r/SubredditDrama • u/ReddCrowe • Jun 12 '17
r/AskReddit analyzes a childhood tragedy where a young girl dared her annoying, unwanted crush to play chicken with a train, resulting in his death. Is she guilty of manslaughter? An amoral monster? Or is it just reddit manbabies whining? The saddest drama you'll read today is here.
/r/AskReddit/comments/6gmrji/serious_people_who_have_accidentally_caused_the/dirkyml/?sort=controversial43
u/RoosterAficionado Jun 12 '17
I've never seen so many little red daggers in one thread before.
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Jun 12 '17
Little red daggers?
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Jun 12 '17
They mark controversial comments. You can turn them on in the site settings
somewhereunder comment settings > "show a dagger (†) on comments voted controversial".16
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u/LaPeauDouce Jun 12 '17
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u/ReddCrowe Jun 12 '17
I was wondering about that, but then again r/nothingeverhappens
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Jun 12 '17
It's askreddit tho...that place is a hive of compulsive liars and karma whores. There's just too many internet points involved to not have those guys come out
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u/Ceremor Jun 12 '17
So many of these posts seem like they're engineered for karma points. This sort of thing is morbidly fascinating to me so I read most of the thread, but as I went down the line there was a pretty obvious pattern that emerged for pretty much all the posts.
It wasn't their fault.
It was never any of their faults.
The thing always happened because of someone else's negligence or because they literally weren't capable of handling a situation like if they're a child and someone is drowning. Not a single one of these that I read actually had someone directly accidentally killing someone. It was always "and then this person made an illegal turn and I ended up hitting them" or "and then I said no dude, I'm busy I can't give you a ride to the store and they ended up getting hit by a bus later" all this shit like wtf you didn't have anything to do with what went wrong.
And in telling a story like that they make themselves instantly sympathetic and get hella upvotes. I'm sure there's a few people that've been tangentially related to a death and feels it's sort of their fault even though it definitely isn't to any outside perspective but holy shit, the whole thread? With stories that are all almost exactly the same where nobody is actually at fault? God damn.
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u/Amelaclya1 Jun 12 '17
Eh... When I was in middle school, a boy a few grades below mine had his leg cut off by a train when he and his friends were playing on the tracks. Though in his case, they used to jump on the trains, not play chicken.
It isn't too far fetched to believe someone could die in similar circumstances.
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u/FifaFrancesco Jun 12 '17
So really fucking unlikely, but it's the internet, you never know.
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u/Amelaclya1 Jun 12 '17
Well a dude having two dicks is rarer than that and we had one of those on Reddit. A user knowing someone who was killed by a train doesn't seem odd at all considering some of the things I've seen here.
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u/Pandemult Jun 12 '17
Well a dude having two dicks is rarer than that and we had one of those on Reddit.
YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THESE AND NOT LINK THEM.
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u/Aetol Jun 12 '17
Just because it only happened a few time doesn't mean the story is "really fucking unlikely". People don't tell stories about the time no one got killed by a train.
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u/GladiatorUA Jun 12 '17
Just because it only happened a few time doesn't mean the story is "really fucking unlikely".
It does, though. That what it means. Without knowing names, dates, locations or any other variables to confirm the story, there is only chance. "Really fucking unlikely" chance.
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u/FifaFrancesco Jun 12 '17
The chance of her acquaintance being one of 25 in a couple million definitely qualifies as "really fucking unlikely" to me.
You wouldn't believe the things people do for karma or actually just because of pure and utter boredom. Referencing u/vargas for example. Every one of those stories is quite believable until it goes of the deep end at some point. But people come up with some crazy shit.
That being said, I don't even conclusively think that that OP is full of shit. It's just really fucking likely.
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Jun 12 '17
Even if in this case it's false, odds are something similar has happened to someone somewhere. Hell my dad had a vaguely similar experience.
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u/tehlemmings Jun 12 '17
Yeah everyone's talking about how unlikely this is, yet only one of separation away from two different train death stories. Like, yeah, only a handful of people die to trains each year, but it doesn't seem radical that a random person on reddit would be involved in one of those stories.
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u/Theta_Omega Jun 12 '17
It's part of the reason so many Ask Reddit stories start with "Not me, but [one-degree of separation]...". You personally only have one life-experience, but each person knows dozens of people, increasing the chances of someone having a story about it.
And the thread in question is asking for Redditors who have some type of tragedy in their past, so it's going to draw in people with those stories. It's possible some are making stuff up, but we're not dealing with a random sample. It irritates me when people forget about selection bias in working out the math behind something.
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u/tehlemmings Jun 12 '17
Yeah, that's pretty much my opinion on askreddit as well. I used to love posting there sharing stories and having the occasional odd conversation for that reason.
