Who thought Reddit couldn't get Worse

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This guy for sure until I saw this.

www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/...

Not posting the context you can read it your self if you want to hate humanity.

But I reported the thread to the FBI tip site. I suggest you do the same.

Over 2k up votes makes me want to puke.

Wired wrote:

But I reported the thread to the FBI tip site. I suggest you do the same.

Link, please? Or is it an easy Google?

Sorry on my phone.

Tips.FBI.gov

That is pretty crazy. Not only are there a bunch of people saying that they have been raped making comments, but the sheer amount of people who are brushing it off as "well he's changed, it was a long time ago" is pretty amazing. This comment really gets me:

Again, what does that achieve? Publicly shaming people medieval style isn't exactly constructive. It's not a very good example, either. Surely you must have been in a situation at some point where you acted like a douche, but realised and then regretted it with all your heart afterwards?

rape != being a douche. Rape is a serious crime, which this guy committed multiple times. He just wants to try to clean his conscience by posting it somewhere. Yeesh

This is the same website that only took down their kiddy porn section after getting heat from Anderson Cooper.

f*ck even then they acted like free speech was hurt that day.

m.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/reddit-pulls-jailbait-section-after-kid-porn-post-120043

Take a look through the comments if you want to know anything more about how this started, why I stopped, how many victims, when this happened, what life is like now, whether I sought after professional help, etc...

Yeah, jail would be the next step. I mean, sure, you could argue the thread itself holds some value as a teaching tool, but still, jail.

Some Redditor wrote:

It amazes me how every comment I have read so far is calling him a cancer, terrible person etc. Obviously he did a lot of f*cked up stuff, but after 10+ years, without an incident.. I commend him for changing. I wouldn't consider him to still be a rapist like everyone else.
Raping someone shouldn't make you labeled a rapist for all 70some years of your life should it?

Jesus. F*cking. Christ. See this sh*t? This is how I ended up becoming a feminist. Because seriously. Holy f*cking sh*t.

Is Reddit always this full of broken people? Is there an active community there of people saying "Yeah, well, what Sandusky did is in the past they should have let him go?"

EDIT: Well, most of the thread is people informing this guy he's the worst human ever. But clearly, there are still more than a few people in there who...

Some Deranged Redditor wrote:

Please don't take this as me putting the blame on you, but...you gotta say something if you want it to stop. Think about it - the guy clearly wants to have sex if he's advancing the situation. He's not going to stop unless you make it clear that you want it to.

I think I've been in situations like this before - sometimes I picked up on the non-verbal clues and stopped but sometimes I didn't and it continued. I only knew that the girl regretted it after the fact, and I felt horrible about it. If I had known beforehand I would have stopped right away. I never used force or coercion to advance the situation, I was just taking the lead, as every bit of media I've ever absorbed has instructed me to do.

You may say that I should have paid attention or stopped at the first sign of unease. But desire is a fluid thing - you can both want and not want to do things for different reasons, and sometimes the balance changes when you're messing around and all of a sudden it's game on. But if you don't tell us how you're feeling, there's always going to be a chance we're not going to stop just based on your body language. You guys know how men work. We want sex. But most of us would rather not get laid than do something that's going to make someone feel bad in the end. Our one track lower-brain really takes over when things get hot and heavy so you have to be extra direct with us if you want something to go differently.

I'm sorry if that comes across as sexist or making excuses for rapists, but I didn't mean it like that. I'm not saying it's your fault at all that bad men do bad things to women sometimes. I'm just saying one way to help curb the "rape culture" that exists in America is to empower other women to communicate with us, even if you think you might come across as a "Female Doggo".

Another Deranged Redditor wrote:

Seems kind of vague to me. At no point does it sound like the girls said anything like 'NO, GET OFF ME,' and as I said, girls like to put up a play fight even if they want sex.

There's a huge difference between play fighting and real fighting - as a muscular 180lb-ish guy who dates girls in the 100-110lb range I can assure you a 105lb girl could make me feel a world of pain whenever she wants if she actually wanted to. Girls are strong -- my gf could kick my ass -- you can't just shift your weight on top of an unwilling girl and magically your penis enters a wet vagina and suddenly sex -- apparently Reddit thinks this is possible. Ever felt the impenetrable fortress that is a woman with clenched legs? If a girl doesn't want to have sex putting your weight on her is not going to do anything.

