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Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how I feel about this case.

On one hand, Carter made a horrible threat about shooting up a school. Whether he followed his comments with 'lol' and 'jk' or not, he still made a really ugly, juvenile threat. Whether he follows the news or not, he still had to have some inkling that what he said was going to get him in a whole lot of trouble. I mean, he was 18 years old when he said that...

On the other hand, he celebrated his 19th birthday behind bars and it seems like such an unbelievable waste to lock up people that young. The penal system isn't exactly famous for rehabilitation, rather, many people come out of prison far worse (and more screwed up) than they were when they went inside.

All I can hope is that he is offered a plea bargain that calls for severe amounts of therapy, community service and probation.

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If you think an 18 year old needs therapy, community service, and probation for a poor-taste sarcastic comment (the kind of thing teenagers do all the time), you are actually a horrible person.

EDIT: Sorry for the personal insult. This really bothers me. I said a lot of stupid shit when I was young (still do, actually), and I couldn't imagine being prosecuted for it.

I'm sorry to have offended you, but seriously, he was 18 years old when he made that comment. I said some incredibly stupid things when I was 18, but nothing quite of that magnitude. I mean, shooting up a school and eating their still beating hearts??

At minimum, the young man could use some anger management training. I think that probation beats the heck out of jail time. And, I'd argue that community service is good for just about any teenager (even those who haven't been convicted of anything).

Have you ever been to 4chan? Is the real problem here that he made a stupid remark on facebook instead of anonymously in the depths of the internet?

He was obviously trying to make a joke about how 'insane' he is, and came up with some prose to try and show it. His reference for 'insane' was a school shooter cannibal.

I don't really understand how any of this could be construed as anything other than just poor taste humor.

I don't understand this critique. Just because there is a large community of people on the Internet who say horrible and stupid things doesn't mean that those things are excusable. The better argument is to say that having poor taste and being socially inept are not criminal offenses, except in extreme circumstances (shouting "fire" in a theater)

Honestly, I think this is going to fall into one of those "it depends on your audience" statements.

If a popular greeting between people of the same culture was "F* you!" except the long form of that, or even something more grotesque (to you), is it wrong to, if you're a part of that community, say those things to one-another?

The internet, if anything, has created a large collection of very callous 20-somethings that can, off the cuff, say some really, really awful things, to a person that's not a part of their community. Huge parts of Reddit and 4chan are evidence of this sort of change in callousness.

Now, this particular instance of what he said, given what's happened in schools lately, was in terrible taste; and, if this is a pattern for him, he may need some real counseling, but the criminality of his statements is very suspect.

Long story short: what people are saying in normal conversation between each other is changing to things that older people, in part even like myself, find repulsive; but, it's normal and not-rude in their vernacular and it's a strong judgement call to call them socially inept and having poor taste - just different ones, and maybe "socially inept", if only in your social circles; but, when those statements cross the line to real threats or extreme circumstances, then yes, things must be done, sometimes through the judicial system.

The anger management training he could use is primarily, I think, because this person left the confines of the game and posted a comment, presumably in a place that the other person could see it.

In the physical world, this would be akin to someone saying, "Dude, you're a jerk" (or harsher) and then you, some time later, write over all the whiteboards in his office and the offices around his many explicatives and angry faces.

Someone's got a bit of an uncontrolled temper.

In the game is one thing, since it wandered OUT of the game that's ... a bit awkward. Deserving of criminal charges, I don't think so; but, needing help? I think yes.

> I don't really understand how any of this could be construed as anything other than just poor taste humor.

That is certainly one possibility, but it's not the only one. Sometimes people tell you exactly what they will do, and then go do it.

In fact there was a school shooting in Virginia just like that a couple of months ago, where the shooter posted his intention to 4chan first.

I would be very surprised if the sequence of events that lead up to that was a sarcastic remark after being called 'insane' followed by 'lol jk'. Context is everything.

Not only that, I could even go so far as to see the police showing up, the kid saying 'no, really, it was a joke', and then the whole thing ending right there, and I wouldn't cry foul. But prosecuting this kid for making 'terroristic threats' is a monumental failure of the justice system.

EDIT: Policeman friend of mine just quoted the Penal Code 22.07 Terroristic Threat verbage for me:

1. Threatening to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property 2. With intent to a.) cause a reaction of any type by an official or volunteer agency organizied to deal with emergencies b.) place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury c.)prevent or interrupt the occupation or use of a building, room, place of assembly, place to which the public has access, place of employment or occupation, aircraft, automobile or other form of conveyance or other public place

In his opinion, the kid's actions did not meet the criteria to cause an arrest, much less a prosecution, under this law due to the lack of evidence of intent.

Well, I don't support prosecuting him by any means, or arrest. I don't mind the police investigating to see if there was any intent to act for real though, but the police can do that investigation without him sitting in a jail cell.

It's hard for me to take seriously anyone who suggests they're going to eat a human heart. Even without "lol" and "jk", I read that and I think, "Oh, that's a joke", not: "what a horrible, ugly threat".

