Post 7. Work is not fun, what say you?
Post 8. Two more to go!
Post 9. I really appreciate your donating to a great charity!
Post 10. Winning!
Donate to this charity please: http://www.cfsomd.org/
Ok, that was pretty funny. I’ll do it. 
Thanks for being a good sport about my admittedly childish string of posts 
In my defense, I was kind of drunk and it seemed funny. You could have really called me out for being a stupid jerk.
Thanks
Because she was intentionally manipulating him to do so. She clearly knew that she could push his buttons in a particular way, and for whatever sick reason, she chose to push them in an attempt to have him die.
But let’s step away from the specifics of this case. I am sure we can both agree that there are uncountable numbers of manipulative relationships that result in pretty extreme behavior. Just a few examples: drug addicts somehow know extremely well how to play people around them to give them things to help them feed their habit. Children learn very early how to push their parents’ buttons to get what they want. Young people fall in with bad influences (boys who get the stripper girlfriend, girls who get the cheating boyfriend) who manage to wrap otherwise decent kids around their little fingers. Cops sometimes get people to confess to crimes that somebody couldn’t possibly have done. Terrorists convince teenagers that blowing themselves up is an amazing thing to do. Spies convince sources to risk their lives to steal secrets. Certain political leaders have convinced millions upon millions of people to do absolutely crazy and repellent things – just think about the Cambodian genocide, in which one out of four people in that country ended up dead.
I have the sense that you think that it is only dumb people who can fall pray to psychological manipulation. That’s just not the case. Again, think about the number of alcoholics in this country, and how many people get manipulated to help them with their disease: are they all stupid? No, it doesn’t have anything to do with brains. CEOs, university professors, Silicon Valley gurus, famous generals, etc. have all been fucked with by family members with addiction.
The fundamental techniques here, of using leverage, fear, intimidation, rewards, affection, humiliation, and so on, to get someone to do things they wouldn’t normally do is done ALL THE TIME around the world. This girl used those techniques on one person to a tragic end – that doesn’t mean that she could do the same thing to you. But I will bet you that there is someone in your life, that if they woke up evil one day, could push your buttons in bad ways, too, to make you do something that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Yeah, it might not be suicide. Maybe it is abandoning your friends, breaking some law for them, or something else – but don’t kid yourself that smart people are immune from being manipulated.
I agree with all of this. And you notice, all of them require a physical presence.
No, I don’t think this at all. I think people who continue to read toxic text messages are dumb.
I don’t doubt that smart people can be manipulated. I doubt that someone is incapable of NOT reading text messages. A person can’t be bullied by text, because it is trivial to put an end to it.
How is this different than a charismatic cult leader urging their followers to commit suicide? Or, as I suspect, it’s the same to you, and that person should not be punished, either.
That’s a nonsense criteria. People get taken in phone scams all the time, like the current IRS “you’re about to be arrested!” scam. Not to mention the role radio played in the Rwandan genocide:
And yet, the evidence is overwhelming and conclusive that he WAS bullied by text. The only debate here is whether the law allows for punishment of his harasser.
Do you have any examples of a charismatic cult leader using text messages to convince his followers to commit suicide?
I fail to see how it was bullying if he willingly read the texts.
Words are words. What’s the difference? Is it because you can ignore a text? Well, I could ignore what you’re saying just as easily. If this is a free speech issue, certainly it shouldn’t make a difference.
You don’t see the difference between a physical presence that forces you to do something under threat (implicit or explicit) of harm or punishment, and a text message from a person 1000s of miles away?
If you were physically in front of a kid and told him “Eat that dog turd”, the threat of physical violence for non-compliance is there.
If you were 1000s of miles away and texted a kid “Go eat a dog turd”, there is no threat of physical violence. You can be easily and safely ignored.
The term people are looking for is “diminished capacity.” People are using toddlers as a metaphor for the victim’s vulnerability to psychological manipulation due to his state of diminished capacity to resist.
I have no strong opinion on this issue, but wanted to pin this down for you, since the back-and-forth was making the thread hard to follow without adding anything.
Let’s say I willingly pick up the phone and talk to one of those fake IRS agents, and I end up giving him thousands of dollars. Was I not defrauded because I willingly talked to the person?
I think you’re being overly literal on the meaning of bullying. In this context, nobody is arguing that the young woman was threatening to inflict physical harm on him. (See my previous comments on how you ought to drop the straw man arguments.) She was clearly using psychological means to torment him.
Others often use psychological means to elicit desired behavior, such as cases in which police interrogation methods that do not involve any threat of physical force at all have been known to produce confessions despite there being no way that the person could have committed the crime.
You seem to be in denial that psychological pressure exists if it isn’t backed by a threat of force. How does that make you feel?
Of course. If the woman had defrauded him some way, then I would agree that she should be charged with fraud. But I thought we were talking about bullying.
Perhaps we can first try to agree what we all mean by “bullying”?
What are some of these methods? Do they involve the police texting someone telling them to confess? Or are the confesses physically located in the police station?
Is psychological pressure considered “bullying”?
Let’s try this. Say your girlfriend, or wife, or partner, or whatever said to you “If you don’t rob that 7-11, I’m breaking up with you”
Then, you go and rob the 7-11 because you don’t want to break up. Do you think she should be charged with a crime? Did she bully you into doing it?
If one can be manipulated by wireless communication to the pecuniary benefit of someone else, why is it impossible to be manipulated by wireless communication for the twisted fantasy of someone else? In either case, the victim can in theory just ignore the communication. But one scenario you deem criminal, the other you deem impossible.
Inuse the broadest connotation of preying on a weak person for someone’s amusement or benefit, and all similar situations.
What does it matter? You keep bringing up physical location but the only reason I have seen you post on why you think it is important is for the threat of physical force. But you also admit that people can be manipulated if they aren’t in physical proximity, so I’m not sure why you keep going back to this point that you sometimes acknowledge is unimportant.
It can be bullying, or used for other purposes.
Depends on the context of the threat and the mindset of both me and the other person. I could see it possibly being solicitation of a felony, blackmail, or conspiracy, depending on how the statutes are written. But I couldn’t offer a more firm opinion just based on you saying my hypothetical SO uttering one sentence.
Well, now you have to define “preying” as used in this context. Is sending a mean text message “preying”? What about calling them names on a public message board? Is that “preying”
Yes, morons can be manipulated if they aren’t in physical proximity. And they are morons if they listen or are “bullied” by someone sending texts. You can’t be bullied if you can easily ignore the bully. That’s my point.
Fine. Your SO texts you everyday “I’m not going to have sex with you until you rob the 7-11” Everyday your SO texts you this. And your SO doesn’t have sex with you. Eventually, you rob the 7-11 so your SO has sex with you. Did your SO commit a crime?
I don’t dispute these assertions. But are you claiming these are, or should be, crimes prosecutable in a court of law, for which someone could be imprisoned?!? I certainly don’t believe so.
Kind of funny that you used this technique (which I consider perfectly legitimate BTW) of argumentation via thought-experiment questions. Manson made a legitimate and really key point the same way, which you evaded with your meta-objection:
The “key point” I refer to here is the difference between texting “Send me $1000” 1000 times, and texting “I am an IRS agent; send me $1000 or go to prison”. To my way of thinking, the latter is fraud (assuming it is a lie), while the former is not.
Everything I have seen about this case indicates that the defendant was sincere (or not provably insincere) in everything she said to the young man who ended his life. How can a collection of entirely sincere statements possibly constitute fraud?