Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl, hanged herself with a belt after receiving cruel messages from a boy she'd been flirting with on MySpace.
Thousands on social media have expressed outrage and offered support to the daughter of the late actor Robin Williams after she announced this week that she was quitting social media after receiving "cruel and unnecessary" comments on her public profiles.
In October 1917, Hiralal Sen was sick, bankrupt and just a few days away from death when he received some cruel news.
High-rise apartment dwellers around New York City, already sweltering in darkened rooms, also received a cruel lesson in the dynamics of urban water systems, as the lack of electricity for pumps meant that depleted rooftop tanks could not be refilled.
I have received reports of cruel treatment of students, including one child whose mouth was taped shut by an instructor for talking too much and another whose shoes were removed in the classroom for not paying attention.
It seems like today, if you disagree with someone, particularly if it's on the Internet, you will receive nasty comments, cruel emails, and phrases that I don't believe people would utter in person.
It's an awkward conversation to have but, the received wisdom is, it's cruel and cowardly to dodge it and send a text instead.
The court received no answer to this cruel and silly question, but one could easily have found an answer had he permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on the fate of those Dutch Jews who in 1941, in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, dared to attack a German security police detachment.
As a result of being cast as one of the manipulators and villains of the show, Samantha says that she has received a lot of really cruel comments on social media.