Rape is continuing past the point where you've been clearly told no. To overpower a girl that's putting up a real fight would require real force. Any man that uses his real strength on a woman is a terrible human being -- but I am not reading that in OPs post.

Other responders in this thread are like "well he used his good looks to manipulate girls into having sex with him," I guess any guy that picks up a fatty after last call is a rapist?
......
I read OPs confession as a kind of ten-year-later exaggeration over what sounds like what could pass for (almost) normal drunken college sex, where a girl is conflicted between raging hormones and desire conflicting with her need to 'not give it up' or seem easy. In college you are still "not supposed" to have sex and sex remains a bit taboo; in contrast to post-college adult dating where it's odd not to have slept with each-other a few dates in.

If picking up a less than attractive girl and using your good looks and charm to have sex with her, which she resists initially but gives into and then stays the night and has breakfast with you the next day, makes a guy a rapist that people on here are calling a terrible human being and hoping to kill, I just don't know.. That seems extreme and I'm not sure what he did is actually rape. Shoot me, I guess.

I'm a mild-mannered long term relationship type of guy whose never laid a violent finger on a woman in my life and never will, and the thought of rape makes me sick to my stomach, but I'm not just getting the vitriol here.

Like holy sh*t people. That's "rape culture". Right there, in glowing neon pink. THAT'S what people mean.

There are just so many people pulling the "rapists will always be around so women need to be careful". Some guy even put together some well-meaning but idiotic bit of "be a strong, confident, unique, beautiful woman" piece of white-knighting saying that.

No. The rape is the crime. It always is. The focus is on the transgressor, not the victim.

Wow.... this is a reply from the author of the thread, someone asked if his wife is aware of all this:

No, she is not. There was an accusation once by someone who turned out to be a friend of hers trying to "warn her". I didn't know, but was able to turn the situation around. Told her she had come onto me, and I turned her down, she was just jealous. Wife believed it, they're no longer friends (although they weren't real good friends before, so no big loss), I'm still a sh*tbag, but I'm also still married. Probably for the better, to be honest if I hadn't met my wife, I don't know if I would have evolved, and made the change in my life to stop when I did.

I think the mere fact that he put quotes around "warn her" shows he doesn't actually have any remorse, not even mentioning his entire reply. Before that comment people are calling him a sociopath, I would have to agree that is probably what this guy's problem is. Either he is lying and looking for attention, or he doesn't feel feelings

On the one hand, I think learning about the psyche of a predator is important, so in principle, I have no qualms about listening to a criminal in order to understand what motivates such a crime.

On the other hand, Reddit is the worst venue for this. Raw quotes from a rapist require an intelligent filter and a proper analysis. I wish I had read about this guy on a blog or a proper news publication. Instead, we get the hivemind going in three or four different directions at once.

It has been interesting to see the reactions though, because you now have a half a dozen different philosophies regarding rape coming to the fore all at once. If you want to have a discussion about rape culture, now would seem to be the perfect time.

My thoughts:

1. If this had ended up with the poster apologising to the people he victimised, and promising to work through this stuff with a professional of some sort, I'd be alright with it. I've always been someone interested in reparation+reformation over punishment, but a conscience-cleaning anonymous post only covers half of the issue, and way too late. With that said, if someone were to admit to past crimes with a genuine interest in resolving the problems they'd caused, I doubt I'd be in favour of them going to prison or whatever, simply because it doesn't accomplish anything.

2. The post reads way, way too much like an instruction manual, and I hope he changes it.

I only read the first post, because I can imagine what's in the comments, and just don't know if I could handle it. Where are other people's opinions in line with this?

Oh, hey, looks like I was just responding to one post, not te original one. Whoops.

Still, repentance+trying to ameliorate whatever damage you've caused > prison time.

Oh, and I don't want to seem like I'm in favour of forgiving Sandusky or anything, because I'm not. He's only sorry 'cause he got caught, and so represents a threat. I'm actually not too certain on how I should feel, any thoughts?

El-Taco-the-Rogue wrote:

Oh, and I don't want to seem like I'm in favour of forgiving Sandusky or anything, because I'm not. He's only sorry 'cause he got caught, and so represents a threat.

