Episode 164: A Can't-Look-Away Nightmare Involving A Sci-Fi Writer, A Maybe-Formerly-Racist Cybersecurity Expert, And, Somehow, A Cabal Of Online "Opie And Anthony" Fundamentalists (Part 1)
Episode 164: A Can't-Look-Away Nightmare Involving A Sci-Fi Writer, A Maybe-Formerly-Racist Cybersecurity Expert, And, Somehow, A Cabal Of Online "Opie And Anthony" Fundamentalists (Part 1)
We have some places like that where I am. It's at a school, big open filed surrounded by a fence and woods. Everyone in the neighborhood and from all around brings their dog there to throw the ball and run during off hours. I mean everyone. The school's fine with it. The neighborhood is fine with it.
If there was one person that showed up and started telling everyone to put the dog on the leash it'd be very weird and out of place.
We have another spot that's an "unofficial off leash" beach. Everyone know's of it, everyone who goes there goes there for off leash time. So much so that the paperwork's been filed to make it official.
So it kind of depends. There are "officially unofficial" off leash areas in most cities I've been in.
"The neighborhood is fine with it. If there was one person that showed up and started telling everyone to put the dog on the leash it'd be very weird and out of place."
I used to be that one person, asking people why their dogs weren't leashed in the park, per local laws. Never got a good answer, though my favorite was "Because no one's here." Finally gave up and now I just glare at them if I dare to get close enough. I see dogs relieving themselves far from their owners, and I know the owner isn't cleaning it up, so I avoid walking through such open spaces now. Horribly inconsiderate. If you want your dog to have a place to run free, buy a farm. ETA: Or go to the dog park. There's almost always one near where I see these off-leash dogs.
Where I live within a small area, bout 5x10 miles, there are 50 miles of trails and 1000's of acres of park land. Not counting community parks, publicly accessible school areas, and so on.
Of all of that, there's a dog park and the one maybe 200/300 yard strip of beach (of miles of beaches) that is referred to commonly (by dog owners and non-dog owners) as "the off leash beach". and there's the school field that's fenced in that the school administrators and community open up for people run their dogs off leash.
I stand by what I said. If you showed up to these small, niche, community accepted off leash areas and glared and started telling the (sometimes) dozens of people running their dogs off leash to leash up......
Well it wouldn't be a good look. It'd come off as neurotic and a bit weird. Like you might be having issues or something.
We have woods like that near us. It's a forest preserve, and for the 25 years I've been living here it's been a leash off place. Unofficially official.
A few cranky pants newish people have tried to put the kibosh on it, but we successfully fought back. Viva la dog!!!
We get a certain kind of transplant usually from a certain state where I live that usually fills these kinds of roles. If there were a gender neutral word for Karen, it'd be a perfect match for the personality I'm thinking of.
You know, the kind that moves to a rural or semi-rural area then complains about the neighbor's roosters.
I dunno, it depends a lot on the environment. There are some locations where a non-aggressive, unleashed dog is going to bother literally no one, and some where leashing really matters.
I'd guess the comments here might wind up splitting along rural/urban or low-pop./high-pop. lines. So I wanted to represent the yokel's point of view.
As someone who has been bitten by unleashed dogs more than once, I say fuck you people. Yes you are personally probably reasonable, and rural areas are different. But the number of people who think their dog is harmless and would never bite someone (95% of dog owners), and the number where that is true (significantly less), bear little relation.
Plus people with unleashed dogs clean up after them approximately 1/10th as much.
I will never forget some neighbors who were otherwise lovely people who had a giant Great Dane, and would just take it on walks and leave its giant horse sized dumps in the middle of the sidewalk. Saw this happen more than once, and if you called them on it it was always "the first time" or some pressing emergency that meant they couldn't pick it up this time.
I got no problem with dogs per se, but a good half their owners are delusional/irresponsible.
These people should either not have dogs or not allow their dogs around other people/dogs.
Dogs are animals and most have, essentially, no training. Most are a hodgepodge of genetics and haven't been bread for the benefit of the breed/dog. Even a trained dog will act aggressively without warning and ignore their owner. All dogs act aggressively/violently at some point and their owners will truly have no idea under what circumstances this will happen or have an explanation for why it happened.
I've yet to meet a trainer who recommends taking a dog to a dog park.
Aggressive dogs are part of why I routinely carry a firearm, in my mind, probably the most likely scenario in which I would need to use it. Dog attacks are no joke yo
I think if you’re trying to present a fun anecdote about doing something against local ordinance (and often (though not always) of questionable social conscience) in the face of complaints then you have at least a little onus to explaining what’s exceptional about the circumstance.
I live in a rural area & I can’t stand ppl having their dogs off leash. They come up & jump on us sometimes, or are way too friendly with my kids who don’t like dogs. Off leash dogs in rural areas are the ones to win stupid prizes like getting quilled, or something less common but still a possibility like getting stuck in an abandoned leg hold trap.
My spouse is a vet and the last place we’d ever take a dog is the dog park because they are loaded with parasites.
“A recent study conducted by Oklahoma State University, Elanco Animal Health, and IDEXX Laboratories found that 85% of parks sampled in 30 major metro areas in the United States had at least one dog test positive for intestinal parasites, including roundworm, whipworm, Giardia, or hookworm. Of the more than 3,000 samples in the study, one in five had parasites.1
The high prevalence of parasitism seen in the few studies available suggests that dogs visiting dog parks could be at increased risk of infection from exposure to a contaminated environment. Estimates from regional studies in Europe and the United States suggest that intestinal parasites, many of which are zoonotic, are present in 7.0% to 50.2% of fecal samples from dogs frequenting dog parks.” (Brave AI summary from searching for “dog parks parasites”)
Yep, a friend of mine who works as a dog trainer got into big trouble after his personal dog picked up some infection from a dog park and then infected his boss's kennel.
one time I was chased by a small mutt off-leash on my way to pick up my brother and it has sent me on a straight path to becoming a cat person I think.
Yeah, I wanted to be with her because there's hardly anything I love more than watching dogs play off-leash. Our nearby elementary school is a de-facto dog park before kids arrive for school, and it's pretty great for everyone. It only works, though, if everyone prioritizes leashing up (and cleaning up).
When my wife and I first adopted our dog he had a big aggression problem toward other dogs. If he saw a dog in the distance he would immediately lose his shit. He snapped at a couple of dogs that got too close. We’ve been able to train him out of it, but it took awhile.
While he was still working through this I didn’t dare take him to a dog park, but I did walk him in a park close to our home. If I saw a dog in the distance I’d turn away. Most of the time I was able to distract my dog and he didn’t even know another dog was present. Sometimes this failed and the other dog owner got to see and hear my dog going apeshit and they kept their distance.
Every now and then someone would treat this park as an off leash area, their friendly dog would come to say hi, and it was not pleasant. It never escalated to a full on fight, but there was definitely snarling and snapping. I’d have to scoop my dog up to try to prevent a fight from breaking out.
Some dogs have issues and their owners expect others to obey leash laws for the sake of others.
I’ve traveled to Poland & larger dogs are required to be in muzzles (can’t remember the specifics but I’m not used to seeing muzzled dogs so they caught my eye).
how did you work on the aggression towards other dogs? I adopted a one year old french bulldog mix from the local shelter in June 2022, and she hates other dogs. She is otherwise a near-perfect dog.
A lot of folks don't like to hear this, but in the end negative reinforcement was the only thing that worked.
I tried positive reinforcement with treats, that didn't help. If I caught him before he saw a dog he'd eat the treat and then flip out on the dog once he saw it. If he'd already seen it, he wouldn't care about treats.
I tried confusing him by picking him up and holding him upside down. Then he was just upside down and still losing his shit.
I tried reinforcing other commands as a general discipline boost, no help.
In the end I got a training collar. It actually worked to snap him out of his snapping and snarling. Thankfully the shock mode only needed a few uses, then vibrate was enough to get his attention. Gradually as I intervened with a vibrate at the first sign of aggression he stopped showing aggression altogether. It took a few months, but now he's totally chill. I haven't put his training collar on in years. Strange off leash dogs have run up to him recently and he's nearly apathetic about it.
I'm very happy that I was able to train him out of this behavior, it's much better for him. I was walking him only at odd hours when I could minimize the chances of seeing another dog, and when the timing didn't work out we just wouldn't go on walks.
He was also a shelter adoption, about seven years old when we got him. Also nearly perfect in every other way, no aggression towards humans at all.
My experience in dealing with two, large, reactive dogs:
1. Accept that your dog will probably never get along/play with other dogs; work towards tolerance and the ability to ignore other dogs. It's a dog's job to love its family, not other dogs.
2. Go to training sessions; there are plenty for reactive dogs, specifically. Start with positive reinforcement (clicker plus treats).