People always act like every post is a lie, but I definitely don't think that's the case. That said, the most common lie is probably making claiming that a stories is yours when really you got it third hand. But honestly, that really doesn't take anything away from the potential conversation or my entertainment. I don't go to askriddit to prove anything, I go because I'm bored and there's nothing else to do/read.
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u/dethb0y Jun 12 '17
A goodly number of teenagers get hit by trains, because they are fucking dumb. I could totally see this actually happening to someone.
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u/banjowashisnameo Jun 12 '17
r/nothingeverhappens And someone created a throwaway for a false story?
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 12 '17
If I was gonna post a fake story I'd make a throwaway so no one could find inconsistencies. But I do agree that there's no reason to think that couldn't happen.
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u/MegasusPegasus Jun 12 '17
Big, if true.
But for srs...I get why this is a moral dilemma. But aside from missing that she was 12, why the fuck is the focal point her 'leading' him on rather than that he's fucking dead and she dared him to do it???
Liiike, I personally wouldn't blame her for daring him to play chicken as a kid, or at least not to the extent that I'd call it manslaughter. But I GET if that's your beef, I don't the fuck get why you think it's the end of the world if a 12 year old girl didn't handle the art of rejection perfectly.
Girls did this type of thing to me growing up. I still can't trust women or really anyone 20 years later. They would act like they like me and then do horrible shit and laugh with their friends.
Ohoh that's why. Y'know, I'm being too harsh. Because I get it, I do, I get that this really effects a lot of people and it can really hurt ones self perception and trust in others. But I hate that it's treated as such a...villainous, intended, cold thing. Girls rejecting boys are just as fucking troubled and confused by their feelings, they aren't the bad guys for not doing it right and coming off as cruel as kids.
Honestly, I remember boys being so persistent, creepy, they wanted something from me and no matter how nice or callous the first rejection was...they always figured they could win me over if they became what I wanted. And...at the risk of getting skewered, I don't blame them for being like that at that age! They didn't know, they weren't thinking of how it felt from my perspective...but I ask that they don't in turn grow up and judge girls for handling shit wrong at first, too.
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u/banjist Jun 12 '17
A girl friend of mine convinced me to pee out my bedroom window. I convinced her to jump out that window. She skinned her knee. Her parents never forgave me. It was very tragic. Her older brother broke my train set and I chased him down the street with a He-Man sword shouting "By Grayskull" afterward. I'm glad she didn't convince me to play chicken with a train.
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u/skysonfire Jun 12 '17
Wait, did she land in your pee?
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u/banjist Jun 12 '17
Nah it was two separate incidents. But I used the peeing out the window instance to pressure her to jump.
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u/PENIS__FINGERS Jun 12 '17
Yeah this is reddit. The rejection part is the most relatable part of that post.
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u/BolshevikMuppet Jun 12 '17
why the fuck is the focal point her 'leading' him on rather than that he's fucking dead and she dared him to do it?
At least from my reading, the two are connected. The only reason a dare like that would work (on me, and accepting that there's a whole lot of projection for all of the parties on every side of this) would be if there were some indication it could work.
From her own story, it was an ongoing and reliable way for him to get some attention from her. Which (in the exceedingly stupid middle school boy mind) means that this is how he can win her over.
And... I get it, these were kids. And maybe in a position of relative power I would have been equally sociopathic. But at least for me the broader pattern of behavior has to be part of the "bad" here, since absent that pattern the instant case might have turned out differently.
But I hate that it's treated as such a...villainous, intended, cold thing
I agree in general.
And a whole lot of the problem with young men's outlook is tied up in what it means to them to be rejected and what it says about them or the person they're into. I can go on for days about how messed up media is on the subject and how bad the lessons young men learn are.
But in this particular case? It's hard not to feel like regardless of immaturity, telling someone to risk their life on the implied promise of positive attention is more wrong than ordinary "handling shit wrong."
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Jun 12 '17
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u/justforvoting2015 Jun 14 '17 edited Jun 14 '17
They're not mutually exclusive. I remember girls treating boys that way sometimes in school and it was invariably a boy who was persistently asking one of the girls out and telling her he loved her after she'd already turned him down. The attitude was sort of like "Well he didn't take no for an answer, maybe he'll get the hint if I'm mean to him", sometimes with a touch of "Maybe I can also enjoy some benefits from him not leaving me alone."
I don't want to generalise to other people's experiences but that was part of the culture at my school - sometimes the boys were inappropriately persistent, and sometimes the girls would deal with that by getting mean and/or taking advantage. Yes, it is mean and sometimes goes into outright bullying, but it's also tied up in trying to reject unwanted advances and stuff too. It sucks, but it's not done out of simple malice, it's kids being crap at navigating situations that they're uncomfortable with, as well as being a tad sociopathic because they're still learning empathy.
It sounds like the commenter we're talking about was actually bullied, but maybe it was also a form of rejection.