From what i've read, Sandusky isn't sorry himself, and still maintains his innocence. And it doesn't seem like the guy in the thread is particularly sorry either.

I'd probably be with you if we were talking about a number of other crimes. He could've lied, cheated, stole, could've been a conman supreme.

But this isn't that. This is a dude who methodically, systematically committed multiple sexual assaults. He can begin to earn forgiveness when he's actually begun to repay the immense (and that's being generous) debt he owes to those women (and to society). Because this isn't dealing drugs, or theft, it's a serial rapist. Certainly, there should be a focus on rehabilitation, but simultaneously, you have to own up to the sh*t you did, and you should be punished accordingly. Saying "I was a bad person then and I feel bad about it but I totally donate to women's shelters now" is slapping a band-aid on a severed artery.

Wired wrote:

Sorry on my phone.

Tips.FBI.gov

No worries. The deed is done.

Prederick wrote:

Is Reddit always this full of broken people? Is there an active community there of people saying "Yeah, well, what Sandusky did is in the past they should have let him go?"

Just... Christ.

If I might relate (this tale will not end as darkly as it may appear half-way through)...I've mentioned a time or two that I worked in a youth treatment facility, and I think I've also well established that I'm a bleeding heart sort. We got, for example, super gang involved kids, and I'd hold them accountable when they, say, mimed a drive-by, but at the same time, always in the back of my head was the idea that a lot of these kids came out of a culture I'd never known, and was lucky to have never known. And some of those kids had been sexually abused, and became abusers themselves, and honestly, they disgusted me, but unjustly smug or not, I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to think "You are a broken creature , who had a horror I will never understand inflicted upon you, and in turn you inflicted that same horror on others, you disgust me to my very core, but you have the right to learn how to cross multiply, and who knows, maybe that will be the thing that turns your life around."

But there was one, we were told at our daily lunch briefing/pow-wow/dark humor time that he was a sex offender, and had a 120+ IQ. The teacher giving the briefing dubbed him "scary," which at the time I chalked up to hyperbole.

At the same time, there was a kid who looked up to me because I knew all about old school punk, in her mind at least. She'd ask for absurd interventions--"Whatsername is a Female Doggo, please tell her therapist to order her not to talk to me," etc. One day, as I left anger management, it was "Tell So-an-So not to stare at me, it creeps me out." As we stepped into the hall, I reacted as I always did with a vaguely condescending I'll Get Right On That. But, down at the end of the hall was So-an-So himself.

I am not kidding, or being hyperbolic, and I will go All In with whatever legitimacy chips I have into this kitty to drive the point home, when I say it was a death stare. It was the scene in the movie when time slows down and the music gets ominous. I was hardened by a year or so of teaching liars and exaggerators, but this sh*t was real, he wasn't just "scary," he was frightening. I knew fear, fear of what he might do given the chance. Make me swear on whatever you choose, I will assert that moment convinced me there was true evil. He stared, and I thought "If you were hit by a car today, it would be a service to the world." He was 16, and I thought that, which is more than a little disconcerting to me. But not as much as his glare.

One of my dearest wishes would be to have that moment crystallized in amber, so I could rub the noses of all the Reddit excusors like above in it, as if they were puppies who pissed the rug. They say "He hasn't done it in 10 years!" I say "He's just good at hiding."

Prederick wrote:
El-Taco-the-Rogue wrote:

Oh, and I don't want to seem like I'm in favour of forgiving Sandusky or anything, because I'm not. He's only sorry 'cause he got caught, and so represents a threat.

From what i've read, Sandusky isn't sorry himself, and still maintains his innocence. And it doesn't seem like the guy in the thread is particularly sorry either.

I'd probably be with you if we were talking about a number of other crimes. He could've lied, cheated, stole, could've been a conman supreme.

But this isn't that. This is a dude who methodically, systematically committed multiple sexual assaults. He can begin to earn forgiveness when he's actually begun to repay the immense (and that's being generous) debt he owes to those women. Because this isn't dealing drugs, or theft, it's a serial rapist. Certainly, there should be a focus on rehabilitation, but simultaneously, you have to own up to the sh*t you did, and you should be punished accordingly. Saying "I was a bad person then and I feel bad about it but I totally donate to women's shelters now" is slapping a band-aid on a severed artery.