3. Get a well fitted harness (put the leash on the front of the harness, not the back) so that you have control over the dog. If you cannot control the dog then find a trainer to help you fit and understand how to use a gentle leader.
4. Have lots and lots and lots of treats! See a dog in the distance, say `leave it' and then give the pupper lots of treats and praise! Turn around and walk away from the other dog. Eventually, if they're food driven, they'll look to you when they see another dog because they think that means a treat! (This is part of positive reinforcement regimen your trainer will teach you).
5. If your trainer will only practice positive reinforcement, and after months of diligent application you haven't seen improvement, then it's time to find a new trainer. Likely your dog will need a correction-based training routine, possibly a prong collar, and intensive trainer-led sessions (prongs are probably likely only necessary for powerful dogs...I've seen corgis with prongs on and I can't imagine why).
Please, please see a competent trainer before trying to correct your dog on your own, though (e.g., don't just put an e-collar on the dog or use a prong collar without training).
Finally, screaming at a dog doesn't do much but confuse them. You have to train them to associate a word with an action/behavior. Never speak to them in an angry tone but always high pitched and happy. You can say just about anything you want that way (including cursing them, which is a great stress reliever on those tough walks) and they'll take it as encouragement and love.
Same situation here. And importantly, you’re legally in the right. I’ve talked to two lawyer friends about this situation and they’ve said that the unleashed dog would be at fault. Not a situation I ever want to occur, but I just have to plan around my Mexican street pup.
I'm with Katie on this. Seems like she's in a rural-ish area with no dog park nearby? Don't quite see the point of taking your dog to an enclosed area if they're expected to be on leash, either.
But...if you take your dog anywhere where dogs are off leash (prohibited or not) then you don't get to complain when dogs start acting like dogs (I believe Katie had some recent experience with this at a campground?). They bark, growl, and nip at one another. That's how they communicate/govern each other's behavior. Many breeds will also grab another dog's scruff and try to wrestle them to the ground---because it's fun for them and their playmate (watch GSDs playing together)!
Puppies can be in for especially harsh corrections by their peers (grabbing the puppy by the neck and throwing it to the ground, for example) if they get too inquisitive. A well behaved dog, however, will escalate the severity of their corrections to other dogs versus viciously attacking (still, the owner accepts the risk of a vicious attack).
All of this is mostly fine until the dog starts shrieking or the owner overreacts (a person being panicked will further agitate a dog).
It's the owners who freak the fuck out without understanding how dogs communicate. They have raised angry voices and flapping arms and wonder why the dogs are getting more agitated.
Oh man.. Never have I been so stoked to hear a pt. 2. I'd also like to give my totally unsolicited opinion regarding the Jordan Neely ep criticism, and say that you guys shouldn't feel obligated to address your detractors. This could apply to addressing the cancer survivor comment from a previous ep as well. It seems beneath y'all, and potentially influential on the shape of the show. They're only going to get bolder after hearing you guys humor them. Anyways, love you.
Well, I agree, but that was part of Jesse’s problem on Twitter: responding to detractors and trying trying trying to clarify that which his detractors are determined to misconstrue.
I have a personal approach to handling debates online that I have almost never broken and has helped keep me sane: I will weigh in on a post/issue with my own opinion, evidence, etc. If someone replies with something I consider to be a good point or showing that I wasn't clear in the first place, I will acknowledge their point and/or clarify what I meant. ONCE. I do not do back-and-forths.
I don't get why they will read long, pointless emails on air, but they never read any of our comments, many of which are brilliant, trenchant, and not written by me.
Agreed. I'd only ask for an exception when Jesse and Katie think someone's sent in a fair criticism that they feel they should have addressed or would like to address.
I didn't think the last two sets of critical e-mails met that standard.
I mean, addressing detractors is fine, although not of all that much interest to me. The problem here is that I feel like neither this case or the cancer case really made much an argument *worth* addressing.
In the case of long COVID, I think J&K made the important points in the first episode (something I'm confident in because they are basically what I have thought since the idea of long COVID was first reported on ;)), *with* the exception that I think Jesse phrased his point very poorly when he said "It's not doctors' jobs to believe you symptoms", but I think it should be reasonably clear that he really meant it isn't their job to just take you self-diagnosis at face value, which is important. In fact, the cancer survivor's story is exactly the reason why! What if they had come to the doc and attributed their vague symptoms to long COVID, or Lyme, or what-have-you, and the doctor didn't investigate too deeply...they'd be dead!
For the Joran Neely criticism...yeah, I don't see it. Progressives absolutely have made arguments that police should be involved seldom if ever in these situations, they have, essentially, if not explicitly, said that people should just "tolerate" the discomfort, just as they've dismissed vandalism and property crimes since people are "insured" or such. Actually, if anything, from what I read on this site, I think a lot of people criticized J&K for being too against the employment of force, there's at least as good a reason to respond to one of us?
A while back there was actually a letter in a medical journal by a couple of doctors who had seen two cases of metastatic lung cancer that had initially been diagnosed as long Covid. Lung cancer has a really low five year survival rate, so those patients' lives probably could not have been saved if it had been caught earlier, but they may have had more time if it had been caught earlier.
Early diagnosis and treatment makes a huge difference stuff like MS and Lupus, so spending 3 years thinking you have long COVID means you have three years of your immune system attacking your body.
Believing a patient's symptoms is so much different from believing a patient's explanation for their symptoms. Doctors spend 4 years in medical school and however many years in residency learning how to figure out the cause of the patient's symptoms.
There are only two people I’ve heard of that don’t consider Norm MacDonald funny: Patrick Tomlinson, and, you guessed it, Frank Stallone.
Actually Frank Stallone really liked Norm MacDonlad’s non-sequiturs about him on Weekend Update through a good chunk of the 90s, so Patrick’s on his own sadly.
A scold who can’t stop scolding regardless of the ravages of these bottom-feeders is the perfect target. I feel bad for the guy, more so for his inability to understand that when you’ve been targeted for being an opportunistic virtue-monger, it’s really not a good idea to try to scold your way out of it, especially with the monsters he has had to deal with.
Norm’s handling of the situation that prompted Tomlinson’s fated tweet would be instructive. Norm expressed concern for Rosanne and Louie CK and didn’t do enough throat clearing about the harm they’ve done. He then tried to throat clear on Howard Stern and made it worse. Then he went on The View, a show where’s he’s been incredibly transgressive on in the past, and was measured and contrite and only slyly transgressive.
But he disarmed the situation. He made an attempt to deescalate, all while dying of cancer which no one knew he had. He went into a show where he was reviled and humanized himself.
There isn’t as much incentive to the perpetually online to deescalate unless the ante has been raised exponentially, but by that point it’s too late. You see your enemies as subhuman, and they respond going all in on the attention economy geared on disgust. And any backlash to being a prick unnecessarily is going to reinforce the idea that your enemies are not human and deserve no quarter.
The documentary `Stallone: Frank, That Is' is kind of fun...at least if you're on an airplane.
Norm's video podcast has been archived and if you enjoy Katie's mocking of Jesse then you might appreciate his interactions with his co-host (Adam Eget), as it's very much in the same style (e.g., Jesse dating a horse is about the level of humor). In fact, I think Katie stole Norm's bit as Norm used to make Adam Eget read offensive/unfunny jokes and mock him for it, just as Katie keeps trying to get Jesse to say the N-word.
Katie and Jesse have a good back and forth dynamic, but Norm and Adam Eget were something really special. Adam was completely out of his league and got rolled for it, and yet he did something during those episodes so it didn’t feel like Norm was just using him as a punching bag. But he was basically a punching bag.
The multi-episode fabricated accusations of Adam being a Holocaust denier is something incredible.
I smile whenever I look out over the East River and see the Queensboro bridge, safe in the comfort that someone down there is chasing his dream, fifteen dollars a man.
Back in the 90s I didn't find anything he did funny and figured people just liked him because you were supposed to. Then sometime in the 2000s it sort of "clicked" and he's seemed like a genius to me ever since. But I suppose I can imagine someone not finding him funny for non-twitter-brained reasons.
Even assuming your framing is correct (and I have no reason to dispute it), the extreme bullying and harassment (some of which was IRL) of a person who is essentially a nobody on the internet is utterly out-of-proportion with the offense.
This isn't merely a case of someone who "plugged himself into that energy and got burned by it." This is a case of sociopaths using Mr. Tomlinson's annoying social media posts as an excuse to satisfy their desire to inflict cruelty. And unfortunately, an online mob's desire to inflict cruelty seems endless.
And don't forget that the harassment goes beyond acts directed against Mr. Tomlinson; it included SWATing Mr. Tomlinson's elderly parents. There is nothing righteous here.
