I keep seeing videos lately of grown men posing as children online and baiting individuals to public spaces and either assaulting them or recording/exposing them for content. While I don’t mind the idea of a predator being outed, the idea of grown adults posing as children online seems unsavory to me. Especially if their end goal isn’t to protect children, and is to provide content for views.
Obviously, being a child predator is wildly immoral and illegal and their actions are not what’s being debated.
Vigilantism is never the answer. In pretty much every case the vigilante has far less noble motivations than they claim to have. Just look at the constant screeching about “groomers” by US conservatives.
The question is, would these people be predators if people didn’t bait them into it? If they are doing this for “content” or some sense of moral judgement, then they have an incentive to push people into these things more than they originally would.
I can imagine the following scenario being common (to the point at which I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a tutorial for it somewhere):
- Find someone online who has serious mental health problems or cognitive impairment.
- Emotionally manipulate them into saying or doing something nasty that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
- Invite them somewhere public and humiliate then online for content.
- Congratulations! Not only have you managed to ruin someone’s life, you’ve done it in a way that you get to feel morally superior as well.
Target some marginalised group as well, and you can also justify hatred towards them and show everyone that your group is better!
Yes.
For two reasons.
First: Two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
Second: The police has far more resources to verify suspicions than any vigilante has. The risk of acting on false accusations or bad dats is just way too big. Also if the predator has had multiple victims a vigilante may miss that and never giving all vicitms closure or compensation.
This happened to someone I know.
Don’t know the full details, but apparently he ended up going to prison for it even though nothing actually happened, as obviously there wasn’t an actual child involved.
He’s kind of a fuck up, but mostly just kinda stupid and with an alcohol problem.
Is he a predator and therefore one of the most evil people on the planet? I don’t think so.
He’s a fuck up who’s never had success with women, and someone reached out and was kind and interested in him.
idk how to feel about it tbh. I know a lot of people online will just blanket say he’s a monster, but it’s different when it’s a real person you know.
I’ve got a fuck up friend who goes for young women because he is actually on their level. Legal young, but young. He would easily respond to a pretty 15 yo without asking for age.
It feels gross that child rape is compelling stakes for TV entertainment.
That’s why you don’t like it. Because at the end of the day, this content isn’t being produced to save kids, it’s so you have something to watch on a Tuesday.
