8 ms·
Behavior is obviously not right, but is it really harming someone else's rights? I'm having a hard time jumping from sexual innuendos to sexual predators... I t
by crazypyro 12y ago
Behavior is obviously not right, but is it really harming someone else's rights? I'm having a hard time jumping from sexual innuendos to sexual predators... I think it would be a massive mistake to try to make into a crime.
Although many of these tweets clearly cross the line of tastelessness, how many sexual jokes/innuendos are less obvious and more controversial about whether they are tasteless? We don't need to criminalize this. Nobody's rights are being violated, in my opinion. We shouldn't be using the criminal system unless there is a clear threat of violence, not just some internet trolls trying to get a reaction out of a celebrity....
- japhyr 12y agoThese are not innuendos, these are threats.
- crazypyro 12y agoOh give me a break... the most offensive/threatening one that was posted by Kurt on his blog was: "Teach me your knuckleball technique so I can fist your daughter" You really think this is a creditable threat of violence and not someone trying to make a very, very, very poor taste joke? There are very few tweets I would even consider threats, most were just scumbags trying to get some twitter fame by making terrible baseball sexual innuendos. There are other ones like "Kurt bleeds more from his sock than gaby does when shes on her period" that in no way could even be construed as a threat, but I feel they are getting lumped into the same category, simply because they are distasteful.
- phpnode 12y agoThis is the same kind of deluded apologism that the gamer gate crowd uses and it is dangerous. How can anyone judge the credibility of a threat made by a stranger on the internet? A threat is a threat.
- foogoespop 12y agoI haven't read through the tweets but what crazypyro posted aren't threats, they would be considered bullying though. Didn't the gamergate lady have actual threats on her life? I know her information was doxxed and people actually put her house in their threats.
- reitanqild 12y agoI'm afraid yes, even if I'm one of those who suspect that there's foul play on both sides.
- crazypyro 12y ago>A threat is a threat. I disagree completely, especially in the eyes of the law. If a comedian says he's going to kill someone, nobody is going to prosecute him. Threats have to be creditable. The tweets posted by Kurt all make some reference to his baseball career and then try to use that to make sexual jokes about his daughter. They are just terrible jokes and should be socially ostracized, but we should not be using the legal system to punish these kinds of tweets. The line is too unclear. None of the posted tweets contain any serious threat that doesn't contain some baseball innuendo, at least the ones Kurt published. There is a difference if someone said e.g. "I'm going to rape your daughter when she gets here" and that tweeter lives in the town of the school. One might be able to consider that creditable. We don't prosecute people who make others scared, we prosecute people that we believe have a creditable chance of harming another human being.
- seasoup 12y agoThe question is, do these type of comments on Twitter cause harm? If you've read anything by people being subjected to online bullying and harassment then you know that it does cause psychological harm by itself. Especially when a number of people all start in on one person, but even one person can cause a lot of fear and harm from cyber stalking someone. Does someone doing this deserve to have their life ruined, probably not, but they should not be free from all repercussions.
- 12y ago
- acdha 12y agoHere's the problem: the woman receiving these threats has no way to know whether this is some teenager on the other side of the country or the creepy guy down the block. She has to spend time thinking about each one and wondering whether to be worried or not, or whether the harasser is going to escalate from being an ass on Twitter to contacting her friends, relatives, coworkers, etc. on email/Facebook/etc. The one thing which I would bet on is that if something bad did happen – and given that her dad is a celebrity hated in some circles, that's less hypothetical than it might seem in your first reaction – there would be people coming out of the woodwork to ask why she didn't report it.
- crazypyro 12y agoUnfortunately, the goal of prosecuting threats is to prevent violence, not prevent people from being scared. If the chance of violence is relatively nil, (I already argued that I believe these guys are just terrible, wanna-be comedians) I don't think there is any case to be made that these guys are anything near sexual predators, just assholes and scumbags.