Pat submitted hundreds of copyright claims to get his trolls’ reddit forum mocking him banned. After this latter event happened, he boasted on Twitter how he had gone to war with his trolls and defeated them, dispensing ‘helpful’ tips for people in similar situations (“most important: forget don’t feed the trolls”) while surmising he could get a book deal out of the whole thing.
When the trolls moved to their own site, he filed a lawsuit against 60 of them, which he admitted was a pretext to “unmask” them. So not just annoying social media posts.
The guy is a sociopath himself hah. At least my wife would think so If I text messaged daily with the people I alleged were swatting us.
Some dweeb tweeting “Hot take, I've never thought Norm Macdonald was funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me.” about a famous comedian shouldn’t be cause for any sort of reaction, let alone one like this.
I have never thought he was very funny. Every once in while I will laugh, but usually not. I did like his relentless trolling of O.J. Simpson in the 90's.
I think his weekend update and SNL work wasn't nearly as good as some of his standup. He was great in a few SNL things, but I would point to say his "Me Doing Standup" set as a great example of what is best about Norm.
Who is this guy? I’ve legit never heard of him. I thought that video he made ultimately telling people to continue going after that poor idiot for not finding him funny to be exceptionally stupid. Even if intended as a joke.
The video is from Cameo I think, in which people pay a public figure to make a video, usually with little context. I highly doubt Norm MacDonald knew what the trolls were doing with the video. He was the epitome of someone who was kind but not nice, so I don’t know what he would do if he knew what he was being paid for.
That said, Norm MacDonald is not for everyone. I see him like a (much less well known) David Bowie type in comedy; he was around for a long time, changed his format, tone, and medium often, and was always uncompromising.
Conan O’Brien’s sidekick Andy Ritcher said Norm’s lack of giving a fuck what people thought was genuinely scary. Norm did a lot of things that made him a target, and if something was funny to him, he said it. That’s one of the reasons why he was doing Cameo videos instead of getting royalty checks for some broad appeal nonsense (his recurring cancer he told no one about and he degenerate gambling didn’t help either). A lot of people have a soft spot for Norm for these reasons. I imagine these sociopaths saw Norm as a kindred spirit due to his uncompromising attitude.
Some of the stuff was funny like buying the rights to his twitter profile pic, which tomlinson sold himself. The Swatting is basically attempted murder, and I can't believe the Police keep going along with it.
I too congratulate Jesse on his slay the spire runs, I think it’s great that after failing to finish Elden Ring he’s landed on a mobile game that’s more his speed
Based on what I've seen not following the story super closely, I think it's wrong to say the system didn't fail Jordan Neely. Yes, he was on that top 50 list. But if you're not going to check the list when you have interactions with him, to realize he needs to be arrested...
Neely had a bunch of interactions with the system while that warrant was out. And apparently none of those times did anyone see he was on the list.
There may have been many services available for Neely, and yeah, he might not have wanted to use them. But NYC wasn't really trying to get him into them, not with any diligence.
If you do much reading of right-side commentary on the matter, sooner or later you'll find some mention of our having basically done way away with too much civil commitment. I have no difficulty believing such can be misused and some institutions might become abusive in practice. But it really does seem to me like involuntary commitment is the only real answer for a nontrivial number of people, and it is how the system failed Neely here.
It is not society or the system's responsibility to make sure everyone "makes it". That comes down to them and their friends and loved ones. And if they are too dysfunctional to have friends and loved ones, well it is not clear what possible value they are providing society anyway.
This isn't some tiny vessel where each member of the crew is vitally important. The system should mostly be there to protect people from people like Neely, whether he gets "helped" is of a secondary concern (and often pretty impossible without commitment/incarceration).
The value they provide to society is the intrinsic value of a human life. I have no difficulty saying that friends/family/etc. *should* be taking care of most of this. But 1) not everyone has them, and 2) those support networks *can* be overwhelmed. (Too many families with alcoholic or drug addict family members can speak to their inability to help them, up until the point at which the family member *chooses* to actually get themselves better.) Hence there is some need for societal provision to get them actually back on their feet, or to care for them when they are physically or mentally incapable of doing so themselves (including when they represent a threat to others).
That said, reading between the lines of your response slightly, I think I do agree that those support levels do need to be limited mostly to the genuinely unreachable. The social safety nets in the US that are not voluntary, bottom-up provision extend much further than this in many ways. (And yet also fall well short of it, as with genuinely mentally ill people like Neely.)
I would say that the "system" is last in line in terms or responsibility. First is him, then his parents, then relatives, then the people campaigning against involuntary commitment and institutionalization, and then the system.
I always think this when there are children who are murdered by parents or step parents. "The System" is always blamed for dropping the ball. Which is bullshit. Everyone who was around that child is far more guilty than an overburdened child protective service who are severely limited in what they can do.
Eh...the people you mention may/probably have some culpability. I don't know how much work they put in, how much Neely was or was not receptive to the work, etc. At a certain point the burden will exceed anyone but specialists.
But end of day, all their culpability doesn't protect the rest of us. Police need to be protecting us, and if it's a constant-care sort of thing like with this dude and similar, then something else needs to be stepping in to provide the more specialized sort of protection required -- namely some sort of commitment system.
I guess I'm just saying that since we can't commit people, or medicate them against their will, it can't be the fault of the "system". The system isn't allowed to do the things it needs to do. Neely walked out of a diversion program designed to keep him out of prison for assaulting people.
So if we have to put ultimate blame on someone- maybe it should go on the people who have taken away all of our carrots and sticks as far as dealing with the violently mentally ill.
I find this type of behavior really puzzling -- why would anyone spend so much time harassing someone they don't know just because they didn't think a comedian you like is funny.
This is something that psychologists and sociologists should make a good faith effort to understand. And by good faith effort, I mean do good science where you try to actually understand the factors driving the phenomenon rather than just collecting evidence to support your preferred explanation. Is it just social pressure? Boredom? Not viewing Tomlinson as a human being? A conviction that if you don't like someone it's fine to do terrible things to them?
It seems to be a game, or rather, the ritual dance of a subculture. Patrick showed up on that dance floor with his flashiest dancing shoes on, ready to boogie and announcing that he's looking for dance partners. He's also declined the option to leave the dance floor in the intervening years, which makes him an obviously consenting participant in a sadomasochistic tango. His participation seems not only a requirement of this particular dance but its driving force. Why would some people do "terrible things" to others in BDSM dungeons? Because everyone involved has some weird kinks and they're all getting off.
Best I can do is 'white supremacy makes them do it'.
But in seriousness it is pretty weird. I think the short answer is 'because it's easy'. The spend a lot of time, but it's not particularly hard. There's a lot of people who are sort of miserable, or at least unfulfilled, and hating on someone offers a quick easy path to some amount of catharsis. If we're honest with ourselves I think we all sometimes enjoy seeing someone we don't like suffer.
Not to nerd out, but it's a bit like light side/dark side of the force. People are seeking some form of fulfillment and satisfaction. The 'light side' version of that would be doing things like being productive, learning a skill, improving yourself, helping others, etc... Those things will bring you satisfaction that is more lasting, but they're hard, they take time and usually require getting up from your chair. The dark side would be finding someone to hate and making them suffer. On the internet, you can do that pretty easily without leaving your moms basement.
yeah i don’t think it’s laziness at all, a lot of energy and creativity goes into some of these pranks, and parts of it are quite funny. you could argue that it’s a misuse of or improper outlet for these skills, and obviously there is a meanness to a lot of it, but it’s an oversimplification to just say people are defaulting to this behaviour by giving in their dark urges or because it’s too much trouble to go outside and sand their deck. people have different interests, for better or worse. again i’m not defending the swatting and stalking etc, but i do defend the idea that some of the best art and comedy comes from a place of pure absurdity with no pretense of being useful or even “good” for society.
It's almost like it's a multi-player video game for them. I'd say they should design literal games to bully NPCs instead but spooky AI ethics concerns on that subject aren't nothing either.
idk it’s not super confusing to me. they’re not like sincerely upset that this guy said norm wasn’t funny, but like the absurdity of the level of retaliation becomes part of the joke i think, plus every time he responds it provides more fodder and snowballs etc
it does feel extra exciting and hilarious to be part of a group doing bad stuff online and having these rituals and inside jokes etc. i spent a lot of time doing WAY milder trolling on message boards in the early-mid aughts (nothing that affected anyones real life at all, just annoying/goofy online stuff) and there’s a definite “rush” you get from it. not condoning this harassment campaign at all but if i think of the sort of gleeful mania + weird sense of belonging/accomplishment my 12 yr old self felt at this time, i imagine this would feel similar but on a bigger and more deranged scale etc. and you see all the time how being part of a mob makes people more impulsive and less empathetic than they might otherwise be
and ya i would guess in cases where the perpetrators aren’t legit sociopaths (definitely some are), the anonymity probably makes it easier for ppl to reconcile ruining a persons actual life. and maybe if each person involved is only contributing one part of harassment, it’s easier not to zoom out on the situation or think of themselves as responsible idk
Patricks problem is that onaforums consist mainly of men over the age of 40. They don't get that you can laugh at some of the dumb stuff that Patrick does, without trying to torture him.
