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I tried to keep an open mind reading this. For those who didn't have time to read the whole thing, according to other articles online the guy would pretend to

• xorfish 4y ago
  > What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass. You do understand that he doesn't understand that this is a horrible thing to do?
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    Then this guardians are responsible for his actions and he needs his freedoms legally taken away.
    • blowski 4y ago
      I think that gets to the crux of the issue. If Brandon is culpable for his actions, it's right he is punished. If he is not, then should he have the freedoms that allowed him to do this? Let's assume culpability is a spectrum, not a binary. How do you assess someone's culpability?
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Just ban him from using the internet. That was what happened during his bail and the article seems to indicate he was happy to follow the rules he was given. Prison is only a deterrent because people know they did something wrong and know they shouldn’t do it again. Putting someone in prison who doesn’t know why they are in prison makes no practical sense. It’s only going to make his condition worse.
      • colechristensen 4y ago
        >Prison is only a deterrent Some people just need to be removed from society. Not as a deterrent, punishment, vengeance, or anything like that, but just a recognition that this human is incompatible with freedom among other humans. A person like this man probably deserves the chance to have someone, if willing, to take on legal and criminal liability for his actions (i.e. the other person takes on the legal consequences themselves), but if that fails and there isn't reasonable confidence that this or other things won't continue to happen... then removal is the only option. There are several levels of removal, but ultimately that's what you have to do. I have heard and been close to too many situations were a mentally incompetent person who didn't necessarily know what they were doing hurt people who didn't deserve it. The rest of us shouldn't really have to be on our guard against folks who "don't know what they're doing" when they hurt people, sad as the stories of the incompetent person might be.
        • kube-system 4y ago
          Your partial quote of my sentence changes the meaning! I understand prison can serve more purposes than deterrence, I said it only serves that purpose when people understand why they’re there. This guy doesn’t seem like a violent danger to anyone that needs to be separated from society physically. He needs to be separated from a computer, which is perfectly doable outside of a prison.
  • colinb 4y ago
    I cannot read the article so I'm possibly talking out of line, but still, do you have evidence to back this up? All of my anecdata of the ~20ish autistic people that I know is that they fully understand basic horribleness. I read that autistic people might have trouble reading the moods of others, not that they don't actually give a fuck.
    • jwandborg 4y ago
      You can learn about feelings, but that means you misunderstand or is completely ignorant of the mechanics of the feeling until you are taught about it, once you're taught about it you can try to interpret the signs, but it's still hard and error-prone work, even though it's probably work worth doing, for the benefit of other's perception of your actions. There are feelings and mechanics I wish I'd learned earlier.
      • orbifold 4y ago
        So do people with autism automatically have some form of anti-social personality disorder? If someone doesn't have empathy or can understand how they are hurting others that should be cause for a lot of concern.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      The article describes that he liked to recite the lines of movie super villains, and was fascinated with internet trolls because they were popular. And he wanted to be popular. And how now he repeatedly writes letters to the judge and warden asking to be let out, and in calls with family he doesn’t understand why he’s still there.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Scandiravian 4y ago
      Autism is a spectrum disorder. There are many who can live high functioning lives, there are also those who never learn to speak and require assistance there entire life. I'm guessing most of the people you've met are high functioning, so there's a bias in what your understanding of autism is In more severe forms of autism a combination of learning disabilities and the inability to read facial expressions can make it hard to parse what is considered "horrible" for the people suffering from the condition That does not mean they lack empathy or desires harm in others. The issue is that they need help and support parsing the environment around them Of cause some might need to be denied access to certain things like knives or social media because their inability to understand could be a danger to their surroundings, but that's a situation for a minority of people with autism
  • rnd0 4y ago
    That doesn't help his victims in any way whatsoever. I'm more concerned with them, and not him.
    • Toutouxc 4y ago
      And the guy being in jail, not knowing why he's there, helps them how exactly?
      • Stracke 4y ago
        [dead]
      • timeon 4y ago
        At least the action is discontinued.
        • xorfish 4y ago
          Which could have also been achieved by telling him not to and that it is wrong or if that doesn't work banning the use of social media. He seems to be able to follow rules very good.
