(I’m always happy when I can justify posting a Charles Addams cartoon.)
I’m sure this discouraging episode will somehow make it into the dispute over whether TikTok, which apparently gathers data from millions of Americans to put in the clutches of China’s Dark Masters, should be banned or not. The incident isn’t about TikTok, however.
Apparently there is now a viral TikTok-promoted fad in which people lure suspected sexual predators to some location, lie in wait for them, and either call the police or, for even more fun, beat them up. The “game” is modeled after an unethical vigilante TV reality show on ABC that lasted three seasons; I wrote several posts about it on Ethics Alarms’ now unavailable predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard. Starring “Dateline” reporter Chris Hanson, the show that aired from 2004-2007 would use the internet and phone calls to lure someone seeking underage sexual companionship to a hidden camera ambush. The entertainment came from watching Hanson walk out from behind a bush and make the sick bastard huminahumina his way into coast-to-coast humiliation. The pre-crime predators who were thus “caught” almost never were convicted of anything.
In Worcester, Massachusetts (that’s pronounced “Wuster,” you Bay State ignoramuses!) students at Assumption University came to the wrong assumption that the “To Catch a Predator” game was a good use of their time. Easton Randall, Kevin Carroll, Isabella Trudeau, Kelsy Brainard, and Joaqin Smith, all 18, decided that a “creepy guy” was a sexual predator, so a female student used dating site Tinder to lure him to where he would think was a meeting place for a hook-up with a 17-year old girl. They had enlisted about 30 other students to lie in wait with them, and the mob chased and assaulted him as the stunt was recorded. Oh, the views it would attract! Randall told police that the idea was to emulate “the Chris Hansen videos where you catch a predator and either call police or kick their ass,” but the incident “got out of hand and went bad.”
Ya think?
Ethics Alarms 