I think I gotta admit that I was wrong in the last thread for blaming NYC's social safety net for the Jordan Neely situation. It does seem like he was approached numerous times for treatment but just relapsed over and over again. Some people are just lost causes and need to be detained and forced into treatment for their own good and for the good of society.
I know, apparently (unless someone is cooking the books in an extraordinary way) he had every opportunity to get help and was pursued with offers much more than I would have thought likely. Some people just have to be locked up but I don’t know how you set up that mechanism without triggering loads of rights abuses etc. It’s hard to accept but sometimes everyone does everything they are supposed to and shit still goes sideways.
The problem of making sure that these sorts of involuntary treatment orders are only used on people who really do need them is a big issue and I think a lot of people underestimate how important it is. One factor driving the deinstitutionalization movement was the recognition that some people in state hospitals were not mentally ill and had no way to prove that and get released. (The play/movie "Suddenly Last Summer" is a good example.) And it's still a problem today.
The best example is Britney Spears. Some people who with serious mental illness who continue to pose a danger to other are going to be placed under conservatorships and they have a history of being abused. I don't know what Britney Spears's diagnosis is and whether it's accurate or a misdiagnosis, but it's clear that she is capable of making her own decisions. It makes no sense that she was under a permanent conservatorship and her conservator was her father, a man with a history of substance abuse and domestic abuse. In her case it probably had to do with money but there are all sorts of weird family dynamics that could lead to bad results.
One thing that would help would be requirements for more than one mental heath professional to evaluate the person, each going in without any knowledge of what other professionals had concluded.
>but I don’t know how you set up that mechanism without triggering loads of rights abuses etc.
They aren't rights abuses if they are according got the law. Your rights are literally what is described in the law. If the law says you can be committed for shitting on people's porches, than shitting on people's porches is not one of your rights and getting committed/incarcerated over it isn't a violation of your rights.
This isn't hard. Society just needs to make better rules for what behaviors will be tolerated, and enforce those rules. But right now people would rather pretend to help than actually help (I say that because I also think in Neelys and most other street people's cases infringing on their "rights" would absolutely be what is best for them).
Most of these people need a daddy, or disapproving uncle, not a mommy or oblivious grandmother.
None of those rights mean anything when they aren't upheld/protected by the law. "rights" aren't real, they are social constructs.
When a viking comes to your door with an axe demanding a right to your property or life isn't going to protect you. What is going to protect you is a sovereign that enforces those rights on the viking.
So the SC can talk about unenumerated rights all it wants, but unless society actually respects and enforces those rights, they don't exist.
Sometimes the comment section very helpfully reminds you most people don't know anything about anything and would be better off not opining. guess I'll log off for the day
There are always going to be mistakes, but we can't have the streets filled with crazy people and addicts. It is terrible for society, terrible for law abiding citizens, and terrible for the junkies and crazies.
I don’t disagree but that you’re Dx is correct about the problem doesn’t mean your Rx is on the solution, in fact it could have massive blowback.
Another aspect of this, is that is the same reasoning that 2A abolitionists use. That the problem (mental illness/gun crime) warrants a drastic solution (easier commitment/2A abolition).
I agree about the problem but still have big misgivings on loosening commitment laws.
(And I say this knowing that making involuntary commitment easier could end up with the 2A getting a lot more business.
I still think you can blame NYC's social safety net for the situation. It seems the safety net can't deal with people who are crazy and/or are in a drug induced crisis... you know, the kind of people it really needs to deal with. It's set up for people who can make rational choices to improve their situations. I'm all for this for those people who are in a position to make rational choices, Mr. Neely wasn't such a person. This isn't just to blame the system, but it needs to change. There are 49 people left on that list of the 50 most vulnerable citizens in NYC that are also headed towards tragic ends because the system to protect them, and the citizens of NYC, is clearly not fit for purpose.
To be fair, it wasn’t until 2014 that Weev called himself a white nationalist, and it was even longer before people started believing him. There was even a positive profile of Weev in The Atlantic in 2013. Before 2016, it was generally taken as a given that transgressive humor was left-wing. It sounds like she pretended to have never found it funny at the very same moment everyone else did.
IIRC it was going to prison that turned him from ironic edgelord GNAAer into an actual white supremacist.
And the act that got him sent to prison was definitely not hacking, but that’s what he got charged with. In short, AT&T exposed an API that would produce customer information, and it has no security whatsoever. weev was just making regular web requests to it, without any kind of trickery. He didn’t sell the data he obtained, he contacted journalists about it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-beginning-end
Perils of memory: I thought he was a white supremacist before then.
Still outrageous that he was sent to prison to save AT&T embarrassment, especially when the information he obtained was, what(?), email addresses and non-confidential information about iPad users.
My recollection was that his white nationalist beliefs were well known in the community before that (2016) but shrugged off as not serious. At some point between 2011--2016 didn't he just state that I've been saying this stuff for a long time and I mean it?
YESSSS ITS A PATRICK EPISODE im so excited to listen you have no idea how hard i had to contain my excitement when i saw the header so my co workers wont think im a thought criminal
Pronoun story: I have a foreign friend who lives in the US. She'd just been home for a while and her English was rusty. In a meeting, she was apparently asked her pronouns and had a sudden moment where she couldn't remember what a pronoun was. She had a moment of floundering and said, "sorry, I'm confused..." And everyone suddenly became super supportive. Some sent cards after the meeting. Everyone was honored she chose to share that with them.
And the idea that a room of people decided this middle-aged woman with a thick accent was clearly expressing her deep and complex feelings about gender rather than having language difficulties makes me giggle.
Am I irredeemably cynical or is anyone else expecting pt. 2 to reveal Tomlinson had some Rebekah Jones/Keffals style fabulistic victim delusions and at least half the "harassing calls" (etc.) were coming from inside the house? Anyone who's incapable of logging off after a first online pile-on strikes me as having an uncomfortable relationship with reality and a pathological need for attention.
No they're real, there are guys on the onaforums openly boasting about it. When Kiwi Farms started banning people it's thread on Tomlinson, the onaforums started throwing around bomb threats in the name of KF's owner.
It's funny because for all their hatred of Patrick, they did not take well to being told to 'fuck off'.
Maybe I’m a bully at heart, but Patrick is really obnoxious. It doesn’t justify the swatting and harassment, but boy oh boy is he perfect at encapsulating everything bad brought about by social media
First time I’ve strongly disagreed with Katie. Put the dog on a leash (I say a a dog person).
Didn't she say it was at a local school?
We have some places like that where I am. It's at a school, big open filed surrounded by a fence and woods. Everyone in the neighborhood and from all around brings their dog there to throw the ball and run during off hours. I mean everyone. The school's fine with it. The neighborhood is fine with it.
If there was one person that showed up and started telling everyone to put the dog on the leash it'd be very weird and out of place.
We have another spot that's an "unofficial off leash" beach. Everyone know's of it, everyone who goes there goes there for off leash time. So much so that the paperwork's been filed to make it official.
So it kind of depends. There are "officially unofficial" off leash areas in most cities I've been in.
"The neighborhood is fine with it. If there was one person that showed up and started telling everyone to put the dog on the leash it'd be very weird and out of place."
I used to be that one person, asking people why their dogs weren't leashed in the park, per local laws. Never got a good answer, though my favorite was "Because no one's here." Finally gave up and now I just glare at them if I dare to get close enough. I see dogs relieving themselves far from their owners, and I know the owner isn't cleaning it up, so I avoid walking through such open spaces now. Horribly inconsiderate. If you want your dog to have a place to run free, buy a farm. ETA: Or go to the dog park. There's almost always one near where I see these off-leash dogs.
`I know the owner isn't cleaning it up'
I like to point out to these inconsiderate people that their dog just went to the bathroom. When they just stare I offer a bag.
Where I live within a small area, bout 5x10 miles, there are 50 miles of trails and 1000's of acres of park land. Not counting community parks, publicly accessible school areas, and so on.
Of all of that, there's a dog park and the one maybe 200/300 yard strip of beach (of miles of beaches) that is referred to commonly (by dog owners and non-dog owners) as "the off leash beach". and there's the school field that's fenced in that the school administrators and community open up for people run their dogs off leash.
I stand by what I said. If you showed up to these small, niche, community accepted off leash areas and glared and started telling the (sometimes) dozens of people running their dogs off leash to leash up......
Well it wouldn't be a good look. It'd come off as neurotic and a bit weird. Like you might be having issues or something.
The people in the woods where I go are great about clean up. We also do a lot of woods clean up- both trash and invasive plant species.