Oh, I meant more than donating to women's shelters in terms of reparation. I was thinking something along the lines of genuine and (provided the people involved are comfortable with it) public apology, plus targeted attempts to fix the stuff you broke. I didn't realise that Sandusky hadn't apologised, I just presumed that he had because any genuine human being would've. And when children are involved, obviously I'd be in favour of protecting potential victims above every other factor.

As a side-note, what are people's thoughts on Roman Polanski? I struggle with what he did, because I know that it's horrible and wrong, and yet I can't divorce that fact from my knowledge that a) it was forty years ago, and he seems to me to be as sorry for it as he can be without returning to face justice (though this could well be wishful thinking on my part), and b)
he'd been through stuff like the Holocaust (probably because I learned all of that stuff together, in one Wikipedia article). I do sympathise with him to a degree, but it's also possible that my sympathy results from my love of his films preceding my knowledge of his crime.

I think when it comes to culpability, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you are genuinely remorseful for your actions, then you must face justice. I hope the guy on Reddit gets caught. If you commit a crime, you must pay. Otherwise, what's the point of living in civilized society?

Not to defend this person, or the kind of people this particular post seems to be attracting, but reddit is not a monolithic entity, it's a collection of smaller communities, and a rather large collection of them. It attracts all types. If some idiotic rapist wants to out himself as a criminal, I'm not sure that anyone in power on the site should move to take it down, especially if it's getting further admissions out of him.

I've been on reddit for about the same amount of time I've been around GWJ. The site has changed dramatically in my time there, but I've customized my experience to exclude this kind of detritus.

Did anyone ever claim Reddit couldn't get any worse? If there's one thing I've learned about that site, it's that the bottom will never be reached.

Any unmoderated forum will get worse. This has been true since Usenet.

Of course, I'd then assert that they all get worse in different ways. I'm not convinced that the subreddits will save Reddit in the long run; when new user's first impression is of the worst bits, and the worst bits not only survive but have their own little corners where they can fester, you eventually end up with the lowest common denominator. The discussion model is interesting, but we've yet to see a community-moderated system survive contact with the worst impulses of humanity.

I'd venture to say that the next step after Reddit is going to use social graphs and associations to give everyone their own personal subjective rating system, based on what your friends upvote. Which will lead to even more fragmentation, but we're already headed down that road.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Did anyone ever claim Reddit couldn't get any worse? If there's one thing I've learned about that site, it's that the bottom will never be reached.

Yeah, any time it seems they've reached the bottom, we discover it's actually a false bottom.

Leo Tolstoy wrote:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Grubber788 wrote:

On the one hand, I think learning about the psyche of a predator is important, so in principle, I have no qualms about listening to a criminal in order to understand what motivates such a crime.

On the other hand, Reddit is the worst venue for this. Raw quotes from a rapist require an intelligent filter and a proper analysis. I wish I had read about this guy on a blog or a proper news publication. Instead, we get the hivemind going in three or four different directions at once.

Seeing the world raw is better than getting it through a filter. If there's one thing I've learned about life without the Internet, which many people here may be too young to remember, was that there was a huge amount of information and perspectives filtered out by the media on the way to publication.

Funkenpants wrote:

Seeing the world raw is better than getting it through a filter. If there's one thing I've learned about life without the Internet, which many people here may be too young to remember, was that there was a huge amount of information and perspectives filtered out by the media on the way to publication.

I agree with this. Reddit, and by extension the Internet, opens up new vistas of reality that would often go unseen by people. There is a certain price to be paid for being such an open forum, but the benefits of it far outweigh the costs. We should do all that we can to encourage open communication. I would be far worse off if I did not have access to the vast information out there in places like Reddit. I have learned a great deal about the world from it.

ZaneRockfist wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:

Seeing the world raw is better than getting it through a filter. If there's one thing I've learned about life without the Internet, which many people here may be too young to remember, was that there was a huge amount of information and perspectives filtered out by the media on the way to publication.

I agree with this. Reddit, and by extension the Internet, opens up new vistas of reality that would often go unseen by people. There is a certain price to be paid for being such an open forum, but the benefits of it far outweigh the costs. We should do all that we can to encourage open communication. I would be far worse off if I did not have access to the vast information out there in places like Reddit. I have learned a great deal about the world from it.

