Comradeship // Freechat

Wait what? They are abducting alleged pedos for YouTube content? That sounds crazy.

When you consider the right wing in the US considers everyone from male teachers to pediatricians to be pedos just for being an adult that interacts with children, I can see why this sort of thing could be very alarming. It is normalising mob violence against an acceptable target, you're right that they'll just expand their targets until they can bring back full on lynch mobs to murder every non-WASP they can get their hands on.

It's begging to be weaponized against LGBTQ people to push selective cases to push the narrative that they're all like that, just as the Nazis had regular columns on "Jewish crime" to give the impression the Jews were all criminals. Or to be used as a cover. I think in Russia there were stings for gay people done along similar lines, filmed and they'd often accuse them of being child molesters, of being after kids which was the homophobic narrative there.

It's a very sick individual-centered, glory-seeking approach to a problem which is fundamentally that capitalist cops don't invest serious resources in this, are often predators themselves, etc because they don't exist to protect the citizens but to protect capital. The solution then isn't these individualist acts of violence and attempts at mob justice but collective action, not for views, not for clicks, not to portray oneself as some sort of hero but to actually tackle the problem. It's also of course an issue of the family, of the lack of community involvement in each others lives which makes isolating kids easier. But that would require actual work, community-building, effort, it wouldn't be dramatic, it wouldn't stoke the egos of those involved, it wouldn't sell on youtube, so nothing is done.

Pedophile will expand into LGBT people = Pedophiles real easily. They won't even say they're targeting lgbt people, they'll just shout child groomer.

A video on the original Chris Hansen and him being somewhat not that great

I wasn't aware this was going on, but your analysis makes sense to me. I could understand an organized community approach to assist in such a thing ("we keep us safe" kind of thing rather than depending on cops who are not doing enough), but people outside of a community and turning it into a business? (Making money off of it on the internet.) That's just capitalism doing its thing again, isn't it? And sounds eerily similar to cops who come in from outside of a community to police it, but with even less oversight. I mean, maybe I'm wrong and some of these people are highly focused on their own communities, but if they are, do they really need to do videos? Or do they need to organize and create accountability, so that these things can be stopped before they start?

As for fakeness, I would not be surprised if some of it is. I know there was a period in Youtube history where prank channels were common and it eventually came out that a lot of them were faking them to some degree. But then you have the problem of, not everybody gets the memo and is actually faking. That's one problem with spreading ideas like this without being sincere about what you're really doing.

agree, the ones i've come across are awful. i honestly think its a facade to target mentally impaired people and abuse them.

Edit: Nvm already posted

I can't speak to all of the catchers, but I stress that 99 percent of pedophile catches aren't based in violence or beating up the predator, even if they deserve it sometimes.

I'm extremely suspicious of people who claim "entrapment!" because catching someone doing a crime isn't entrapment.

Legally speaking, only law enforcement can entrap someone. And it's only entrapment when you are coerced into doing something you wouldn't normally do. Claiming "entrapment!" isn't a magic get out of jail free card, and it doesn't make it entrapment.

I have never ever in almost a decade of watching predator catching videos, almost never seen even a single instance where catchers attacked a pedophile, unless the pedophile runs or attacks first, and not even then.

Alex Rosen is on my shitlist. He himself has admitted to being a pedophile, and then covered his ass by claiming it's a joke.

Despite catching multiple hundreds and hundreds of scumbags, and the vast, vast majority of them being much closer to stereotypical rednecks, he still believes in this "LGBT groomer" conspiracy, and he is a reich-wing agitator and a disgrace to actual hunters.

I have no problem with someone making a living from donations for catching pedophiles, as long as they don't spout racist and sexist and transmisogynistic conspiracy theories, and they don't lick cop boots too much.

You gotta do what you gotta do to buy groceries, in a capitalist society.

Edit: Jesus Fucking Christ, that better be bots or neoliberals downvoting me. I'm disappointed and pissed off that people have a problem with justice.