We have woods like that near us. It's a forest preserve, and for the 25 years I've been living here it's been a leash off place. Unofficially official.
A few cranky pants newish people have tried to put the kibosh on it, but we successfully fought back. Viva la dog!!!
We get a certain kind of transplant usually from a certain state where I live that usually fills these kinds of roles. If there were a gender neutral word for Karen, it'd be a perfect match for the personality I'm thinking of.
You know, the kind that moves to a rural or semi-rural area then complains about the neighbor's roosters.
A leashed dog is a loved dog. We have had such a problem with it here, so much so that the local subreddit has regular posts about this.
I dunno, it depends a lot on the environment. There are some locations where a non-aggressive, unleashed dog is going to bother literally no one, and some where leashing really matters.
I'd guess the comments here might wind up splitting along rural/urban or low-pop./high-pop. lines. So I wanted to represent the yokel's point of view.
As someone who has been bitten by unleashed dogs more than once, I say fuck you people. Yes you are personally probably reasonable, and rural areas are different. But the number of people who think their dog is harmless and would never bite someone (95% of dog owners), and the number where that is true (significantly less), bear little relation.
Plus people with unleashed dogs clean up after them approximately 1/10th as much.
I will never forget some neighbors who were otherwise lovely people who had a giant Great Dane, and would just take it on walks and leave its giant horse sized dumps in the middle of the sidewalk. Saw this happen more than once, and if you called them on it it was always "the first time" or some pressing emergency that meant they couldn't pick it up this time.
I got no problem with dogs per se, but a good half their owners are delusional/irresponsible.
`who think their dog is harmless'
These people should either not have dogs or not allow their dogs around other people/dogs.
Dogs are animals and most have, essentially, no training. Most are a hodgepodge of genetics and haven't been bread for the benefit of the breed/dog. Even a trained dog will act aggressively without warning and ignore their owner. All dogs act aggressively/violently at some point and their owners will truly have no idea under what circumstances this will happen or have an explanation for why it happened.
I've yet to meet a trainer who recommends taking a dog to a dog park.
Aggressive dogs are part of why I routinely carry a firearm, in my mind, probably the most likely scenario in which I would need to use it. Dog attacks are no joke yo
"It's complicated" one might even say. And I agree. Judging one throw away line from the Katie with no context...
I think if you’re trying to present a fun anecdote about doing something against local ordinance (and often (though not always) of questionable social conscience) in the face of complaints then you have at least a little onus to explaining what’s exceptional about the circumstance.
I live in a rural area & I can’t stand ppl having their dogs off leash. They come up & jump on us sometimes, or are way too friendly with my kids who don’t like dogs. Off leash dogs in rural areas are the ones to win stupid prizes like getting quilled, or something less common but still a possibility like getting stuck in an abandoned leg hold trap.
My spouse is a vet and the last place we’d ever take a dog is the dog park because they are loaded with parasites.
“A recent study conducted by Oklahoma State University, Elanco Animal Health, and IDEXX Laboratories found that 85% of parks sampled in 30 major metro areas in the United States had at least one dog test positive for intestinal parasites, including roundworm, whipworm, Giardia, or hookworm. Of the more than 3,000 samples in the study, one in five had parasites.1
The high prevalence of parasitism seen in the few studies available suggests that dogs visiting dog parks could be at increased risk of infection from exposure to a contaminated environment. Estimates from regional studies in Europe and the United States suggest that intestinal parasites, many of which are zoonotic, are present in 7.0% to 50.2% of fecal samples from dogs frequenting dog parks.” (Brave AI summary from searching for “dog parks parasites”)
Yep, a friend of mine who works as a dog trainer got into big trouble after his personal dog picked up some infection from a dog park and then infected his boss's kennel.
If you DO go to a dog park it’s probably a good idea to let your vet know so they screen your dog & get it on a preventative.
one time I was chased by a small mutt off-leash on my way to pick up my brother and it has sent me on a straight path to becoming a cat person I think.
Yeah, I wanted to be with her because there's hardly anything I love more than watching dogs play off-leash. Our nearby elementary school is a de-facto dog park before kids arrive for school, and it's pretty great for everyone. It only works, though, if everyone prioritizes leashing up (and cleaning up).
When my wife and I first adopted our dog he had a big aggression problem toward other dogs. If he saw a dog in the distance he would immediately lose his shit. He snapped at a couple of dogs that got too close. We’ve been able to train him out of it, but it took awhile.
While he was still working through this I didn’t dare take him to a dog park, but I did walk him in a park close to our home. If I saw a dog in the distance I’d turn away. Most of the time I was able to distract my dog and he didn’t even know another dog was present. Sometimes this failed and the other dog owner got to see and hear my dog going apeshit and they kept their distance.
Every now and then someone would treat this park as an off leash area, their friendly dog would come to say hi, and it was not pleasant. It never escalated to a full on fight, but there was definitely snarling and snapping. I’d have to scoop my dog up to try to prevent a fight from breaking out.
Some dogs have issues and their owners expect others to obey leash laws for the sake of others.
I’ve traveled to Poland & larger dogs are required to be in muzzles (can’t remember the specifics but I’m not used to seeing muzzled dogs so they caught my eye).
how did you work on the aggression towards other dogs? I adopted a one year old french bulldog mix from the local shelter in June 2022, and she hates other dogs. She is otherwise a near-perfect dog.
A lot of folks don't like to hear this, but in the end negative reinforcement was the only thing that worked.
I tried positive reinforcement with treats, that didn't help. If I caught him before he saw a dog he'd eat the treat and then flip out on the dog once he saw it. If he'd already seen it, he wouldn't care about treats.
I tried confusing him by picking him up and holding him upside down. Then he was just upside down and still losing his shit.
I tried reinforcing other commands as a general discipline boost, no help.
In the end I got a training collar. It actually worked to snap him out of his snapping and snarling. Thankfully the shock mode only needed a few uses, then vibrate was enough to get his attention. Gradually as I intervened with a vibrate at the first sign of aggression he stopped showing aggression altogether. It took a few months, but now he's totally chill. I haven't put his training collar on in years. Strange off leash dogs have run up to him recently and he's nearly apathetic about it.
I'm very happy that I was able to train him out of this behavior, it's much better for him. I was walking him only at odd hours when I could minimize the chances of seeing another dog, and when the timing didn't work out we just wouldn't go on walks.
He was also a shelter adoption, about seven years old when we got him. Also nearly perfect in every other way, no aggression towards humans at all.
My experience in dealing with two, large, reactive dogs:
1. Accept that your dog will probably never get along/play with other dogs; work towards tolerance and the ability to ignore other dogs. It's a dog's job to love its family, not other dogs.
2. Go to training sessions; there are plenty for reactive dogs, specifically. Start with positive reinforcement (clicker plus treats).
3. Get a well fitted harness (put the leash on the front of the harness, not the back) so that you have control over the dog. If you cannot control the dog then find a trainer to help you fit and understand how to use a gentle leader.
4. Have lots and lots and lots of treats! See a dog in the distance, say `leave it' and then give the pupper lots of treats and praise! Turn around and walk away from the other dog. Eventually, if they're food driven, they'll look to you when they see another dog because they think that means a treat! (This is part of positive reinforcement regimen your trainer will teach you).
5. If your trainer will only practice positive reinforcement, and after months of diligent application you haven't seen improvement, then it's time to find a new trainer. Likely your dog will need a correction-based training routine, possibly a prong collar, and intensive trainer-led sessions (prongs are probably likely only necessary for powerful dogs...I've seen corgis with prongs on and I can't imagine why).
Please, please see a competent trainer before trying to correct your dog on your own, though (e.g., don't just put an e-collar on the dog or use a prong collar without training).
Finally, screaming at a dog doesn't do much but confuse them. You have to train them to associate a word with an action/behavior. Never speak to them in an angry tone but always high pitched and happy. You can say just about anything you want that way (including cursing them, which is a great stress reliever on those tough walks) and they'll take it as encouragement and love.
Same situation here. And importantly, you’re legally in the right. I’ve talked to two lawyer friends about this situation and they’ve said that the unleashed dog would be at fault. Not a situation I ever want to occur, but I just have to plan around my Mexican street pup.
I'm with Katie on this. Seems like she's in a rural-ish area with no dog park nearby? Don't quite see the point of taking your dog to an enclosed area if they're expected to be on leash, either.
But...if you take your dog anywhere where dogs are off leash (prohibited or not) then you don't get to complain when dogs start acting like dogs (I believe Katie had some recent experience with this at a campground?). They bark, growl, and nip at one another. That's how they communicate/govern each other's behavior. Many breeds will also grab another dog's scruff and try to wrestle them to the ground---because it's fun for them and their playmate (watch GSDs playing together)!
Puppies can be in for especially harsh corrections by their peers (grabbing the puppy by the neck and throwing it to the ground, for example) if they get too inquisitive. A well behaved dog, however, will escalate the severity of their corrections to other dogs versus viciously attacking (still, the owner accepts the risk of a vicious attack).
All of this is mostly fine until the dog starts shrieking or the owner overreacts (a person being panicked will further agitate a dog).
This is silly, but my sister’s golden retriever cannot see a puppy at the dog park without trying to cuddle with it.
Awwww!
OMG yes!
It's the owners who freak the fuck out without understanding how dogs communicate. They have raised angry voices and flapping arms and wonder why the dogs are getting more agitated.
Agree. I am a dog person too, and am so sick of this. It's dangerous for the dogs, other dogs, and people
Oh man.. Never have I been so stoked to hear a pt. 2. I'd also like to give my totally unsolicited opinion regarding the Jordan Neely ep criticism, and say that you guys shouldn't feel obligated to address your detractors. This could apply to addressing the cancer survivor comment from a previous ep as well. It seems beneath y'all, and potentially influential on the shape of the show. They're only going to get bolder after hearing you guys humor them. Anyways, love you.
Well, I agree, but that was part of Jesse’s problem on Twitter: responding to detractors and trying trying trying to clarify that which his detractors are determined to misconstrue.
I have a personal approach to handling debates online that I have almost never broken and has helped keep me sane: I will weigh in on a post/issue with my own opinion, evidence, etc. If someone replies with something I consider to be a good point or showing that I wasn't clear in the first place, I will acknowledge their point and/or clarify what I meant. ONCE. I do not do back-and-forths.
You sound too psychologically balanced to be on Twitter.
Very smart.
I don't get why they will read long, pointless emails on air, but they never read any of our comments, many of which are brilliant, trenchant, and not written by me.
👏👏👏
THIS.
Agreed. I'd only ask for an exception when Jesse and Katie think someone's sent in a fair criticism that they feel they should have addressed or would like to address.
I didn't think the last two sets of critical e-mails met that standard.
I don't think they did either. They were just people missing the point.
I mean, addressing detractors is fine, although not of all that much interest to me. The problem here is that I feel like neither this case or the cancer case really made much an argument *worth* addressing.
In the case of long COVID, I think J&K made the important points in the first episode (something I'm confident in because they are basically what I have thought since the idea of long COVID was first reported on ;)), *with* the exception that I think Jesse phrased his point very poorly when he said "It's not doctors' jobs to believe you symptoms", but I think it should be reasonably clear that he really meant it isn't their job to just take you self-diagnosis at face value, which is important. In fact, the cancer survivor's story is exactly the reason why! What if they had come to the doc and attributed their vague symptoms to long COVID, or Lyme, or what-have-you, and the doctor didn't investigate too deeply...they'd be dead!
For the Joran Neely criticism...yeah, I don't see it. Progressives absolutely have made arguments that police should be involved seldom if ever in these situations, they have, essentially, if not explicitly, said that people should just "tolerate" the discomfort, just as they've dismissed vandalism and property crimes since people are "insured" or such. Actually, if anything, from what I read on this site, I think a lot of people criticized J&K for being too against the employment of force, there's at least as good a reason to respond to one of us?
A while back there was actually a letter in a medical journal by a couple of doctors who had seen two cases of metastatic lung cancer that had initially been diagnosed as long Covid. Lung cancer has a really low five year survival rate, so those patients' lives probably could not have been saved if it had been caught earlier, but they may have had more time if it had been caught earlier.
Early diagnosis and treatment makes a huge difference stuff like MS and Lupus, so spending 3 years thinking you have long COVID means you have three years of your immune system attacking your body.
Believing a patient's symptoms is so much different from believing a patient's explanation for their symptoms. Doctors spend 4 years in medical school and however many years in residency learning how to figure out the cause of the patient's symptoms.
100% it is a bad idea to go down that rabbit hole.
I detracted once. I’m still here. One day I will detract again.
Har.
Norm McDonald is fucking hilarious.
There are only two people I’ve heard of that don’t consider Norm MacDonald funny: Patrick Tomlinson, and, you guessed it, Frank Stallone.
Actually Frank Stallone really liked Norm MacDonlad’s non-sequiturs about him on Weekend Update through a good chunk of the 90s, so Patrick’s on his own sadly.
A scold who can’t stop scolding regardless of the ravages of these bottom-feeders is the perfect target. I feel bad for the guy, more so for his inability to understand that when you’ve been targeted for being an opportunistic virtue-monger, it’s really not a good idea to try to scold your way out of it, especially with the monsters he has had to deal with.
Norm’s handling of the situation that prompted Tomlinson’s fated tweet would be instructive. Norm expressed concern for Rosanne and Louie CK and didn’t do enough throat clearing about the harm they’ve done. He then tried to throat clear on Howard Stern and made it worse. Then he went on The View, a show where’s he’s been incredibly transgressive on in the past, and was measured and contrite and only slyly transgressive.
But he disarmed the situation. He made an attempt to deescalate, all while dying of cancer which no one knew he had. He went into a show where he was reviled and humanized himself.
There isn’t as much incentive to the perpetually online to deescalate unless the ante has been raised exponentially, but by that point it’s too late. You see your enemies as subhuman, and they respond going all in on the attention economy geared on disgust. And any backlash to being a prick unnecessarily is going to reinforce the idea that your enemies are not human and deserve no quarter.
The documentary `Stallone: Frank, That Is' is kind of fun...at least if you're on an airplane.
Norm's video podcast has been archived and if you enjoy Katie's mocking of Jesse then you might appreciate his interactions with his co-host (Adam Eget), as it's very much in the same style (e.g., Jesse dating a horse is about the level of humor). In fact, I think Katie stole Norm's bit as Norm used to make Adam Eget read offensive/unfunny jokes and mock him for it, just as Katie keeps trying to get Jesse to say the N-word.
Katie and Jesse have a good back and forth dynamic, but Norm and Adam Eget were something really special. Adam was completely out of his league and got rolled for it, and yet he did something during those episodes so it didn’t feel like Norm was just using him as a punching bag. But he was basically a punching bag.
The multi-episode fabricated accusations of Adam being a Holocaust denier is something incredible.
I smile whenever I look out over the East River and see the Queensboro bridge, safe in the comfort that someone down there is chasing his dream, fifteen dollars a man.
I didn't know who he was until he died. I spent my free time over the course of the several ensuing weeks cry-laughing over his material.
His sitcom Norm (co-starring Laurie Metcalf) was one of the funniest sitcoms I’ve ever seen. Episodes on YouTube I think.
Back in the 90s I didn't find anything he did funny and figured people just liked him because you were supposed to. Then sometime in the 2000s it sort of "clicked" and he's seemed like a genius to me ever since. But I suppose I can imagine someone not finding him funny for non-twitter-brained reasons.
I'm assembling a reddit crew as we speak. Prepare for your life to be destroyed due to this wrong opinion.*
*Your opinion is correct and this is a joke
Even assuming your framing is correct (and I have no reason to dispute it), the extreme bullying and harassment (some of which was IRL) of a person who is essentially a nobody on the internet is utterly out-of-proportion with the offense.
This isn't merely a case of someone who "plugged himself into that energy and got burned by it." This is a case of sociopaths using Mr. Tomlinson's annoying social media posts as an excuse to satisfy their desire to inflict cruelty. And unfortunately, an online mob's desire to inflict cruelty seems endless.
And don't forget that the harassment goes beyond acts directed against Mr. Tomlinson; it included SWATing Mr. Tomlinson's elderly parents. There is nothing righteous here.
I disagree, respectfully.
Pat submitted hundreds of copyright claims to get his trolls’ reddit forum mocking him banned. After this latter event happened, he boasted on Twitter how he had gone to war with his trolls and defeated them, dispensing ‘helpful’ tips for people in similar situations (“most important: forget don’t feed the trolls”) while surmising he could get a book deal out of the whole thing.
When the trolls moved to their own site, he filed a lawsuit against 60 of them, which he admitted was a pretext to “unmask” them. So not just annoying social media posts.
The guy is a sociopath himself hah. At least my wife would think so If I text messaged daily with the people I alleged were swatting us.
Just when I think the world can't get any weirder...
I, therefore, shall avoid googling anything related to this story until after listening to the next episode.
Some dweeb tweeting “Hot take, I've never thought Norm Macdonald was funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me.” about a famous comedian shouldn’t be cause for any sort of reaction, let alone one like this.
I have never thought he was very funny. Every once in while I will laugh, but usually not. I did like his relentless trolling of O.J. Simpson in the 90's.
I found him sort of mean spirited a lot.
