[bilekas]

> What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass.

As it was kind of explained that, 'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world and so he emulated that behavior. In fact one could say he went to the extreme. But his understanding of the context and emotional impact is nothing compared to us on the outside.

This isn't a case of him falsifying a condition to get off, this guy has his whole life documented with diagnoses. It's not a 'pass' but it's simply not the same situation and so it doesn't seem sincear to charge him as such.

[Cthulhu_]

It's an explanation, but not an excuse; he still did what he did. Do you believe he should be treated not compos mentis and have his agency taken away?

[q-big]

Why do most people what they do? Because their are conditioned/brainwashed by school and society to believe in specific morals for their behavior.

Similarly, as bilekas suggests, the fact that "'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world" gave this man an active feedback loop for reinforcing this behavior.

[prewett]

"Society made me do it"? He had no agency in this? Nobody ever told him that these sorts of things hurt people?

Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable.

[q-big]

He is influenced by multiple feedback loops: one that is encouraging this behavior (from the respective website) and one that does discourage it. In this case, the former one was stronger.

> Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable.

With the same reasoning, you can argue that people in this kind of internet forums gave him a strong feedback that the "society" is wrong here.

[ivanhoe]

> But his understanding of the context and emotional impact is nothing compared to us on the outside.

Well, similar defense could be used for psychopaths as well, they too have a condition that prevents them from seeing or understanding the context and the emotional impact of their actions - but some lines have to be drawn somewhere. Society has to protect itself and innocent people who get hurt by these antisocial actions.

In case of Brandon here no one got physically hurt, and the court should certainly see his condition as a mitigating factor - but you can't just completely dismiss the damage that was done and seriousness of his actions. Emotional traumas are serious deal too, and he, knowingly or not, psychologically tortured those families, causing them a great deal of pain. And he probably got some pleasure from it too, whether from the feeling of power or from the peer support and cheering, as he wouldn't be inclined to repeat it so many times otherwise...

[cassianoleal]

My understanding is that psychopaths are well aware of the damage they're doing to their victims, they just don't care.

I could be wrong though, but in case I'm not - these are entirely different situations.

[zozbot234]

That was not trolling. Trolling is about riling people up in subtle ways that aren't apparent at first glance. This guy wasn't doing that, he wasn't someone playing gadfly in order to expose people's biases and hypocracy. He was saying really horrible, offensive stuff and nobody should get a pass for this.

[DaiPlusPlus]

It’s no use trying to reclaim the term “troll” for the legends of Usenet: the word is now a synonym for a griefer, the contemptibles, FBI swatters, and so on.

Defending the word can be misconstrued as defending the act. It’s not a fight worth having.

[zozbot234]

When someone is laboring under the misapprehension that online "trolls" are popular and committing very real crimes as a result, clarifying the history of that word is absolutely appropriate. That's the very opposite of defending cruel griefers.

[cm2187]

Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences, this is why those rules are codified in law and don't just rely on your own appreciation.

Most assassins are psychopaths in one way or another. It might be interesting to study them but it doesn't mean they get a free pass for their actions.

[bilekas]

I don't think it's a free pass, but it's not intentional by any means and I believe there is certainly some room for leniency in such edge cases.

[oxygen-crisis]

It was by all means intentional. He packed as much hurt as he could into his short messages and expertly targeted the people those words would hurt the most.

[eurasiantiger]

Understandable, given his condition.

Autism can be an experience of having all your senses, empathy and emotions turned up to 11 while everyone around you is behaving in seemingly irrational ways you have no way of understanding except through the vicious pain other people steadily inflict on you.

Imagine growing up like that. Not just occasionally but every day for decades. It dulls something.

[Scandiravian]

Psychopaths are always dangerous and has a desire to do harm. They have no empathy at all. Because of this the currently only way to protect others from their behaviour is to incarcerate them

People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

Your lack of empathy and understanding for people on the autism spectrum is honestly scary

[winReInstall]

There certainly is a fascination with strong, reproduceable emotional reactions in some autistic cases though. They also seem to be fascinated by certain emotional reactions, that make no sense to them.

They do understand that they hurt people, but the fascination of finding something adhering to rules, is stronger.

@Scandinavian: Relatives of mine. One in particular, enjoys trolling me, and i sincerley hope its limited to me. Others might not understand the sense of humor, and it particular, the endless "reproduce" joke and reaction sequence.

[Scandiravian]

Who are they? What combination of symptoms from autism are you referring?

[laserlight]

> People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

I don't think it's insane to bring the comparison into this conversation, because the behavior of this autistic person is clearly a psychopathic one, regardless of the intention.

[bsjanmelttq]

Autistic people feel emotions but don't understand them [0].

Psychopaths understand emotions but don't feel them.

They might seem similar but really are polar opposites.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

[Scandiravian]

The motive was a desire to be accepted and have a connection to other people

Excluding intention as a part of judgement is also excluding a desire to rehabilitate the offender, which makes the goal of punishment revenge

What ends up happening is that people with autism are sent to prison, where they will be the victim of psychical and mental violence almost every day, in an environment that's torturous to them, with no ability to understand why they are there or how to change their situation. All this simply because of a desire to hurt someone who's perceived as "bad".

I'm not sure we agree who's displaying psychopathic traits in that situation

[badcppdev]

Seems like someone could be on the autism scale and a psychopath.

I'm aware that the concept of a disabled person also being 'bad' in some way is not an intersection box that modern world has the tools to discuss at the moment. Outside the Overton window so to speak.

[Scandiravian]

They could, but what does that have to do with the situation? Psychopathy affects approximately 1.2% or the population, so given that autism affects 2.2% of the population, the combination would have a prevalence in 0.027% of people

I think that's a number so low, that it's not worth discussing, given that a psychopath with full mental capacity would undoubtedly be more dangerous

[prewett]

I'm not sure that you can just multiply those probabilities (are they both uncorrelated? Can autistic people even become psychopathic?), but, 0.027% * 300 million people in the US = 81,000 hypothetical autistic psychopaths, which is over 1600 per state. That's plenty to worry about from an administrative (e.g. police) standpoint.

[Scandiravian]

Why would you be more worried about autism + psychopathy over a psychopath who doesn't suffer from a developmental disorder?

[deafpolygon]

> People with autism are not psychopath

And psychopaths are not autistic.

Yet it does not make the two things mutually exclusive. They can be both present and exhibit in individuals at the same time.

[Scandiravian]

Sure. The occurrence of this combination would be so rare that I don't think it's worth discussing, unless your argument is that an autistic psychopath would somehow be more dangerous than a psychopath without autism?

[coldtea]

>Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences

You'd be surprised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense