I'm Done. The Mezra death brought home how cycincal and damaging this website it to real people

*cynical

My hope now is that Dr. Meza's death is not in vain and some change to internet culture can come from this.

Meza's Law has a nice ring to it. Paging Scott Dominguez....

Well... Bye.

Your conscience is clear now. Don't let the door hit ya ...

This site likely has NOTHING to do with Meza’s death. You morons jump to conclusions here.

jiaaf wrote:

This site likely has NOTHING to do with Meza’s death. You morons jump to conclusions here.

Ummm ... Hundreds of pages of people gleefully engaged in harassing him by contacting his friends, family, work, medical board, writing fake reviews pretending to be his patients, implying if not outright stating there was some insidious things going on at LHS with the children.... The whole thread was a dumpster fire and the only reason it was allowed to stay up was because it was fun.

Brojos take down threads for talking about adblockers, but they leave up threads engaged in targeted cyberbullying. Good standards.

jiaaf wrote:

This site likely has NOTHING to do with Meza’s death. You morons jump to conclusions here.

...and if it comes out that is does....I suppose you will defend it still.

ok then wrote:

jiaaf wrote:

This site likely has NOTHING to do with Meza’s death. You morons jump to conclusions here.

...and if it comes out that is does....I suppose you will defend it still.

I have never posted in nor read the thread but I am smarter than you people. Consequently I do not let my narcissism cloud my judgment. I am simply stating that the odds are this site had NOTHING to do with the man’s death. I am not defending this site, as the site deserves disparagement many times. But agaIn, disparage it if you will, just do not assign culpability without cause.

If the guy was cheating to get into Boston or pick up a dinner coupon, I would look at it very differently. But Meza systematically sullied the WR of one of the greatest (and honest and truly humble, not a humblebraggart) runners ever, Ed Whitlock. Frank didn't deserve to die or go to jail for that, but he needed to be held accountable and all of those fake times removed from all records. I have great sympathy for his friends and family but little empathy for his character in this specific instance. He should have come clean, period. Instead he will be remembered for the mess he left behind.

Posterity wrote:

. But Meza systematically sullied the WR of one of the greatest (and honest and truly humble, not a humblebraggart) runners ever.

It wasn't a sanctioned race there was no WR to be set...

Furthermore, nobody REALLY cares about AG awards or Ed Whitlock. Give me a break.

Took me a while v4 wrote:

jiaaf wrote:

This site likely has NOTHING to do with Meza’s death. You morons jump to conclusions here.

Ummm ... Hundreds of pages of people gleefully engaged in harassing him by contacting his friends, family, work, medical board, writing fake reviews pretending to be his patients, implying if not outright stating there was some insidious things going on at LHS with the children.... The whole thread was a dumpster fire and the only reason it was allowed to stay up was because it was fun.

Brojos take down threads for talking about adblockers, but they leave up threads engaged in targeted cyberbullying. Good standards.

Where was your outrage when LRC exposed Mike Rossi, Robert Young and Kip Litton? They were all cheaters who never owned up to it. LR is doing a public service by outing cheaters. If cheaters cannot handle the publicity and refuse to come clean, then that's their own fault.

Took me a while v4 wrote:

Furthermore, nobody REALLY cares about or Ed Whitlock. Give me a break.

WRONG

Rossi Young Litton wrote:

Took me a while v4 wrote:

Ummm ... Hundreds of pages of people gleefully engaged in harassing him by contacting his friends, family, work, medical board, writing fake reviews pretending to be his patients, implying if not outright stating there was some insidious things going on at LHS with the children.... The whole thread was a dumpster fire and the only reason it was allowed to stay up was because it was fun.

Brojos take down threads for talking about adblockers, but they leave up threads engaged in targeted cyberbullying. Good standards.

Where was your outrage when LRC exposed Mike Rossi, Robert Young and Kip Litton? They were all cheaters who never owned up to it. LR is doing a public service by outing cheaters. If cheaters cannot handle the publicity and refuse to come clean, then that's their own fault.

So they've outed 4 middle-aged or senior citizen Age Group cheaters and that may have had played a leading role in the death of one of them. What service are they providing exactly? If I helped 4 old ladies across the street, and 25% of them were hit by cars and died on the way, would you consider that a 'public service'?

Something that is irresponsible and reckless and possibly causing people to commit suicide while providing almost zero public good is not a public service. The whole issue was just click bait from the start.

Very little guilt can be ascribed to the thread. If you want culpability, how about those who possibly covered up or at least held their tongues as Frank's obvious cheating got more and more grandiose over the years? It was easier for them to "play along" rather than confront him and try to persuade him to come clean.

what service? wrote:

So they've outed 4 middle-aged or senior citizen Age Group cheaters and that may have had played a leading role in the death of one of them. What service are they providing exactly? If I helped 4 old ladies across the street, and 25% of them were hit by cars and died on the way, would you consider that a 'public service'?

Such stupid logic. If this board exposed an Olympic champion as a ped user and the individual subsequently killed themselves, would it be wrong to expose ped users?

This guy went beyond even peds. I know the majority opinion on this board is that everybody dopes so it doesn't matter, but I doubt even the hardcore apologists think everybody takes shortcuts during road races to slice minutes off their time and break national or world records.

Perhaps masters and age group running is trivial to you, but it's not to others. Perhaps cheating is more odious when it's simply to inflate one's ego rather than to feed an African village or such like.

Not to say in the slightest that his apparent suicide isn't deeply sad and a tragedy for him and his family, but the guy clearly had psychiatric issues to brazenly cheat after being caught doing the same thing before.

Having said that, the bullying that is allowed to go on in this forum is indeed obscene. Requiring all posters to register and employing mods who do not appear to be psychopaths might be a start in changing that.

Don't tell me no one cares about AG records. This is a site about running with a bunch of middle aged guys on it. I care a lot about AG racing. I get inspired by AG records. People put months and years of daily effort into training because they care about it. If you beat me with work or talent, I'll congratulate you. If you beat me by cheating, you deserve the DQ.

And don't tell me the thread was about public shaming. It wasn't. I read the whole thread in real time, and I'm re-reading it now. There's very little about Frank's personal life except confusion as to why such a successful person would be so driven to cheat. Roderick Powell comes in for far more abuse on the thread than Frank does.

Look at the first post on Marathon Investigation. It was extremely fair. Derek wanted to vindicate Frank, not shame him. He gave Frank a chance to explain, and then Frank started making legal threats.

There are heroes and villains in this sad story, but the villains aren't at LRC.

Can't post on the official thread on this topic because I was banned several years ago (which seems like it must have been a mistake, but actually gave me some peace...).

This place brings out the best and the worst in people. This incident may be the absolute worst of the worst. That I recall anyway, since I started coming here around 2000 or so.

I'm unsurprised to see rojo rationalize the situation after having stoked the fire (indirectly perhaps). Kudos to malmo for calling him on it.

Sincere condolences to Dr. Meza, my thoughts are with his friends and family.

Numb wrote:

Very little guilt can be ascribed to the thread. If you want culpability, how about those who possibly covered up or at least held their tongues as Frank's obvious cheating got more and more grandiose over the years? It was easier for them to "play along" rather than confront him and try to persuade him to come clean.

I agree. Why should we assume Frank needs an intervention and is fragile when with all his expertise and that huge multiple institution network he has doesn't? Worse, it appears they supported his denial.

Having the school Frank apparently contributed so much to for 30 years wash their hands of him so thoroughly and quickly must of really hurt this man. Still even they didn't make him do what he did(if he did in fact kill himself).

He evidently never liked the real Frank Meza, or his real life. That goes back a long long way.

The internet doesn't kill 70 year old men, doesn't even barely contribute. Maybe it has some influence on high school boys and girls ,or younger, but not grown men. No body should expect it does. If frank killed himself it was because he didn't want to deal with his life as he had been and was actually living it. For all we know he was in trouble for other things, or he feared he would be. We really don't know.

I think some people on these new threads are being judgmental of posters who didn't, or don't see too much wrong with the original FM thread. It's easy to chime in like a saint now. People have differently sensibilities based on vastly different life experiences. Some are more combative in the face of controversy , or anti- authoritarian, etc, than others for a reason. Some are too nice because they can't cope with normal conflict. Some people have a lot of guilt and don't like to see people punished for their wrongs. We see different significance, some see only an old guy that cheated at marathons and really are offended , and some see a potentially bad situation for students at a Catholic high school. What if everybody followed the idea that "if you don't have something nice to say don't say it". Would any bad things ever be stopped?

One thing I have learned in life is that it truly takes all kinds.

The only solace is that Ed W never had to witness any of this nonsense.