I think his weekend update and SNL work wasn't nearly as good as some of his standup. He was great in a few SNL things, but I would point to say his "Me Doing Standup" set as a great example of what is best about Norm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGcw17aAutQ&list=OLAK5uy_lYikrmbIaNArKgiL2EOkV3N4V9xr_cIO4
Who is this guy? I’ve legit never heard of him. I thought that video he made ultimately telling people to continue going after that poor idiot for not finding him funny to be exceptionally stupid. Even if intended as a joke.
The video is from Cameo I think, in which people pay a public figure to make a video, usually with little context. I highly doubt Norm MacDonald knew what the trolls were doing with the video. He was the epitome of someone who was kind but not nice, so I don’t know what he would do if he knew what he was being paid for.
That said, Norm MacDonald is not for everyone. I see him like a (much less well known) David Bowie type in comedy; he was around for a long time, changed his format, tone, and medium often, and was always uncompromising.
Conan O’Brien’s sidekick Andy Ritcher said Norm’s lack of giving a fuck what people thought was genuinely scary. Norm did a lot of things that made him a target, and if something was funny to him, he said it. That’s one of the reasons why he was doing Cameo videos instead of getting royalty checks for some broad appeal nonsense (his recurring cancer he told no one about and he degenerate gambling didn’t help either). A lot of people have a soft spot for Norm for these reasons. I imagine these sociopaths saw Norm as a kindred spirit due to his uncompromising attitude.
The Patrick Tomlinson saga is horrible. The amount of focused cruelty and abuse directed toward him is crazy. No one deserves to be treated like that.
I’m waiting for the twist where he’s been doing some of it to himself. I mean I hope that’s not true but it’s where I’m at emotionally.
Some of the stuff was funny like buying the rights to his twitter profile pic, which tomlinson sold himself. The Swatting is basically attempted murder, and I can't believe the Police keep going along with it.
I too congratulate Jesse on his slay the spire runs, I think it’s great that after failing to finish Elden Ring he’s landed on a mobile game that’s more his speed
I also play sts daily. Always brings a smile to my face when jesse brings it up. Recently beat Ascension 20 Silent with a killer shiv build
Based on what I've seen not following the story super closely, I think it's wrong to say the system didn't fail Jordan Neely. Yes, he was on that top 50 list. But if you're not going to check the list when you have interactions with him, to realize he needs to be arrested...
Police Officers May No Longer Hold People to Check for Warrants https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/nyregion/nypd-warrant-settlement.html?unlocked_article_code=THDpgPBRPpDhFKPOP9hSFRATaEhEMLQ2o9P7mivkBiianIg0vlibJWKEx-194ekRstM57szaI93fKMYOdQZJQBA-8L7ONKTXtCl2dJAMw4FXe57WIzFAv9MzpTTRbz4KwsySsyvxNUv40DrvMRFMZiVk0eQeRnVaie0AbcgGiqe07wK9rqFOziCJUBtlc58aPTcCxqZmDCRNqqyhbtWLFy6Y2aqK8GNvLKTvWb9mnMuX6vfzOgURwnZekrplP4cVAkUpC4ioDvt8bqy2MK8lnN-dhMnY6AIhNYOyBJVzjizcD7p-GlDd9tMCnVt-0syiq2nLW5N26D-UOooQYI5rB3pV&smid=nytcore-android-share (gift link)
Neely had a bunch of interactions with the system while that warrant was out. And apparently none of those times did anyone see he was on the list.
There may have been many services available for Neely, and yeah, he might not have wanted to use them. But NYC wasn't really trying to get him into them, not with any diligence.
If you do much reading of right-side commentary on the matter, sooner or later you'll find some mention of our having basically done way away with too much civil commitment. I have no difficulty believing such can be misused and some institutions might become abusive in practice. But it really does seem to me like involuntary commitment is the only real answer for a nontrivial number of people, and it is how the system failed Neely here.
It is not society or the system's responsibility to make sure everyone "makes it". That comes down to them and their friends and loved ones. And if they are too dysfunctional to have friends and loved ones, well it is not clear what possible value they are providing society anyway.
This isn't some tiny vessel where each member of the crew is vitally important. The system should mostly be there to protect people from people like Neely, whether he gets "helped" is of a secondary concern (and often pretty impossible without commitment/incarceration).
The value they provide to society is the intrinsic value of a human life. I have no difficulty saying that friends/family/etc. *should* be taking care of most of this. But 1) not everyone has them, and 2) those support networks *can* be overwhelmed. (Too many families with alcoholic or drug addict family members can speak to their inability to help them, up until the point at which the family member *chooses* to actually get themselves better.) Hence there is some need for societal provision to get them actually back on their feet, or to care for them when they are physically or mentally incapable of doing so themselves (including when they represent a threat to others).
That said, reading between the lines of your response slightly, I think I do agree that those support levels do need to be limited mostly to the genuinely unreachable. The social safety nets in the US that are not voluntary, bottom-up provision extend much further than this in many ways. (And yet also fall well short of it, as with genuinely mentally ill people like Neely.)
I liked this comment- but I do believe that every person has intrinsic value.
I would say that the "system" is last in line in terms or responsibility. First is him, then his parents, then relatives, then the people campaigning against involuntary commitment and institutionalization, and then the system.
I always think this when there are children who are murdered by parents or step parents. "The System" is always blamed for dropping the ball. Which is bullshit. Everyone who was around that child is far more guilty than an overburdened child protective service who are severely limited in what they can do.
Eh...the people you mention may/probably have some culpability. I don't know how much work they put in, how much Neely was or was not receptive to the work, etc. At a certain point the burden will exceed anyone but specialists.
But end of day, all their culpability doesn't protect the rest of us. Police need to be protecting us, and if it's a constant-care sort of thing like with this dude and similar, then something else needs to be stepping in to provide the more specialized sort of protection required -- namely some sort of commitment system.
I guess I'm just saying that since we can't commit people, or medicate them against their will, it can't be the fault of the "system". The system isn't allowed to do the things it needs to do. Neely walked out of a diversion program designed to keep him out of prison for assaulting people.
So if we have to put ultimate blame on someone- maybe it should go on the people who have taken away all of our carrots and sticks as far as dealing with the violently mentally ill.
I find this type of behavior really puzzling -- why would anyone spend so much time harassing someone they don't know just because they didn't think a comedian you like is funny.
This is something that psychologists and sociologists should make a good faith effort to understand. And by good faith effort, I mean do good science where you try to actually understand the factors driving the phenomenon rather than just collecting evidence to support your preferred explanation. Is it just social pressure? Boredom? Not viewing Tomlinson as a human being? A conviction that if you don't like someone it's fine to do terrible things to them?
I think Jesse nailed it - whatever psychological issues might be at play, it always comes down to underemployed young men.
It seems to be a game, or rather, the ritual dance of a subculture. Patrick showed up on that dance floor with his flashiest dancing shoes on, ready to boogie and announcing that he's looking for dance partners. He's also declined the option to leave the dance floor in the intervening years, which makes him an obviously consenting participant in a sadomasochistic tango. His participation seems not only a requirement of this particular dance but its driving force. Why would some people do "terrible things" to others in BDSM dungeons? Because everyone involved has some weird kinks and they're all getting off.
Best I can do is 'white supremacy makes them do it'.
But in seriousness it is pretty weird. I think the short answer is 'because it's easy'. The spend a lot of time, but it's not particularly hard. There's a lot of people who are sort of miserable, or at least unfulfilled, and hating on someone offers a quick easy path to some amount of catharsis. If we're honest with ourselves I think we all sometimes enjoy seeing someone we don't like suffer.
Not to nerd out, but it's a bit like light side/dark side of the force. People are seeking some form of fulfillment and satisfaction. The 'light side' version of that would be doing things like being productive, learning a skill, improving yourself, helping others, etc... Those things will bring you satisfaction that is more lasting, but they're hard, they take time and usually require getting up from your chair. The dark side would be finding someone to hate and making them suffer. On the internet, you can do that pretty easily without leaving your moms basement.
yeah i don’t think it’s laziness at all, a lot of energy and creativity goes into some of these pranks, and parts of it are quite funny. you could argue that it’s a misuse of or improper outlet for these skills, and obviously there is a meanness to a lot of it, but it’s an oversimplification to just say people are defaulting to this behaviour by giving in their dark urges or because it’s too much trouble to go outside and sand their deck. people have different interests, for better or worse. again i’m not defending the swatting and stalking etc, but i do defend the idea that some of the best art and comedy comes from a place of pure absurdity with no pretense of being useful or even “good” for society.
Is the answer to this kind of thing always “filling the religion shaped hole”? I don’t know. But Jesus.
It's almost like it's a multi-player video game for them. I'd say they should design literal games to bully NPCs instead but spooky AI ethics concerns on that subject aren't nothing either.
