> The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.”
There's this thing you'll see with people who really struggle to understand social cues and how to act "normally" in a social environment when dealing with teasing jokes (like back and forth jokes in a friend group). Someone will say some harmless thing about their clothes or their hair and they'll accidentally overstep a line while looking for a response joke that would do a lot of "damage" to get even. Instead of responding with an equivalently harmless "roast" they'll respond with legitimately hurtful things like "well maybe that's why your mom killed herself" or "XYZ is why your girlfriend left you".
Obviously they overstepped a line and went straight for the most hurtful thing they could find but it's partially because they never learned where the line was and why it was there. Even with "trolling" it's conceptually similar to "roasts" between friends with the exception that one side is often not a particularly willing participant(not that trolling is OK but you can view them in a somewhat similar light). They both have a degree where the troll/individual is harmless and it's all in good fun. There's also a degree where it's annoying or frustrating but has limited consequence on the recipient past that. Then there's legitimately hurtful and unacceptable stuff past that point.
The root of the problem here is that if the troll can't distinguish the line between annoying and hurtful, they'll try to deliver the most horrible and "damaging" blows they can all the while thinking something along the lines of "haha they are so mad, I must be annoying them really badly". Unless the person actually understands the social weight of what they are saying, there's a very real chance that in their eyes, harassing a person about tragedies personally suffered/making threats is equivalent to "I'm not touching you" dialed up to 11.
> The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.”
There's this thing you'll see with people who really struggle to understand social cues and how to act "normally" in a social environment when dealing with teasing jokes (like back and forth jokes in a friend group). Someone will say some harmless thing about their clothes or their hair and they'll accidentally overstep a line while looking for a response joke that would do a lot of "damage" to get even. Instead of responding with an equivalently harmless "roast" they'll respond with legitimately hurtful things like "well maybe that's why your mom killed herself" or "XYZ is why your girlfriend left you".
Obviously they overstepped a line and went straight for the most hurtful thing they could find but it's partially because they never learned where the line was and why it was there. Even with "trolling" it's conceptually similar to "roasts" between friends with the exception that one side is often not a particularly willing participant(not that trolling is OK but you can view them in a somewhat similar light). They both have a degree where the troll/individual is harmless and it's all in good fun. There's also a degree where it's annoying or frustrating but has limited consequence on the recipient past that. Then there's legitimately hurtful and unacceptable stuff past that point.
The root of the problem here is that if the troll can't distinguish the line between annoying and hurtful, they'll try to deliver the most horrible and "damaging" blows they can all the while thinking something along the lines of "haha they are so mad, I must be annoying them really badly". Unless the person actually understands the social weight of what they are saying, there's a very real chance that in their eyes, harassing a person about tragedies personally suffered/making threats is equivalent to "I'm not touching you" dialed up to 11.