Possible 8yrs in prison for video game comment

After 911 common sense was replaced by procedure and policies.

From now on common sense will be referred to as "Rare Sense".

I guess watch what you say. Even a vague, non-specific, non-imminent absurd fake-threat can get you locked up for 5 months. The thought police are out in force. Way to go America. Way to live up to our ideals.

@fuzzybunny566: I can understand it perfectly. I come from the internet like most of us here, a place so cold and unforgiving that if you suggest you are going to kill yourself people ask you for your stuff and tell you to take pictures. The vast majority either got used to it or left.

The idea that someone can come into the very same place and not only act sensitive, but also get someone jailed for it is completely alien. It is like going to the middle east and beating the shit out of someone for having two wives.

On one hand, I do agree that sarcasm is very hard to detect online. This may be why I act more formal around people I've just started talking to, because they don't know me well enough yet to know when I'm serious, and when I'm kidding. Looking at something someone has written at pure face value may make them into someone they're actually not.

On the other hand, there are people both online and off who believe that it's okay to, on a regular basis, threaten people, and as long as they punctuate it with "Just kidding!" or don't actually carry out the threat, they believe it's fine. It's not. Even empty threats shouldn't be made. I don't understand why it's supposed to be funny to begin with.

I'm not sure whether I agree with the prison sentence or not yet. I think I need more of what went on to make a more firm opinion.

The kid's an idiot. I don't care where you are, internet, anonymous, whatever. You don't talk like that.

There should be accountability for this stuff but I don't agree with the proposed sentence. I refuse to defend what this boy said though. It's very, very simple to teach your children early on that what you say online is just as important as what you say in front of a camera or face to face. Culture will catch up to having the internet soon. Unfortunately this won't be the last time this sort of thing happens.

@reisz said:

Thanks dad.

A night in jail for joking with his FRIEND?

@clonedzero said:

No, a night in jail because if you're going to punish somebody for talking shit you might as well go all the way.

I'm not American in any event, so what Americans do to other Americans isn't really any of my business.

In the immortal words of Frank Zappa: "They're only words."

Rolling in his grave I'm sure.

That's insane. At most the kid needs therapy.

Sending him to prison for 8 years is the real crime. The fact he has already been in jail for 5 months for some dumb comments is horrifying.

What's our country becoming?

Oh this is nothing. The fun is just getting started.

Really doubt this is gonna go all the way through and in the end this kid's family is probably gonna be able to sue the state.

This is disgusting. Hope he manages to get compensated somehow.

I said something early but one last thing...

An 8 year sentence, even if he doesn't serve it all, will do nothing beneficial to society at large and will put his life in a really shitty position that he'll likely never get out of. Nothing positive comes from such a silly, unnecessary sentence.

@herbiebug: Bond is at half a million dollars.

Texas is big.

...This stupid jerk shouldn't be sitting in jail.

I'm going to shoot up the Giant Bomb offices.

lol

jk.

not really.

WAIT, jk.

But a Canadian woman who saw the post looked up Carter’s Austin address, determined that it was near an elementary school, and called the police.

What is some random Canadian woman that is looking at some TroLoLlolol post able to figure out some kid's address?

Thing is, dude wasn't even shit talking. He was making a hyperbolic joke to a friend... I mean shit, Jeff talks like that in front of a camera every damn day.

This is a real weird topic - freedom of speech shouldn't cover retardisms (which this clearly is), but this seems excessive. If anything, it seems like he's being made a lesson of - making him an example of for others to see and fear. In the case of the GB offices, I would think it was in incredibly poor taste (though shooting up a school is in worse taste, considering...) but I don't think that deserves jail time, maybe a permanent ban. Someone needs to put such people in their place and say, "That shit is NOT funny, and shut the fuck up", preferably a burly biker guy so it sticks, but a possible 8 year jail time will NOT teach this guy to think before he speaks - if anything, it will be the exact reason why he retaliates in the future. This is slightly different, but has certain analogs - this is how terrorists are made: through oppression and misguided "lesson teaching", people become fed up with the system and decide to act. There's no "cause" to become a terrorist for in this case, but there's definitely a reason to harbor hostility towards the system that fucked his life.