This is frighteningly plausible.
idk it’s not super confusing to me. they’re not like sincerely upset that this guy said norm wasn’t funny, but like the absurdity of the level of retaliation becomes part of the joke i think, plus every time he responds it provides more fodder and snowballs etc
it does feel extra exciting and hilarious to be part of a group doing bad stuff online and having these rituals and inside jokes etc. i spent a lot of time doing WAY milder trolling on message boards in the early-mid aughts (nothing that affected anyones real life at all, just annoying/goofy online stuff) and there’s a definite “rush” you get from it. not condoning this harassment campaign at all but if i think of the sort of gleeful mania + weird sense of belonging/accomplishment my 12 yr old self felt at this time, i imagine this would feel similar but on a bigger and more deranged scale etc. and you see all the time how being part of a mob makes people more impulsive and less empathetic than they might otherwise be
and ya i would guess in cases where the perpetrators aren’t legit sociopaths (definitely some are), the anonymity probably makes it easier for ppl to reconcile ruining a persons actual life. and maybe if each person involved is only contributing one part of harassment, it’s easier not to zoom out on the situation or think of themselves as responsible idk
Does Kill all Normies have good research in it? I’ve been meaning to read it sometime
Patricks problem is that onaforums consist mainly of men over the age of 40. They don't get that you can laugh at some of the dumb stuff that Patrick does, without trying to torture him.
I think I gotta admit that I was wrong in the last thread for blaming NYC's social safety net for the Jordan Neely situation. It does seem like he was approached numerous times for treatment but just relapsed over and over again. Some people are just lost causes and need to be detained and forced into treatment for their own good and for the good of society.
I know, apparently (unless someone is cooking the books in an extraordinary way) he had every opportunity to get help and was pursued with offers much more than I would have thought likely. Some people just have to be locked up but I don’t know how you set up that mechanism without triggering loads of rights abuses etc. It’s hard to accept but sometimes everyone does everything they are supposed to and shit still goes sideways.
The problem of making sure that these sorts of involuntary treatment orders are only used on people who really do need them is a big issue and I think a lot of people underestimate how important it is. One factor driving the deinstitutionalization movement was the recognition that some people in state hospitals were not mentally ill and had no way to prove that and get released. (The play/movie "Suddenly Last Summer" is a good example.) And it's still a problem today.
The best example is Britney Spears. Some people who with serious mental illness who continue to pose a danger to other are going to be placed under conservatorships and they have a history of being abused. I don't know what Britney Spears's diagnosis is and whether it's accurate or a misdiagnosis, but it's clear that she is capable of making her own decisions. It makes no sense that she was under a permanent conservatorship and her conservator was her father, a man with a history of substance abuse and domestic abuse. In her case it probably had to do with money but there are all sorts of weird family dynamics that could lead to bad results.
One thing that would help would be requirements for more than one mental heath professional to evaluate the person, each going in without any knowledge of what other professionals had concluded.
>but I don’t know how you set up that mechanism without triggering loads of rights abuses etc.
They aren't rights abuses if they are according got the law. Your rights are literally what is described in the law. If the law says you can be committed for shitting on people's porches, than shitting on people's porches is not one of your rights and getting committed/incarcerated over it isn't a violation of your rights.
This isn't hard. Society just needs to make better rules for what behaviors will be tolerated, and enforce those rules. But right now people would rather pretend to help than actually help (I say that because I also think in Neelys and most other street people's cases infringing on their "rights" would absolutely be what is best for them).
Most of these people need a daddy, or disapproving uncle, not a mommy or oblivious grandmother.
> They aren't rights abuses if they are according got the law. Your rights are literally what is described in the law.
That is, *famously*, not how that works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenumerated_rights
None of those rights mean anything when they aren't upheld/protected by the law. "rights" aren't real, they are social constructs.
When a viking comes to your door with an axe demanding a right to your property or life isn't going to protect you. What is going to protect you is a sovereign that enforces those rights on the viking.
So the SC can talk about unenumerated rights all it wants, but unless society actually respects and enforces those rights, they don't exist.
Sometimes the comment section very helpfully reminds you most people don't know anything about anything and would be better off not opining. guess I'll log off for the day
You are a rights realist then? Hehe
Naaah, I would agree with you in theory but Thia makes an important point about involuntary commitment being a tool rife for abuse.
Its why I oppose the death penalty, it requires too much faith in a system made up of flawed human beings.
There are always going to be mistakes, but we can't have the streets filled with crazy people and addicts. It is terrible for society, terrible for law abiding citizens, and terrible for the junkies and crazies.
I don’t disagree but that you’re Dx is correct about the problem doesn’t mean your Rx is on the solution, in fact it could have massive blowback.
Another aspect of this, is that is the same reasoning that 2A abolitionists use. That the problem (mental illness/gun crime) warrants a drastic solution (easier commitment/2A abolition).
I agree about the problem but still have big misgivings on loosening commitment laws.
(And I say this knowing that making involuntary commitment easier could end up with the 2A getting a lot more business.
I still think you can blame NYC's social safety net for the situation. It seems the safety net can't deal with people who are crazy and/or are in a drug induced crisis... you know, the kind of people it really needs to deal with. It's set up for people who can make rational choices to improve their situations. I'm all for this for those people who are in a position to make rational choices, Mr. Neely wasn't such a person. This isn't just to blame the system, but it needs to change. There are 49 people left on that list of the 50 most vulnerable citizens in NYC that are also headed towards tragic ends because the system to protect them, and the citizens of NYC, is clearly not fit for purpose.
To be fair, it wasn’t until 2014 that Weev called himself a white nationalist, and it was even longer before people started believing him. There was even a positive profile of Weev in The Atlantic in 2013. Before 2016, it was generally taken as a given that transgressive humor was left-wing. It sounds like she pretended to have never found it funny at the very same moment everyone else did.
IIRC it was going to prison that turned him from ironic edgelord GNAAer into an actual white supremacist.
And the act that got him sent to prison was definitely not hacking, but that’s what he got charged with. In short, AT&T exposed an API that would produce customer information, and it has no security whatsoever. weev was just making regular web requests to it, without any kind of trickery. He didn’t sell the data he obtained, he contacted journalists about it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/weevs-case-flawed-beginning-end
Perils of memory: I thought he was a white supremacist before then.
Still outrageous that he was sent to prison to save AT&T embarrassment, especially when the information he obtained was, what(?), email addresses and non-confidential information about iPad users.
My recollection was that his white nationalist beliefs were well known in the community before that (2016) but shrugged off as not serious. At some point between 2011--2016 didn't he just state that I've been saying this stuff for a long time and I mean it?
YESSSS ITS A PATRICK EPISODE im so excited to listen you have no idea how hard i had to contain my excitement when i saw the header so my co workers wont think im a thought criminal
This is the Pronoun Training Video I recommend. I was trained with it in 1969.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTKy0CYUrV0
How bizarre must it have been during that time for people unaware that the creative classes were consuming acid.
I wonder if there’s a drug trend that explains our present moment and we’re just out of the loop.
Dopamine! https://www.leehealth.org/health-and-wellness/healthy-news-blog/mental-health/are-you-addicted-to-social-media
Oh Stalker, Child! Opie and Anthony fans are cringe, but Patricks narcissism makes me lose sympathy for him. They deserve each other.
Edit: Enjoy Prison
Pronoun story: I have a foreign friend who lives in the US. She'd just been home for a while and her English was rusty. In a meeting, she was apparently asked her pronouns and had a sudden moment where she couldn't remember what a pronoun was. She had a moment of floundering and said, "sorry, I'm confused..." And everyone suddenly became super supportive. Some sent cards after the meeting. Everyone was honored she chose to share that with them.
And the idea that a room of people decided this middle-aged woman with a thick accent was clearly expressing her deep and complex feelings about gender rather than having language difficulties makes me giggle.
Am I irredeemably cynical or is anyone else expecting pt. 2 to reveal Tomlinson had some Rebekah Jones/Keffals style fabulistic victim delusions and at least half the "harassing calls" (etc.) were coming from inside the house? Anyone who's incapable of logging off after a first online pile-on strikes me as having an uncomfortable relationship with reality and a pathological need for attention.
No they're real, there are guys on the onaforums openly boasting about it. When Kiwi Farms started banning people it's thread on Tomlinson, the onaforums started throwing around bomb threats in the name of KF's owner.
It's funny because for all their hatred of Patrick, they did not take well to being told to 'fuck off'.
There's no evidence at all ONA is behind the swattings, they tell people not to do that. Katie was misleading about this IMO.
Poor old Patrick, for all the dumb stuff he's done, he's never actually harmed anyone. You can't say the same about singh.
I don’t know about that - he’s got some criminal records
Maybe I’m a bully at heart, but Patrick is really obnoxious. It doesn’t justify the swatting and harassment, but boy oh boy is he perfect at encapsulating everything bad brought about by social media
Patrick is funny, Katie glosses over the story of the half marathon he entered, when he blatantly cheated. That was hillarious.