- ijk 12y agoThe goal of prosecuting threats is because threats are violence, or at least are damaging in and of themselves. Threats are also illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 875(c). Even if there was no intent to carry out the threat, if the threat can be interpreted by a reasonable person as being intended to cause fear, it counts as a true threat. [1] [1] https://verdict.justia.com/2014/12/10/supreme-court-considers-true-threats-first-amendment https://verdict.justia.com/2014/12/10/supreme-court-consider...
- chris_wot 12y agoThank you. I was about to make a similar comment. Threats are intimidation, and a form of violence.
- runn1ng 12y agoReally? This is OK for you? https://38pitches.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/tweets-10.jpg https://38pitches.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/tweets-10.jpg
- SamReidHughes 12y agoNobody said it was OK. It's dubious to call it a threat.
- chris_wot 12y agoIt's not at all that dubious. Threatening to "shred her hymen" is, well, a threat. Curt didn't know this guy, and he's a father who just had someone tell them they want to rape his daughter. I'd consider that a threat too.
- SamReidHughes 12y agoAmid comments that imply she wants the(ir) D, that comment says she'll be slutting around with him, first.
- chris_wot 12y agoCompletely irrelevant. If you told me that my daughter was "slutting around", then I'd assume she was being forced. I'd be even more likely to consider you a rapist.
- SamReidHughes 12y agoWhat makes something a threat or not is not the conclusions the recipient of the message jumps to.
- chris_wot 12y agoWrong. You might want to look at ''Elonis v. United States'' [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States
- brittonsmith 12y agoIf these things were said in person, I think you would feel differently. It's easy to pass off actions that take place on the internet as being without consequence, but they can still do real damage. I think this same sense of detachment from consequences is what allows people to do things they would never do if they could see the recipient. I don't know what punishments are just, but it seems to me that returning a feeling of consequence to actions is how you also bring back civility.
- crazypyro 12y agoAny of these said in person, I would not feel differently. Almost all of them make some reference to a baseball comment and then try to make a joke about Kurt's daughter based on that. They are simply assholes making poor jokes. Unless Kurt didn't post the most extreme ones (e.g. someone said "I'm going to rape your daughter when she gets here"), I feel like none of them even border the line of a creditable threat. Are we going to start arresting new comedians that make shitty jokes because they went too far trying to make fun of a celebrity? Where's the line of poor joke and creditable threat? I personally think its a lot farther away than any of the tweets Kurt posted.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- brittonsmith 12y agoYou may have somewhat of a point. As I said, I'm unsure whether the commenters should be criminally punished or just as they have been already. However, even if you would not feel differently, I don't think all of the people who said what they did would even have the nerve to say those things in person. The internet creates this imbalance where the effect of actions is felt much more by the recipient than the actor. This, at least, is not a good thing, and a slightly different context than a comedian making a tasteless joke.
- chris_wot 12y agoYou aren't most people then. If most fathers were told to their face that their daughter's hymen was about to be shredded, I can assure you that person would be in danger of serious injury!
- joshuapants 12y agoI agree. As the article shows, there are already repercussions for being a jackass on Twitter. If it goes beyond simply being a jackass (stalking, physical endangerment) we already have laws against those.
- lizzard 12y agoPeople making these sorts of statements at work would potentially get into trouble because in some countries we have law against harassment at work and creating a hostile work environment. This situation is more like a bunch of dudes going outside someone's house on the public sidewalk and screaming obscenities. Whether or not it's a direct threat of imminent harm or not, it seems unlikely to end well for the screamers.
- aroch 12y agoExcept standing outside their house and screaming the contents of the tweets would surely fall closer fulfilling "true threat" doctrine than tweeting from hundreds if not thousands of miles away.
- Frondo 12y agoHow is the teenaged girl, at whom many of these menacing tweets are directed, supposed to know where these men making menacing/threatening/disgusting remarks are? How is she to know or understand that they're not next door, or down the street?
- philoktet 12y agoYou don't feel like that behavior harmed his daughter's rights? If so, that is pretty disturbing.