Yeah. I'd far prefer stuff like this to make it to daylight and potentially be addressed than brushed under the rug because it's not the flavour du jour...

Huh... WTF is going on with all the double posts on GWJ recently?

Something up with the site?

Something up with the site?

Too many vowels!

fangblackbone wrote:
Something up with the site?

Too many vowels!

But my tag compensates for it (let's see if this DPs)....

[edit] HA! Beat you, internet!

My faith in humanity is somewhat restored by the fact that this response is currently sitting at #1 on /r/bestof

I know this will get buried, but I hope you read this.

Unlike everyone else here, I'm not grateful that you posted this. The only way to prepare against someone like you would be to live in fear of any great guy that was kind to introverted girls like me, and I'm not going to live my life in a self-imposed cage, when you should be in a government one. As a women I ALREADY can't go out by myself at night. I can't smile or make eye contact with others while walking down the street without worrying that it will lead to men approaching me. I can't put my drink down at a party, I can't wear a short skirt, I can't nod off on the subway, I can't even be NICE to a guy without the thought of "don't make him think you're leading him on, he might think you 'owe' him later", which is what happened with many of the men in this thread. If you think I'm just crazy paranoid, ask a woman you know what she does in her daily life to protect herself against a sexual assault.

But you didn't confuse the situation. You didn't misinterpret anything. You preyed on innocent girls, probably damaging them for life. And you have the f*cking nerve to say:

I'm somewhat remorseful for what I did to those girls

And what the f*ck, Reddit? You're congratulating him for telling his story even though nothing about this could be used to prevent a rape in the future unless women just STOPPED interacting with men altogether?

In a year I'll have graduated law school. If my interviews in the coming weeks go well I will be graduating with position as a prosecutor, pending bar passage. If I put one man like this OP in prison, I will feel that my life had meaning in this world.
f*ck you.

That thread is completely frightening. The evil in the world...wow......

Maybe I've become jaded, but after seeing all the guys on 4Chan claiming to be serial child rapists for the lulz, I never take posts like this at face value. That being said, I certainly hope the authorities can track him and force him to give up some DNA samples - just in case he's not the ultimate troll.

I'm coming down on the opposite side of this. I like that the guy posted that content, whether or not it was true.

You can't wear short skirts, you can't go out by yourself at night, and you can't smile at random men as a woman, because it attracts the wrong sort of attention.

But most importantly, you can never assume that ANY guy will not rape you, especially the ones you know the best. You do not spend time with any guy alone without incurring this risk, and you should not.

There may be an obscure point in some future society where this kind of caution will no longer be necessary, and it's deplorable that this kind of thinking of behavior exists in the world. The kind of damage it does to women is immense, and it circumscribes what women can and cannot do. It is also very unfortunately very real, and it is better that we know than we don't, so we can take precautions.

It is not a myth. It is not "bad guys." It is not creepy looking guys who catcall you. That nice young, outgoing, popular guy with the self-deprecating sense of humor who likes D&D? Yeah, that guy could be a rapist.

LarryC wrote:

The kind of damage it does to women is immense, and it circumscribes what women can and cannot do. It is also very unfortunately very real, and it is better that we know than we don't, so we can take precautions.

It is not a myth. It is not "bad guys." It is not creepy looking guys who catcall you. That nice young, outgoing, popular guy with the self-deprecating sense of humor who likes D&D? Yeah, that guy could be a rapist.

It hurts men as well to think this way. It gives people this perception that men are monsters that cannot be around women or children because they 'obviously want to sexually abuse them.' People just have to realize that these incidents are the exception, not the rule, and that living in fear like this does no one any good.

ZaneRockfist:

It's not necessarily living in fear. While these incidents are exceptions, you can't really tell so it's safer to just assume that it's a possibility. I don't see this as unfair to men who are not rapists; any situation in which it's possible that you could be considered one is a situation in that society in which I feel that men in general are not doing enough to combat rape and rape culture. The caution is apt and just. I'll add that my own culture is just such a one.

I have to go out of my way to provide security and peace of mind to my women friends (especially from me) just as they have to go out of their way not to behave in certain ways that are deemed risky.

I have a question: say i meet a girl and i think she's nice to me and all that is it now considered offensive if i ask her out? i'm now participating in rape culture because a girl cannot be nice without me taking it as interest?

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