I was going to post this in one of the complaints threads, but it's long, and i'm aware that some people may get offended at me suggesting they aren't literally king Minos, all-knowing judge of the underworld. To those people, i just want to highlight that your behaviour was unacceptable regardless of how you may want to see it. Instead of getting angry and defensive, maybe you need to stop and consider the consequences of your actions instead of jumping onboard a hate train in future.
I've just finished the documentary about the deaths of Shanann Watts and her children, and i find both the major forms of opinion on display, after Chris Watts claimed she was the one who killed their children and he killed her in retaliation, to be pretty rancid. On the one side you had people who seemed completely certain she was innocent and that he's a total monster. On the other you had people completely certain she was guilty, and even going so far as to verbally attack her family like it would have somehow been their fault. The way the legal system works is to state "innocent until proven guilty", because that's how due process works. Because the alternative is idiotic mob law, where things are decided in the court of public opinion instead of on the basis of what actually happened.
And so at the time you couldn't definitively state either option presented here was the truth, because to assume that Shanann was innocent required you to assume that Chris was guilty, and vice versa. As comfortable as you may have felt sitting in judgement on either of these people like you knew for certain one of them was guilty, you are not omniscient, which meant you lacked any form of proof, and you therefore had no right to behave as the sole arbiter of who really killed those children. So stop acting like you did. I'm just sick of seeing people pour out of the woodwork after an incident like this claiming they just know that someone is guilty of something, despite having no solid evidence corroborating their opinion, just a bunch of circumstantial bullshit.
And yes, i am aware that Chris eventually confessed to the murder of his daughters, which makes those assuming he was the guilty party technically correct, but guess what - That still doesn't make your mob mentality "i've decided so it's obviously the truth" shit ok. A point that i think couldn't be better exemplified than by your counterpoints who threw all that abuse at the poor Rzucek family who were still reeling from the loss of Shanann. Only once Chris had confessed, or once a guilty verdict had been passed had he not admitted the truth, would you then have the right to view him as a monster. It still doesn't make things like abusing his family, or gathering together to mass-fantasise about torturing him ok, but yes, it does confirm he is a terrible human being. You could have doubts about him, you could feel it was likely he was the culprit, you could even argue that there was a statistical likelihood it was him before his confession. But you had no right to make categorical statements of his guilt any time before that point.
And we see this happen time and time again. The moment an accusation gets levelled at a person and they gain notoriety you can, as certain as the sun rising in the morning, find a group of people not just speculating about how obviously guilty that person is, but even engaging in some sick socially-accepted game of "Who can describe the most depraved act of torture they want to pretend they'd have the stomach to inflict on this individual". It's like an even more demented version of the two minutes' hate, which is fucking saying something. This shit is how you end up with stories like pediatricians being assaulted because idiots don't know the difference between a pediatrician and a pedophile. Or people being beaten to death over an alleged crime only to later get revealed as completely innocent. Or people's houses being set on fire because there was a rumour they were guilty of a crime they didn't commit. Or hell, doing things like firing a handgun at workers on a 5G tower, because a certain group of people have decided 5G is actually a secret conspiracy to transmit covid (I wish i was joking, but this really did happen).
I don't know why, but i've always had an especially black little spot in my heart for false accusations. They flare up an anger in me that it's hard to recreate in any other way. And so witnessing this kind of hostile, egocentric mob justice in action has always made me feel sick to my stomach with resentment. You can never assume someone is guilty of something. Having your doubts, or leaning towards a certain verdict are both fine, but until you have solid evidence, you can never make these assumptions and still claim to be a rational human being, because it shows you follow your emotional mind more than anything, and simply choose to believe what you want to.
I've just finished the documentary about the deaths of Shanann Watts and her children, and i find both the major forms of opinion on display, after Chris Watts claimed she was the one who killed their children and he killed her in retaliation, to be pretty rancid. On the one side you had people who seemed completely certain she was innocent and that he's a total monster. On the other you had people completely certain she was guilty, and even going so far as to verbally attack her family like it would have somehow been their fault. The way the legal system works is to state "innocent until proven guilty", because that's how due process works. Because the alternative is idiotic mob law, where things are decided in the court of public opinion instead of on the basis of what actually happened.
And so at the time you couldn't definitively state either option presented here was the truth, because to assume that Shanann was innocent required you to assume that Chris was guilty, and vice versa. As comfortable as you may have felt sitting in judgement on either of these people like you knew for certain one of them was guilty, you are not omniscient, which meant you lacked any form of proof, and you therefore had no right to behave as the sole arbiter of who really killed those children. So stop acting like you did. I'm just sick of seeing people pour out of the woodwork after an incident like this claiming they just know that someone is guilty of something, despite having no solid evidence corroborating their opinion, just a bunch of circumstantial bullshit.
And yes, i am aware that Chris eventually confessed to the murder of his daughters, which makes those assuming he was the guilty party technically correct, but guess what - That still doesn't make your mob mentality "i've decided so it's obviously the truth" shit ok. A point that i think couldn't be better exemplified than by your counterpoints who threw all that abuse at the poor Rzucek family who were still reeling from the loss of Shanann. Only once Chris had confessed, or once a guilty verdict had been passed had he not admitted the truth, would you then have the right to view him as a monster. It still doesn't make things like abusing his family, or gathering together to mass-fantasise about torturing him ok, but yes, it does confirm he is a terrible human being. You could have doubts about him, you could feel it was likely he was the culprit, you could even argue that there was a statistical likelihood it was him before his confession. But you had no right to make categorical statements of his guilt any time before that point.
And we see this happen time and time again. The moment an accusation gets levelled at a person and they gain notoriety you can, as certain as the sun rising in the morning, find a group of people not just speculating about how obviously guilty that person is, but even engaging in some sick socially-accepted game of "Who can describe the most depraved act of torture they want to pretend they'd have the stomach to inflict on this individual". It's like an even more demented version of the two minutes' hate, which is fucking saying something. This shit is how you end up with stories like pediatricians being assaulted because idiots don't know the difference between a pediatrician and a pedophile. Or people being beaten to death over an alleged crime only to later get revealed as completely innocent. Or people's houses being set on fire because there was a rumour they were guilty of a crime they didn't commit. Or hell, doing things like firing a handgun at workers on a 5G tower, because a certain group of people have decided 5G is actually a secret conspiracy to transmit covid (I wish i was joking, but this really did happen).
I don't know why, but i've always had an especially black little spot in my heart for false accusations. They flare up an anger in me that it's hard to recreate in any other way. And so witnessing this kind of hostile, egocentric mob justice in action has always made me feel sick to my stomach with resentment. You can never assume someone is guilty of something. Having your doubts, or leaning towards a certain verdict are both fine, but until you have solid evidence, you can never make these assumptions and still claim to be a rational human being, because it shows you follow your emotional mind more than anything, and simply choose to believe what you want to.