These are really good points to ponder, especially in terms of law enforcement.Grace~~~ wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2019 3:33 pmI'm pretty sure there have been posters here on cpaptalk who would have willingly said they felt "panicked" or "threatened" (or who would have said *anything* that they thought would work) ... if it meant they could cause trouble. I'm guessing some would have loved to get the police sent to arrest Zonker or JNK ... -or one of the other "rough characters" here.
... PARTICULARLY, since there seems to be no repercussions for those purporting to have felt "panicked"? I believe some even feel the need (and RIGHT) to be protected from being "offended"? Maybe being offended feels like being panicked or threatened?
That's what *I* wonder about most. What's an appropriate consequence for the panicked people on the "metoo" train? It seems like they should be the first ones looked at by the authorities to see if they are "dangerous or stupid" ~~~
As far as I can tell, there are absolutely zero consequences for being offended by everything. As a matter of fact, I would posit that there are nothing but social windfalls for them, because victimhood status is a real thing that's beginning to not only have merit, but actual monetary value. The more offended someone is, the more legitimacy they have in an online social environment. In order to see this very thing in action, just hang out on Twitter for awhile, you'll see it in realtime. The whole "verified" and "blue check" given by Twitter holds real value, and the people that have them seem to believe that their opinions somehow matter more than the people that don't. Being online in this day and age is akin to living in a caste society, where the constant complainers matter more to people than the "normal" people who just brush stuff off and get on with their day. Social media is, by all rights, a cancer - and it's metastasizing at a rapid pace.
As law enforcement, we have to be careful with this though. Where do we draw the line between coming down on someone for being "offended" or lying about something in order to harm another person, either personally or monetarily? I'll tell this quick story: A couple of years ago, I got called in to begin investigating a rape claim. I began interviewing the victim and collecting relevant information that was needed for the investigation. During the course of the interview, I asked a simple question: "What were you wearing when this occurred?" At that point, the victim began screaming at me in the interview room. She yelled that her clothes had little to do with what happened and that I was victim-shaming her. I very calmly explained that it had a great amount of relevance, because if I was to get video feeds of her and her aggressor's prior movements (which she demanded that I do), I needed to be able to pick her out in the crowd. Additionally, it would be relevant if I were to identify the location of the incident and procure a search warrant - because I would need to identify possible articles of her clothing as evidence for collection for DNA sampling.
That did not satisfy her, and she made a formal complaint on me. So now the investigator became the investigated, but I continued to work the case, even more stridently now (I didn't know that she made a formal complaint against me at the time). There were some red flags in her story that I identified, but I was able to get the video, and through that, the location of the incident, and through THAT, the actual identity of the aggressors. Now I had identifying information of the persons who she alleged raped her. I told her this and her immediate response was "...now that I think about it, I don't want you to investigate this anymore." There was a reason for that - because as I identified, it never happened, and video clearly showed that.
We did not charge her with lying, fabrication, or anything for that matter. We have a strong displeasure in charging a possible victim with a crime, even when we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was a lie and the incident never happened. Now, I told you all that in order to tell you this: If we continue on this path, it will do nothing but teach people that they can do whatever they want, fabricate any story they want, tell any lie they want - with zero consequences and zero repercussions. This is a dangerous game we're playing, and it will only get worse...but make no mistake, there are many who treat it just as a I called it: A game.
Unfortunately, this "game" has a very real chance of actually destroying a completely innocent person's life.
Edit: I'd like to quickly add something to this. This phenomenon that we're seeing, people essentially making up crimes that didn't happen, that only happens in a society that is extremely safe and productive. Our society has been safe for so long that people need to make believe bad things in order to justify their position, which is usually ideological in nature, because there isn't really enough "bad things" going on around them that they can point to. What that means as a whole, I'll leave for others to decide, but I have my opinions. Am I saying that crime doesn't happen? Of course not, evident by my very profession, all I'm saying is that since there isn't ENOUGH crime happening, some people need to birth it out of thin air in order to gain social standing by being victimized.
- who knew?)
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... and was so impressed with your thoughts. - Most of my friends think I can't even turn on a computer. 