      • Stracke 4y ago
        [dead]
  • oxygen-crisis 4y ago
    He understood it was horrible. He wasn't asking people why their nose was so big or calling people doody-heads. He successfully figured out who the most vulnerable victims were, sought them out, and proficiently concocted threats and insults that would hurt them greatly. If he wasn't so effective at maximizing horror, barely anybody would have noticed his remarks.
    • CuriousCosmic 4y ago
      Honestly I'm not so sure. To quote the article: > The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.” There's this thing you'll see with people who really struggle to understand social cues and how to act "normally" in a social environment when dealing with teasing jokes (like back and forth jokes in a friend group). Someone will say some harmless thing about their clothes or their hair and they'll accidentally overstep a line while looking for a response joke that would do a lot of "damage" to get even. Instead of responding with an equivalently harmless "roast" they'll respond with legitimately hurtful things like "well maybe that's why your mom killed herself" or "XYZ is why your girlfriend left you". Obviously they overstepped a line and went straight for the most hurtful thing they could find but it's partially because they never learned where the line was and why it was there. Even with "trolling" it's conceptually similar to "roasts" between friends with the exception that one side is often not a particularly willing participant(not that trolling is OK but you can view them in a somewhat similar light). They both have a degree where the troll/individual is harmless and it's all in good fun. There's also a degree where it's annoying or frustrating but has limited consequence on the recipient past that. Then there's legitimately hurtful and unacceptable stuff past that point. The root of the problem here is that if the troll can't distinguish the line between annoying and hurtful, they'll try to deliver the most horrible and "damaging" blows they can all the while thinking something along the lines of "haha they are so mad, I must be annoying them really badly". Unless the person actually understands the social weight of what they are saying, there's a very real chance that in their eyes, harassing a person about tragedies personally suffered/making threats is equivalent to "I'm not touching you" dialed up to 11.
• gattilorenz 4y ago
  > according to other articles online the guy would pretend to be the Parkland shooter and send messages to the victim's families That’s mentioned in this article as well, and with some of the exact quotes you reported. The article doesn’t say that what he did is not horrible, nor that autism should grant him a pass (in the sense of freedom from any consequence).
• maeln 4y ago
  > It made a bit more sense when he heard Brandon’s account of what happened – his son admitted to almost everything straight away. Brandon told a federal investigator that he’d been inspired by an internet troll who went by the name of Lynn Ann. “Lynn Ann” was obsessed with one of the Columbine High School shooters, and achieved a small amount of fame online by posting messages on social media about how “ugly” the shooter’s victims had been. Brandon’s messages to the Parkland victims’ families had been “pure bullshit trolling” like Lynn Ann’s, he told the investigator. Brandon said he had become interested in internet trolls because they were “popular”. > It was the same with “Shark Tale”. It made sense to Fleury that Brandon would mimic the language and behaviour of internet trolls without really understanding them. An expert on autism hired by the defence gave a similar assessment to the court. > The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.” No one is denying that what he did is awful. The idea being discussed here is how to properly judge someone when they don't necessarily understand the wrong in what they are doing. You might want to believe or not that Brandon did it knowing the pain that it cause. But I have been around neurodiverse people in my life, and I saw how they where sometimes unable to understand that their behaviour could cause pain to other. The opposite was also true, where they could be deeply pained by what neurotypical people would consider a fairly normal behaviour. Therefor, is it fair, is it just, to judge someone who doesn't understand the consequences of their action (or at least in the same proportion) in the same way that someone who does ? We already answered this a long time ago it seems, since the law for minor is usually different than for adult based on this exact principle. So how to we handle neurodiverse people has a modern society, it is an important question that bears asking.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    > So how to we handle neurodiverse people has a modern society, it is an important question that bears asking. We handle them so they can't have the possibility to hurt others again until we can be confident enough that they understand what they did and/or won't do it again. IMO protection of society is more important than punishments. At the very least that person's internet usage should be restricted and monitored for a while. Judging and handling are two different things. FWIW, I have been victim of a mentally unstable person years ago, with employment consequences I still suffer from. Basically that guy's medication were not adequate anymore and he went to the police to report me and others for computer related crimes (things like hacking his family's emails). Me and others still have that info somewhere in my country's police system. I wish he went to the police with his usual bullshit of Noriega still being alive and manipulating him through the electrical outlets or that South Africans replaced his heart with a bomb while he was sleeping or threats of crashing our skulls through brick walls instead of the mild fantasy he had that day. I don't think he should be punished. But he's still at large and that's not okay. Hope his prescriptions are better handled now, for others first and then for himself.
