7 ms·

Oh 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 daugh

Oh 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 ago
This 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    I'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 ago
    The 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.
- reitanqild 12y ago
  Can we stop dragging gamergate into this? (Or might I suggest you read up on KotakuInAction on reddit and tell me how it is anywhere borderline close to this?)
  - acdha 12y ago
    KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics. … and, yes, it's rather relevant: GamerGate started with a bunch of people on 4chan attacking a stranger on social media at the behest of her ex-boyfriend but it escalated quickly to coordinated harassment on a bunch of different forms of electronic media and attempts to bring it close to home with real-world stalking at work & conferences, SWATing, etc. That's the problem here: the people who started it might have had no intention of anything beyond enjoying making someone else unhappy but they repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.
    - reitanqild 12y ago
      > KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics. The ideaisn't too bad in this particular case when the question is "what do gamergaters write?" : ) > repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further. this reminds me of someone else.
    - lake99 12y ago
      Quite the opposite, Zoe Quinn herself has been discovered to have played a role in SWATing her critics [1]. Incidentally, KotakuInAction has been featured elsewhere today [2]. I agree with your last sentence. [1] http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2015/01/gamergate-swatting-and-zoe-quinn.html http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2015/01/gamergate-swatting... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/2yb80x/march_8th_2015_rkotakuinaction_gaming_journalism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/2yb80x/m...
      - 12y ago
acdha 12y ago
Here'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 ago
  Unfortunately, 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Thank you. I was about to make a similar comment. Threats are intimidation, and a form of violence.
runn1ng 12y ago
Really? 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 ago
  Nobody said it was OK. It's dubious to call it a threat.
  - chris_wot 12y ago
    It'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 ago
      Amid comments that imply she wants the(ir) D, that comment says she'll be slutting around with him, first.
      - chris_wot 12y ago
        Completely 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 ago
        What makes something a threat or not is not the conclusions the recipient of the message jumps to.
        chris_wot 12y ago
        Wrong. 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

phpnode 12y ago

This 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 ago
I 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 ago
  I'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 ago
  The 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.
reitanqild 12y ago
Can we stop dragging gamergate into this? (Or might I suggest you read up on KotakuInAction on reddit and tell me how it is anywhere borderline close to this?)
- acdha 12y ago
  KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics. … and, yes, it's rather relevant: GamerGate started with a bunch of people on 4chan attacking a stranger on social media at the behest of her ex-boyfriend but it escalated quickly to coordinated harassment on a bunch of different forms of electronic media and attempts to bring it close to home with real-world stalking at work & conferences, SWATing, etc. That's the problem here: the people who started it might have had no intention of anything beyond enjoying making someone else unhappy but they repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.
  - reitanqild 12y ago
    > KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics. The ideaisn't too bad in this particular case when the question is "what do gamergaters write?" : ) > repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further. this reminds me of someone else.
  - lake99 12y ago
    Quite the opposite, Zoe Quinn herself has been discovered to have played a role in SWATing her critics [1]. Incidentally, KotakuInAction has been featured elsewhere today [2]. I agree with your last sentence. [1] http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2015/01/gamergate-swatting-and-zoe-quinn.html http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2015/01/gamergate-swatting... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/2yb80x/march_8th_2015_rkotakuinaction_gaming_journalism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/2yb80x/m...
    - 12y ago

acdha 12y ago

Here'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 ago
Unfortunately, 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Thank you. I was about to make a similar comment. Threats are intimidation, and a form of violence.

runn1ng 12y ago

Really? 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 ago
Nobody said it was OK. It's dubious to call it a threat.
- chris_wot 12y ago
  It'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 ago
    Amid comments that imply she wants the(ir) D, that comment says she'll be slutting around with him, first.
    - chris_wot 12y ago
      Completely 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 ago
        What makes something a threat or not is not the conclusions the recipient of the message jumps to.
        chris_wot 12y ago
        Wrong. 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