That's ridiculous. What he said was stupid, but I hear far FAR worse things coming out of peoples mouths online. This kid doesn't deserve 8 years just for that.

I really don't think a jury would send a kid to jail over this. At least I hope not.

Real world repercussions for online bullshit is is all and well, but those consequences should be in perspective. Losing access to the services you were using when you acted out (like losing access to LoL or something, which STILL seems excessive for this), etc. Jail time is fucking ridiculous for something like this.

inb4 'with PRISM, nobody will even have to report the comments, you'll just get swiped away by the government'

@ch3burashka: Yet you probably wouldn't bat an eyelash if someone made a sarcastic comment about africa, since nobody ever does. 20 kids died? That many would probably die if you threw a loaf of moldy bread on the ground in some places in Africa. Your new Iphone was most likely put together by a sweatshop child in China but you never stopped to care, yet here you are preaching about how others should think of this isolated school shooting.

If you people aren't going to put the same amount of effort or more towards the consistent problem of children in Africa who are forced to kill their parents, raped, and then forced to do dangerous jobs such as finding a path through a minefield as you are towards some isolated incident involving a psychopath shooting up a school, then you might as well just stop caring completely.

This is just like that factory collapse in Bangladesh. Over 1000 people died while doing what would be considered slave labor to feed their families because it is cheaper for the owners to just let their employees die than it is to maintain a safe working environment. Guess what? Nobody cared. More factories are being used with the same conditions and it is going to happen again. Yet here we are, throwing away massive amounts of money and liberties just because some psychopath decided to shoot up 20 children at a school.

He used a culturally relevant topic to disprove his friends allegations of him being crazy. It does not lack taste, even if you are a victim of a school shooting there is no reason to get upset because he used it in a sarcastic manner. Getting any more upset about it makes you a sensationalist hypocrite.

I was hoping this was a joke, but it looks like that's not the case. This is really stupid and Giantbomb, Polygon, etc should be reporting it. All that stupid outrage that gamers had for X1 and the ME3 ending should be multiplied and spent here.... since this actually matters. This kid should sue the state and the woman who reported him.

It's kind of pointless to argue any of this in theory when all that matters is looking at what the people involved were doing and thinking. That comment was not pointed at any individual and was likely in fact sarcastic in all manner of interpretation. There are plenty of reasons for others to not get excused for using jk or lol at the end of an inflammatory or threatening statement but as it was in the abstract, self-deprecating, and in the context of the conversation likely sarcastic, then a rather rudimentary investigation should have demonstrated no threat from the boy. I would guess then that in light of no real threat the entire case is predicated upon setting an example in light of Sandy Hook.

After all the woman who called would likely haven't given nearly as much of a shit if he didn't happen to live "near an elementary school" (we don't have details on what that means or how close he actually does live). That and police made an arrest a month after the so-called incident which really defeats the purpose of the arrest if the idea was to prevent something or take him "off the streets" as it were. By that point he could have easily done it and at this point it's really more about figuring out if the comment can be tied to any motive or evidence (which I'm guessing no).

If there was history of school disobedience, threat to other students, history of bullying, ownership or availability of firearms in the home, history of mental illness, or any other indication that they could turn to criminality then sure, there is every reason to be concerned. But even if a threat could be linked, the proper response is to suss out the underlying problem, and hopefully get him some help.

As it happens, this is another typical case of people lusting for "justice" in the punitive sense rather than the reformative sense. The accusation is understandable, not reasonable, but understandable given people's tendency to let their emotions and irrationality (this thread not excepted) get the better of them. The responsibility is in the legal side to investigate the case and determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that this statement would/was in fact lead to a safety compromise. As he's been serving 5 months of jail time, I would think the prosecution has a pretty good case. Otherwise the state is going to have a stink of a civil suit on its hands after he's been acquitted.

uhhhh anyone else kinda freaked out that this kid has to go through all this bull shit just because of something he said on the internet? I just don't understand why something as stupid as this is even on the radar to begin with, let alone being punished for it.

Amen.

I'm just wondering how long it'll take americans to smarten up and go the way of Turkey to sort out their government, I hope they'll realize soon that it's them that control the country, not the corrupted idiotic government.

Pretty much this. Not saying he isn't an idiot, but damn. If they did this for everyone we'd all be doing life in jail right now.