• blowski 4y ago
  I hear you on this. As always, there is a tendency to view all crime and criminals as "not the fault of the perpetrator, they were just misunderstood". However, I don't think this article was suggesting we give people a pass, more that we need to think about how we handle some people's actions in light of what we know about neurodiversity. If we are locking people up partly to punish them and partly to prevent both them and others repeating that behaviour, then the people concerned have to understand what they've done wrong. Does Brandon understand that he's done the wrong thing here? Would other neurodivergent people understand? If not, what should we do differently?
  • autismparent 4y ago
    Barring him from social media for a certain number of years would be a reasonable punishment for this crime. Not prison.
    • hef19898 4y ago
      Agree that prison is not the right solution, also agree that there have to be some consequences. Autistic or not, giving people a free pass on anti-social behavior will result in more harm down the road, and not the least to the, in this case, autistic person.
• googlryas 4y ago
  Why shouldn't his autism give him a pass? Should a person with coprolalia be found in contempt if they interrupt a judge in court? What should happen is his caretakers should ensure he can't do the things he does. But punishing him doesn't make much sense.
  • mantas 4y ago
    If someone can't properly control himself, then it's up to society to ensure that nobody is harmed.
    • xorfish 4y ago
      Society also has to ensure, that this is done in a way that causes him as little harm as possible. It clearly failed here.
      • mantas 4y ago
        Victims should come before the perpetrator though. It's better to harm the bad actor slightly too much rather than make even more victims. Why innocent people should be at risk if somebody just can't be responsible for himself.
        • xorfish 4y ago
          I think it is wrong to value the well-being of some humans more than others.
          • mantas 4y ago
            It is wrong to do harm. Why someone's well being is more important because he has an illness? What if he hurts other vulnerable people? E.g. psycho attacking kids. Should we care about psycho's well being more than about kids safety? What if we take it the other way and kids attack mentally ill? Should we care about their well-being more, because they're kids?
  • 4y ago
• bilekas 4y ago
  > What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass. As it was kind of explained that, 'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world and so he emulated that behavior. In fact one could say he went to the extreme. But his understanding of the context and emotional impact is nothing compared to us on the outside. This isn't a case of him falsifying a condition to get off, this guy has his whole life documented with diagnoses. It's not a 'pass' but it's simply not the same situation and so it doesn't seem sincear to charge him as such.
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    It's an explanation, but not an excuse; he still did what he did. Do you believe he should be treated not compos mentis and have his agency taken away?
    • q-big 4y ago
      Why do most people what they do? Because their are conditioned/brainwashed by school and society to believe in specific morals for their behavior. Similarly, as bilekas suggests, the fact that "'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world" gave this man an active feedback loop for reinforcing this behavior.
      • prewett 4y ago
        "Society made me do it"? He had no agency in this? Nobody ever told him that these sorts of things hurt people? Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable.
        • q-big 4y ago
          He is influenced by multiple feedback loops: one that is encouraging this behavior (from the respective website) and one that does discourage it. In this case, the former one was stronger. > Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable. With the same reasoning, you can argue that people in this kind of internet forums gave him a strong feedback that the "society" is wrong here.
• bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >His autism shouldn't give him a pass. since autism is a spectrum it is really hard to know if it should give him a pass or not without a full read up. although that he is able to do these things puts him on a much higher level than say my own son who will probably never be able to talk much less write messages of any sort.
• helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  > His autism shouldn't give him a pass No but it should be considered when prosecuting and sentencing - 5 years in a prison for someone with severe autism is a much harsher sentence than for someone without. The article makes the comparison with Navinder Sarao - another autistic person they thought was behind a $1trn market-manipulation scheme. Luckily he worked with the FBI, and the prosecutors recommended no prison time (he was sentenced to one year home confinement)
  • mcv 4y ago
    Simple prison is absolutely the wrong way to treat someone with autism. He should be punished, absolutely, but that punishment should include therapy and guidance that helps him find a better path in life. And the same goes for every other criminal.
