The 'wtf is wrong with these people?' thread.
 

Sometimes people can just be such utter dicks. Internet trolls in particular - not the ones who stalk comments threads and try to derail sensible discussions - they're just annoying, occasionally entertaining. No - I'm talking about these kinds of people:

Their little girl was snatched several years ago and hasn't been seen since. Quite possibly dead - or worse.

Seriously - wtf is wrong with these people?

Their 'contributions' were so extreme and worrying that they prompted uninvolved members of the public to report the matter to police :

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...lice-madeleine

What the article fails to mention is that there was a lot of evidence at the time that the girl was not snatched, but rather the parents themselves killed her and disposed of the body. It happened while on vacation, and supposedly the Portuguese police were busy gathering additional damning evidence when the family said, "Ah, thanks for everything, we're going home to our own country now."

No charges were ever formally filed so they are innocent until proven guilty, and harassment is not okay in any case. But it's not like these people are just taunting them over their dead child for fun.

No, Clod, I disagree. They are taunting this couple for fun. I do remember the cloud of suspicion thrown over the parents and, frankly I felt (and still feel) that way to a certain extent, it is so often the persons closest and most apparently distressed who have committed the awfullest crimes. This is exactly like these people are taunting them over their dead child for fun.

You see *anything* constructive in comments like these? How can comments like these help OR hinder the Portuguese police, who could continue their investigation regardless?

Also - much of that reporting has been shown to be libellous and deliberately so; primarily from the Murdoch press. The latest was the Sunday Times, which ran front page stories almost a year ago claiming that the McCanns had deliberately obstructed the Portugese police. They used misleading tactics, misquoted people, and then when they did print a retraction and apology it was hidden away on a insidepage, twomonths after they'd broken the story. They've just had to pay out £50k for that one.

There's always a question mark over parents. But it seems that most of the evidence now points to someone having taken the kid and the Portugese police having acted with incompetence.

And if the dickheads trolling this family were just concerned with justice and really thought the parents were guilty - wtf did they direct some of that trolling and bile towards the two young children?

All I was saying is that the newspaper was disingenuous for not even referring to the family's history. Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman and Jon Benet Ramsey's parents are harassed on a daily basis too, and there's a reason for it. It's a bad reason, and the harassment is still morally wrong, but it's foolish to pretend this shit happens in a vacuum.

I understand - and I also agree that the context is important.

It was this bit I was taking issue with really - 'there was a lot of evidence at the time that the girl was not snatched, but rather the parents themselves killed her and disposed of the body.'

There wasn't a lot of evidence at the time - but there was a lot of reporting of such evidence. Much of which has been shown to be libellous.

What does it mean to "direct a comment towards someone?"

Are they calling them up in the middle of the night? Sending them letters and notes? Sending them emails? Or are they just making comments in their own FB status updates or in tweets?

I saw a lot of media coverage around the OJ Simpson trial. I'm convinced OJ Simpson is a murderer, base entirely on that media coverage, even though he was found not guilty in a court of law. When I say that OJ is a murderer, here on this public forum, am I also a dickhead troll unfairly directing comments at OJ?

Perhaps if those parents don't want to see nasty comments about themselves, they shouldn't do vanity hashtag searches for themselves on twitter. There was plenty of negative press about them, and it's understandable that a number of people view them unfavorably now and talk about it on the internet.

They aren't the ones who brought the trolling to the attention of police.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...by-police.html

That's what I thought. They aren't contacting the parents.

So if I say here that OJ is a murderer and deserves to burn in Hell, am I committing a crime under the Malicious Communications Act 2003?

No. But if you set up several twitter accounts and use them to promote violence against OJ and spam facebook pages and other sites with death threats and declarations of his guilt then probably. If you also send death threats via Twitter to the person who wrote about him then yeah. And if you live in the same town and post regular intime updates about where he is and what he is doing along with suggestiions that someone should go and deal with him for real, then yeah.

Some of this is malicious and incitement to violence, along with intimidation. Some of it is just plain libellous. Very little of this is just a few people innocently chatting on a message board and expressing an opinion. As the police fellah said -

That guy is not a police fellah.

They should actually get some quotes from any official source at all to round this story out instead of just basing it on what is essentially a press release by the internet group that doesn't like the other internet group.

I meant he used to be a police officer.

Problem... solved?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...rolling-claims