
Her script was a mash-up of Stanley Millgram’s shock experiment and Richard Zimbardo’s student prison experiment. Invited to go on a kinky but chaste dating experience, the hero caves under her powers, and like a beaten man he walks into his gas chamber and shuts the door behind himself. She rides off on a school parade float into the sunrise of a better life. As the face of suicide prevention and the creator of a memorial sport stadium, she would be both a very young charitable society matron/queen and homecoming queen who didn’t have to give up the crowns or thrones after a short one year.
The truth might be girls can bully “smarter, much smarter than the man,” if they put their mind to it. It helps if the mind has some psychopathic tendencies. We could understand those tendencies as they came out in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and we could be shocked by her revenge inflicted with a Steely Dan upon her latest abuser in a position of authority. We could be shocked while smiling and praising her spunk. She came off well as a movie heroine.
Eating disorders and self cutting are private internalized activities. Michelle took her issues and dumped them on vulnerable Conrad Roy the Third. Did the power trip of it make her feel in control of her own life? Did this end her self-cutting? Did her food stay down easier?
From where came the tendencies here in the bright young lady with Florida vacations and all the things that come with life in a family that hires “celebrity psychiatrist Peter Bregin” for the defense? Were the tears she shed upon the verdict the crocodile tears previous held for her big scene? I like to think so. And I like the court rewrite of the final act even more so.
She was a hard sell for a heroine and a good ending. And the sequel? The idea of calling the suicide line and reaching Ms. Carter is disturbing. “Hello, how can I assist you?”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-text-suicide-20170616-story.html
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