  • roxgib 4y ago
    I thought the comparison between the two cases was a bit odd. Sarao was able to assist the FBI significantly, which often results in a more lenient sentence. The total amount of money he earned illegitimately was a few million at most, not $1 billion, and regardless market manipulation is quite a different crime. How his Autism was handled wasn't nearly as big a factor as all the other differences.
• sph 4y ago
  I tend to agree. An involuntary crime tends to carry a smaller sentence because it's hinges upon the fact that the guilty person will have learned something from being tried and sentenced. They did something that doesn't fit into their set of morals. Humans learn from mistakes if there were consequences. If the guilty person is unable to learn or understand, an involuntary crime is the same as a voluntary one: the perpetrator might do it again. So a sane sociopathic murderer and an autistic person (that is unable to understand) that thinks killing will make them popular carry the exact same risk to society. Should an AI intelligent enough to hurt a person because it thought it might be a good idea but not "human" enough to understand the implications of it earn a free pass?
• kypro 4y ago
  Not saying what he did wasn't wrong, but this does sound very autistic. But I literally don't understand bullying. If people say something mean to me it doesn't seem to mean anything, I just hear words? There's no emotional impact there. In fact I was bullied pretty badly in school, but I used to encourage it because I saw how happy it made people and it never really bothered me. But obviously we largely treat others how we want to be treated ourselves so when I was younger it was common for me to say nasty things to people for "laughs". I didn't really understand I was hurting them because what I was saying wouldn't have hurt me. I wasn't trying to be mean (not that that should excuse me) I just thought it was funny saying stuff that was inappropriate I guess? The messed up thing is that I still feel like this... I find places like 4chan hilarious and I think it's a good example of "autistic humour" in the sense that I don't think most people there are trying to be mean they just have a perspective and sense of humour that neurotypical people don't really get. I know some people might think this has nothing to do with autism and maybe I'm just a mean person, and struggle with that because I think most people who know me well would say the opposite. I really care about people's feelings I just don't always understand why they feel the way they do about things which means I unintentionally hurt people a lot. Perspective like yours have been hard for me. I'm aware of a lot of stories like this where autistic people have been locked in cages for saying things neurotypicals don't find pleasant. And when I argue they're just words and someone shouldn't be locked in a cage for saying words I get attacked for being insensitive. I struggle with whether I'm the one with the problem here or if it's actually everyone else. Logically I don't understand why neurotypicals care about words as much as they do and wish I didn't have to self-censor to appease neurotypical sensitivities, but I also accept I'm not normal and therefore should try accommodate neurotypical behaviours and norms as best I can. But I'm not going to lie, my immediate thought here was "who cares what he said, that doesn't mean you get to lock someone in a cage?!". Intuitively I honestly feel like you're the one being mean here, but I know that's because I don't understand your perspective. I just have to assume those words hurt as much as being locked in a cage for 5 and half years to someone who's neurotypical, otherwise it seems extremely cruel. Still, as out of touch as I am I can't imagine myself saying these things to victims families. It seems so pointless and cruel. But if I had to guess I assume he just didn't understand how hurtful what he was saying was, but saw humour in the inappropriateness of it. Again, not saying he doesn't deserve to be locked in a cage for 5 and a half years for being mean, but I can see how he might not have understood how what he was saying was hurting people.
• m_fayer 4y ago
  The neurodiversity movement is rightfully credited with creating a world that's more tolerant of and accommodating to autistic traits. But what's been lost in that discourse are the victims of autistic people's unintentional cruelty. Autistic people can be punitive, capricious, and neglectful toward their children (who did not enter into the relationship voluntarily), friends, and partners. When these autistic people are confronted and asked to improve or make amends, the response is increasingly a demand that the victims adjust themselves to the autistic way and forget their own injuries, on the grounds that they were inflicted unintentionally. I do see both sides here, but the fact remains that injuries cannot simply be waved away because they were inflicted unintentionally, by people whose psychology makes them prone to unintentionally hurt others.