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What do you do when someone pranks you?

Checkmite said:
FWIW, I've just seen unsubstantiated claims that the prank in question involved accusing the target of being a wanted sex offender and pretending to put them under a "citizen's arrest". Allegedly, the prankster has other videos on his channel where he performs this "prank" on people.

I still don't think it justifies shooting the prankster, but if true it might represent an angle for an attempted legal defense.
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From Scrutable,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUccLZPRGjk

I've watched the first 20 seconds and it looks like a big bloke and his sidekick are trying to pock a fight with a stranger who is a lot smaller.
 
Checkmite said:
FWIW, I've just seen unsubstantiated claims that the prank in question involved accusing the target of being a wanted sex offender and pretending to put them under a "citizen's arrest"...
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If so, and the prankster declared he was placing the shooter under arrest, then the shooter may have grounds for a civil complaint against the prankster for wrongful arrest, if he felt like twisting the knife, so to speak.
 
arthwollipot said:
Nobody needs to be shot unless they present a very clear and present danger.
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The problem is that that's not the legal standard, because that would require telepathy to know. The legal standard is whether you had a reasonable reason to believe it is a very clear and present danger.
 
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HansMustermann said:
The problem is that that's not the legal standard, because that would require telepathy to know. The legal standard is whether you had a reasonable reason to believe it is a very clear and present danger.
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It's pretty clear that this shooting was not lawful, but the jury decided they didn't care what the law said (can you blame them?). A bench trial almost certainly would have resulted in a conviction for our shooter. Had the guy died I suspect the jury would have convicted.

Jury nullification doesn't happen that often. it's a real testament to how hated these "pranksters" are and how instantly recognizable they are as a public menace.
 
I'm not saying any particular one is OK or not OK, or wouldn't be solved better if the USA had an ASBO system, or anything. Just that when you frame it as broadly as "What do you do when someone pranks you?", it covers such a wide spectrum as to also cover an equally wide spectrum of reasonable responses. Maybe not this one, but some definitely warrant a self-defense or castle-doctrine shooting. Others don't. Which makes the question really meaningful as it is.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
under these circumstances, it's certainly not a tragedy.

To quote George Constanza: You know, we're living in a society.

Not going to cry because a person deliberately engaging in anti-social behavior to achieve the tiniest bit of celebrity status is harmed at the hands of another anti-social person. I guess they were counting on others to be more reasonable and ethical than they were. Big mistake. If two irresponsible idiots remove themselves from the public and do so without harming any uninvolved parties I call that a win-win.
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On the other hand, I am concerned for all human lives, not just the ones that I personally value.
 
HansMustermann said:
The problem is that that's not the legal standard, because that would require telepathy to know. The legal standard is whether you had a reasonable reason to believe it is a very clear and present danger.
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Which is so subjective it's ridiculous, and which has been abused time and again by Americans who just wanted to justify shooting someone.

I've said before that if I wanted to kill someone just to see what it was like (I don't, btw), I'd go to Florida and claim that I feared for my life. I'm pretty sure I'd get away with it.
 
arthwollipot said:
On the other hand, I am concerned for all human lives, not just the ones that I personally value.
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The social contract is something we all buy into with many little acts, like not intentionally being a menace to others. The way I see it, there should be no free riders.

These pranksters make their money by eschewing the very same social code that they assume will protect them from other anti-social individuals. Pretty funny that this person got an immediate lesson in the value of social order as a direct result of intentionally breaching that order, though I admit that hair-trigger gunslingers is not really the most desirable enforcement mechanism.
 
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of course there should be free riders.
Arguably, all science and engineer work that doesn't yield result is freeloading.

The problem only arises when the freeloaders make it harder for the rest to maintain the socio-economic system and/or fail to acknowledge that freeloading is what they are doing and instead pretend that they are productive members of society.
Most of middle management falls under that category.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
of course there should be free riders.
Arguably, all science and engineer work that doesn't yield result is freeloading.

The problem only arises when the freeloaders make it harder for the rest to maintain the socio-economic system and/or fail to acknowledge that freeloading is what they are doing and instead pretend that they are productive members of society.
Most of middle management falls under that category.
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Sure, there are free riders. Plenty of concessions are made for people who cannot meet their social obligations to society for more understandable reasons.

There's a big difference between being compassionate towards those who cannot meet their social obligations and those, like these pranksters, who deliberately breach the social good for venal reasons. Generally speaking, the latter is criminal.

If there's any lesson here, it's that these "pranksters" should be treated as a higher priority criminal than you might assume based on the pettiness of the behavior. While harassment or disorderly conduct may be petty offenses, a deliberate pattern of this behavior should probably be treated as a higher priority criminal complaint.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
The social contract is something we all buy into with many little acts, like not intentionally being a menace to others. The way I see it, there should be no free riders.
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The way I see it, everybody should ride for free, but society isn't structured to permit that yet.

TurkeysGhost said:
These pranksters make their money by eschewing the very same social code that they assume will protect them from other anti-social individuals. Pretty funny that this person got an immediate lesson in the value of social order as a direct result of intentionally breaching that order, though I admit that hair-trigger gunslingers is not really the most desirable enforcement mechanism.
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Do you favour criminal action against all breaches of the so-called "social code"? At what point does a breach of the social code justify criminal proceedings?
 
arthwollipot said:
Well, yeah, that's why I said society isn't structured for it.
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The issue, though, isn't the way society is structured: There is no possible way to structure society wherein everyone is a free rider. It's not that we aren't structured for it, its that such a structure doesn't exist. Someone has to drive the car if the rest are going to ride.

If we were in some other world were our robot/AI slaves did all the work and we were free riders on their society, that would be possible, but we don't have that technology, at least not yet.
 
Roboramma said:
The issue, though, isn't the way society is structured: There is no possible way to structure society wherein everyone is a free rider. It's not that we aren't structured for it, its that such a structure doesn't exist. Someone has to drive the car if the rest are going to ride.

If we were in some other world were our robot/AI slaves did all the work and we were free riders on their society, that would be possible, but we don't have that technology, at least not yet.
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It was an offhand aside. I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
 
arthwollipot said:
On the other hand, I am concerned for all human lives, not just the ones that I personally value.
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Yeah, I agree with this. Everyone's life has value, at least to them. Even in the case of the worst people, you can add up all the harm they do and call them a net negative, but that doesn't mean that their intrinsic value is zero, it just means that it's outweighed by something else.

And in this particular case, while it seems like this guy was a jerk, and the shooter's actions may even have been justified in the moment, that doesn't mean that his death* would have been a good thing.

*in the actual case, he didn't die, right?
 
arthwollipot said:
No, fortunately he didn't die.
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Cool. To be clear, I also agree with you that it was a bad thing that he was shot.

I think there are at least some plausible scenarios where the shooter would have been justified in shooting him.

Both of those things can be true at the same time.
 
Roboramma said:
Cool. To be clear, I also agree with you that it was a bad thing that he was shot.

I think there are at least some plausible scenarios where the shooter would have been justified in shooting him.

Both of those things can be true at the same time.
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The only justification required for shooting someone, apparently, is "I thought my life was in danger". And after you shoot someone it's often difficult to ascertain whether that was actually the case.
 
arthwollipot said:
The only justification required for shooting someone, apparently, is "I thought my life was in danger". And after you shoot someone it's often difficult to ascertain whether that was actually the case.
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Well, more like "I reasonably believed that person was intentionally or recklessly putting my life in danger".

Whether or not society can correctly determine if this was the case is another question.
 
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