Comment by nathanaldensr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nathanaldensr | Hacker News Reader

Suicide is sad and tragic. That said, calling this "murder" is gross hyperbole and very selfish. How is the person speaking for the dead qualified to make this accusation? Where does the line of personal responsibility begin? If every grievance in one's life can be blamed on others, then we will all end up executed by those who would cast judgment. By the author's logic, it's not a stretch to call every suicide "murder."

To the author: Yes, it is different than murder. Murder is when one person kills another knowingly and maliciously. Bullying and harassment, no matter how disgusting, is not murder. Close, yes, perhaps, but still undeserving of the hyperbole.

This is not to say those harassing and bullying (if that did happen; I have not looked into the author's claims, nor do I follow the BSNES/Higan community) should not be held to account.

As a culture, we must fight against this tide of hyperbole in every argument and every disagreement. It leads to one thing and one thing only: violence. We don't need to fracture society further by casting everyone who does bad things as a "terrorist." There are spectrums of crime and punishment; it's not binary.

> How is the person speaking for the dead qualified to make this accusation?

How are you? You clearly assert this isn't murder. Convincing someone to commit suicide has at least garnered a manslaughter charge in the US.

edit: I also fall squarely in the "this is murder" side of this. This isn't even close to the first time KiwiFarms has done this - there is obvious intent, they seek people out to harass who are unstable, repeatedly. If you directly aim to kill someone, and your actions lead to their death, that is murder - a knife or a gun or doxxing as the weapon isn't relevant.

It’s probably best to address concerns about hyberole and the increasing contrast of language in a neutral forum - for example a blog post unconnected with any particular recent event.

The grieving don’t care for the topic and it comes across as callous, however well intended or correct you may be.

As a culture perhaps we should fight against the type of negativity and hate that kiwifarms revels in. We should be saying that sort of behaviour is not ok and the people that undertake it are a real problem, whatever label you apply to them.

Let's start with the negativity and hate that Twitter and Facebook revel in, first. If you want to solve the problem, let's start with the biggest offenders.

They won't, they actually just want a monopoly on the harassment and negativity. They're either pretending or they have a serious case of cognitive dissonance.

Very weird that the "harmful people should be banned" crowds ALWAYS makes an exception for self-admitted pedophiles. It just goes to show that those clout-chasing liars don't care about making communities safer, they're harmful sadists who want to control and manipulate others so that they can freely abuse people themselves.

I've talked to Near personally a year ago when he reached out to me and all I have to say is how fucking dare you.

Okay great, can you give confirmation of his identity and death? If he's dead then it can do no harm. Let's put a name to his accomplishments as well as this crime. Otherwise all we have are hollow accusations being thrown around.

Before you get all high and mighty, just keep in mind that even though you claim to have known the man but none of us did. I'm just asking for something solid so we can have actual confirmation. You can't punish someone for murder without first proving that a murder took place. If the suicide took place days ago, it should be simple to confirm.

If you don’t know the facts of the case, as you admit, how can you judge whether his language is hyperbole or not?

> if that did happen; I have not looked into the author's claims, nor do I follow the BSNES/Higan community

Perhaps you shouldn't be trying to "both sides" this, then.

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