Just more of America going bat shit insane about any type of gun threat. This is getting kind of ridiculous. I was reading an article the other day about how a school wanted a deaf boy to change her name because "her name in sign language looked too much like a gun" AND THEY'RE FUCKING SERIOUS.

http://now.msn.com/school-says-deaf-boys-name-sign-looks-too-much-like-a-gun

Free speech?

Obviously this poor fucking kid's life is being ruined to prove some douchebag's point. I'm gonna shoot up 7 schools and rape the dead bodies (or maybe fuck the barely hanging on ones to death) , but I'm in Canada so I have actual free speech haha

@mideonnviscera: Don't let the Canadian woman who reported this kid, hear you say that. She'll report you. She might even be... your own momma

Only in America.

We're in America. Free speech doesn't exist here.

Just to reiterate, 8 years in jail is enough to destroy a person's life. We have people willing to destroy a young man's life over a comment, made in jest, in a competitive online videogame. I don't think I even need to explain how ludicrous this is. At most, the whistleblower should be examined to make sure she doesn't cry wolf over innocuous comments again.

@thatdutchguy: I wish that were true, but unfortunately the UK gets pretty ridiculous about things said over the internet.

He shouldn't be in jail at all. Totally insane. These laws are going to harass innocent, harmless people far more often than they're going to prevent mass shooters or terrorists from acting. If the only criteria for being locked up for months in wait of a drawn-out, unfair, and expensive trial process is blurting out dumb shit online, then we've got a serious problem on our hands.

His comment was totally outrageous, for sure, but that's not the point at all. Was it a serious threat? Quite obviously to me, and it seems to everyone else on this thread, no. Nobody prominent is going to want to stick up for him though because it would be viewed as antagonizing the families of Newtown and such.

It was a really dumb comment, but this is absolutely ridiculous. You can clearly tell it was just him being dumb, with no malicious intent behind it. People say crap like that in a competitive situation ALL THE TIME. Man, I hope that he doesn't get convicted. That would be awful.

“Justin was the kind of kid who didn’t read the newspaper,” said Jack Carter. “He didn't watch television. He wasn't aware of current events. These kids, they don’t realize what they’re doing. They don’t understand the implications. They don't understand.”

Sorry, that statement there tell me A LOT more is going on than just a single comment online. The police probably had to bring him in to be questioned and in all likelihood transcripts of his other play session, what he might have said to the police, and how he acted is what has him in jail now. Something just does not add up to what the father is saying, there is far more to the story.

He definitely needed to be punished for what he said but 8 years is ridiculous, it's almost as if they are charging him for attempting said crime.

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This is really fucked up. With that said, there's absolutely no way the dude will be found guilty. No plans, no access to guns/explosives. But the fact that he had to spend his 19th birthday behind bars because of a really stupid thing he said online, playing LoL no less, is outrageous. He also followed up by saying lol, jk. I mean come on.

The way you prevent tragic school shootings is by getting those troubled kids help, having some form of an organization that deals with the issue. Not by investigating what everyone says (thinks?) every second of the day.

Also, signed.

Oh, and I'm planning on blowing up the White House. *awaits imprisonment*

Your reply was the United Nations treaty? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I should show this post to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Brazil, China, and Cuba. I'm sure they'll all get a good laugh.

By the Constitution of the United States of America, free speech means FREE speech. Moreover, the Anti-Defamation League has gone to great lengths to ensure that it means EVERYONE, including (whether we like it or not) the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Westboro Baptist Church, and other forms of speech we may not necessarily want to hear.

Unfortunately, thanks to modern government and their love of censorship, free speech is becoming less and less relevant everyday.

Seriously? Even without the context and what he said after that comment is dripping with sarcasm, it would literally be so if that was possible.

I've said worse than that, and I'm a young man (43 y.o.). I couldn't help but notice that This took place in Texas which begs the question: was he black?

@jakob187: The ADL is not the ACLU.

Why should he be punished? If saying tacky things is illegal then about 60% of people on the internet should be locked up. It was a lame joke, but he has the right to say it. If he said this and they found guns/plans in his house then that would be a different story, but he clearly wasn't serious, especially since he mentioned eating all the kids freaking hearts.