I find this attitude dismaying because to me it just screams out "I AM SCARED!!!" You are suggesting that society place a permanent mark on this young man's criminal record and force him into course of treatment designed to change who he is because one sentence he wrote puts him in the category of "different than you ever were." You know nothing about this person except that he is in jail for one sentence which was a joke; this is not right even if you feel the joke was in poor taste. If you think that a person's making one joke you don't like is enough information about that person to prescribe such dire consequences then you should seriously reevaluate the way you think about the world around you. Supposing a heckler had shouted to George Carlin that he was insane in the middle of a performance, and he responded the same way this young man did -- would you be calling for the same consequences as you are for the young man in the article? A disproportionate reaction to something like this is the grown-up equivalent of being frightened of monsters under your bed at night, and nobody deserves to have his or her life ruined because of it.

I guess you're one of those who would have boiled Jonathan Swift alive for his Modest Proposal.

I am now 30 years old and I still make sarcastic jokes that are worse than this boys comment.

Anyways, is there a list of safe jokes available that has been approved by the US Führer or local Gauleiter? I'd just like to be safe when I visit friends in the US.

Your argument is that because his vocabulary is far more depraved than your own punishment is deserved? Why does he need to have any punishment at all? I thought in America you can say whatever you like and that is an inalienable right.

I am sure there are plenty of people who say some really horrible things in jest that would shock you. Have you heard of the joke 'The Aristocrats'? You think the people who tell that joke need anger management to bring them to a more moderate level of behaviour that society can accept?

I cannot to go on, the fact that people think the way you do without seeing what is so deeply wrong with that mindset upsets me too much. It's a sad world we live in.

>> I mean, shooting up a school and eating their still beating hearts??

It's a completely ridiculous comment and I am astounded that you are taking it seriously.

Indeed. I seriously doubt whether such a threat is even physically possible.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." (attribution disputed per wiki)

As I read it, it was not a threat. It was sarcasm. Maybe you need sarcasm tags, but it was trash talk.

Observe. "I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts".

Look I just said the same thing that kid did, but now it's a quote of someone else's speech. Did I just make a terrorist threat? No, because the context clearly shows that it's not a threat. Just as his context showed that it was not serious.

> therapy, community service and probation.

Joking about eating schoolchildren's beating hearts does not make someone insane. Teenagers make those kinds of jokes all the time.

I cannot believe you're serious... You believe that people should go to jail for the things that they say, really? It doesn't matter if it was tacky or juvenile or vulgar.

When you were a teenager, you didn't do and say things that flew in the face of convention just for the sake of making noise? Saying the things that you know were verboten, just to get the reaction?

First, I don't want this young person to go to jail - quite the opposite, in fact.

Second, when I was a teenager, my Dad was a police officer and my Mom worked in a Catholic church. I rebelled hard and got in trouble for wonderful things like wearing a Bad Religion shirt to my Catholic school, or writing obscenely long, self important indictments of Christianity in Christian Ethics exams, or driving at extremely high speeds around the school parking lot, listening to the Ramones and playing "Scare hockey players."

My very first, formative experience with computers was actually playing Shadowrun on a BBS. Had I gone to high school post-Columbine, that game would have gotten us all kicked out of school and likely thrown in jail. Thankfully, nobody ever found out what we did or the kinds of things we said online.

I was an especially pretentious teenager and fell under the guise of 'straight edge punk', so I absolutely shunned drugs and alcohol and stopped being friends with people who drank or got high. In retrospect, that pretentiousness likely kept me out of serious trouble and I'm quite glad for it.

Long story short, I rebelled hard and was friends with many kids who rebelled equally as hard, or even harder. Unfortunately, in the 18 years since I graduated from high school, a shocking number of the people who got me through high school have died because of drugs and suicide.

So yes, I rebelled. And yes, I did many things solely for shock value. However, I also lost some really good people because we didn't get the help that some of us (myself included) needed. Consequently, I take the view that some things are far enough away from the norms to justify further intervention.

"whole lot of trouble" and "whole lot of legal trouble" are massively different things. I'm not sure how you can not be sure how you feel about this case, since it's the latter, not the former.

I'm having trouble telling whether you are serious here. You seem like you are, but you're saying you rebelled by playing Shadowrun, speeding, and not drinking or doing drugs?

I don't want to be condescending but I want you to consider that your perspective might need some calibration. Most professional working adults I know today still do far worse than that, and nobody really considers it rebellious.

Likewise, this act was not rebellious in the least. Watch any comedy central roast and they say worse things all night. Personally, I think people who are afraid of these statements need therapy.

I'm having trouble telling whether you are serious here. You seem like you are, but you're saying you rebelled by playing Shadowrun, speeding, and not drinking or doing drugs?

Canada is a different kind of place, I guess.

In a free society, you shouldn't have to have an inkling that saying a politically incorrect joke can get you in trouble.

The prosecutor should completely dismiss this, not offer him a slap on the wrist plea bargain.

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