this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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I don’t have a problem with actual pedophiles that are caught in these dragnets.
My problem arises from the lack of rigorous and well-documented investigation into the target before shite starts popping off. As the article pointed out, there is nothing wrong with a 22yo dating an 18yo. And the problem here is a sense of vindictiveness trying to manufacture targets where not all targets are guilty of pedophilia.
So: you want to take a pipe wrench to warm over a pedophile? Make sure there is oodles of evidence that clearly and unambiguously makes the person a pedophile, and sure as shite I will look the other way. But the problem is that there is no self-reinforcing framework in place within the vigilante system to ensure and enforce this threshold of evidence. And without this system, innocent people are going to get hurt or killed.
You and the people upvoting you are gravely mistaken.
This isn't about protecting the innocent.
It is about inflicting unaccountable violence.
I'm going go assume from your instance you're not American, but the big flaw in your logic is if you come after me with a pipe, I'm absolutely within my rights to put holes into you until you stop moving.
Vigalante justice is going to get the people who think they're "doing a good thing" killed, and with zero consequences to the pedos who shoot them.
Perhaps a more adult, informed, nuanced take is of use here?
Sometimes criminals also shoot back at the police that come after them with guns.
In the heat of the moment, the only difference between a vigilante and a cop is the level of training, the assigned equipment, and the choice for the cop to follow well-established procedural rules. It’s only when you zoom out do you see the legal system supporting the cop. But when zoomed in and examining the individual incidents, nothing says the cop can’t come away with added lead, either.
Who said there is anything wrong with this?
How is tbsi even example of pedophile rape? It is two adults.
that's a weird thing to bring NYT tbh
Didn't see NYT editor get caught with videos of rape of his own children on his phone recently?
Maybe NYP?
Tell me you completely failed to grok my criticisms without saying that they flew clear over your head at 10,000m
The point I was making... Is that the article brought a red herring fact that has nothing to do with anything
Why did they bring it up?
It was not a red herring in the least, and it struck to the very core of my own criticisms: while some vigilantes may be very stringent about their own investigations and targets, others may not.
In this example, these vigilantes artificially engineered a target where none was likely to ever exist. They drew the target in using the profile of a perfectly legal 18yo woman, but then turned around and claimed that the target was actually chasing the profile of an 17yo - and illegally young - girl, when he was in fact not doing so.
This was a very clear situation of entrapment by false pretenses.
That's what police already does tbh
Also, if somebody is doing that and gets caught, I doubt they will get any sympathy from society.
Vigelanty justice only works when target deserved like the dead CEO, otherwise it just crime.
You clearly see the world in black-and-white, when it really is made up of shades of grey.
Which means that since you haven’t already gotten the point, all the crayons and construction paper in the world isn’t going to help.
I am sorry somebody said something you didn't like online search ;)
Sadly there are a lot of weirdos who think ANY AGE GAP AT ALL is basically the same as pedophilia
People get called things over fanfics and stuff. Innocent people have plenty to be afraid of
As a writer myself, I can only imagine how many the "All characters are 18 or older unless specifically said otherwise" blurb has saved. I feel like that blurb has become standard in fanworks and web original stories, even when they don't involve sex. If there's even the slightest chance anything that happens could be interpreted as someone's kink, you better believe it's there now.
I actually have one character from a series I wrote ages ago, I kind of abandoned it because I'm not edgy anymore, but I still use the lead character from time to time for art projects; commissions mostly, as she did have a fun character design being an undead gerbil and all.
I've retroactively upped her age from 17 to 19, just to be safe.
Though as I said, I was REALLY edgy when I wrote the book series (I was around 19 myself, I'm 33 now), so this is a change I'm actually happy to have made.
It wasn't pornographic, it was based on the movie "I Spit On Your Grave", only if the lead character was killed and got revenge from beyond the grave, so there was a sex scene with her, but it was intended to be immorally wrong and disturbing... and mostly talked about how this otherwise fearless street tough was suffering.... It was also over quick and not elaborated on too much beyond giving the sense that "This is horrible and she's very much not a fan" as the point of the book was that she died horribly, but was given a chance at revenge in the afterlife. (There wasn't even a content warning, because this was so long ago that "CWs" weren't a thing)
I've actually considered doing a reboot of her story and making it lighter and softer, maybe removing the rape from her death entirely.
Not because of fears of being targeted mind you, but because I like the character I created and would love to tell more stories with her, but I'm not the edgelord I was when I first wrote her and if I wrote about her today would never have handled her story the way I did.