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Jun 14 '17
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u/justforvoting2015 Jun 15 '17
If you're talking about ever picking on boys then yeah of course, sometimes girls picked on boys without justification. In fact boy and girls picked on each other as well as people of their own gender, as you might expect.
But if you're talking specifically about those situations where there was a lovestruck boy being teased/bullied by the girl he liked, then yes. Sincerely, to my memory (which admittedly could be subject to confirmation bias, but I am honestly trying to think of a counterexample and am coming up short), it was always that he was endlessly persistent after she'd already turned him down. Either she & her friends were trying to make him back off, or they were taking advantage (like, getting him to buy them sweets from the tuck shop and stuff). And I acknowledge that sometimes it was bullying, and his persistence doesn't necessarily justify that.
And I was also very clear that I don't assume this generalises to everyone, it's just what I observed in my little school. I'm sure there have also been many boys around the world whose love interests have simply been mean to them even though they weren't inappropriate about pursuing her, but I don't honestly recall seeing that in my school.
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Jun 12 '17
I love how people in the comments are pretending they were paragons of moral virtue and intelligence when they were FUCKING 12
When I was 12 me and my friends used to throw glass bottles at each other and kick each other off our bikes going down hills and run around smashing discarded TVs and shooting paintballs at the houses of kids we hated and....fuck you get the point. 12 year olds are stupid, self destructive, and regularly destructive assholes. They're mean, immature, violent, and stupid when they want to be. And they do want to be.
Somehow I don't think this girl was thinking "I'm going to get my friend killed today"
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u/prettydirtmurder Jun 12 '17
Yeah, some of those comments are extreme.
You should have been arrested for this.
Surely arresting and imprisoning literal children for behaving like children is not the answer. Unless the question is "how do we raise a bumper crop of fresh criminals?"
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Jun 12 '17
When I was 12, I was walking across a concrete overpass over a highway with my 8yo brother. The overpass was fully enclosed with chain-link fence, and my brother was terrified of heights. So what did I do?
I threw myself against the sides of the fence, to scare him even more. One weak spot in the fence and I would have been road pizza.
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u/PostmanSteve Jun 13 '17
When you're 12years old and have never experienced tragedy, the worst outcome your brain is able to cook up "they might get hurt or something". You don't think you're friend is going to die.. it's unfathomable, because you probably do dumb silly shit all the time as a child.
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 12 '17
And if you had killed your friend by throwing a glass bottle at his head I would blame you for it too. 12 year olds should know how life and death work. Just because you acted like a 5 year old when you were 12 doesn't mean it's okay for someone to fucking die because of it.
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u/Yes_Its_Really_Me Jun 13 '17
People are getting confused between excusing someone, where you decide they aren't to blame, and forgiving someone who is genuinely remorseful.
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 13 '17
Sure, she can be forgiven. But to say that it's not her fault is ridiculous.
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Jun 12 '17
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 12 '17
I agree completely. I was in the same position as that kid when I was 12, doing whatever a girl asked. But there is zero doubt in my mind that despite her being a manipulative bitch, she never would've told me to do something she knew could result in my death.
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u/pariskovalofa Jun 12 '17 edited Jun 12 '17
Did you just have no feelings for him at all and found it amusing? I have never been able to get a straight answer from a girl on this. Like what made you feel like taking advantage of his feelings for you? Did he just not go away and you got tired of it?
Actually yes, pretty much that last one. This dude's making me constantly deal with his feelings by whining at me or annoying me or straight harassing me, yeah, I figured I might try to get something at all out of it. Or maybe annoy him back until he went away.
Other times it's just the whole sad "No one can know I like them cause reputation!" thing that is fairly common in teens.
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u/lurkerthrowaway845 Jun 12 '17
I understand were you are coming from. When I was in third grade I did a lot of cringe shit to a girl I had a crush on but did not want anything to do with me. Being a kid and an idiot I thought 'true love conquers all' and did not stop bugging her. Her and four of her friend then beat me up after months of annoying her. I am actually grateful for that reality check since if I tried that stupid shit when I was older I might have had to suffer much worse consequences for being an idiot.
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u/pariskovalofa Jun 12 '17
Yeah, I got several talkings-to in elementary school cause if boys didn't stop teasing/poking/following/groping/whatever at me after I told them to stop once or twice, I started throwing punches and dirt and rocks at them. (In middle school I switched to pinching and kicking shins and insulting their masculinity to stay out of trouble.) And obviously that wasn't an acceptable way to deal, but harassing me wasn't acceptable either. Like, I know for a fact looking back that some of those boys had mental problems or really terrible home lives leading to their acting out and I have sympathy for them now, but that doesn't change how their actions impacted me, as another kid at the time, so I have no real regret over being mean to them.
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u/gokutheguy Jun 12 '17
Yeah its shitty how people give a pass to harassing or intimidating people by "aw cute he likes you".
Thats the whole reason kids are supervised by grown ups, so they are kept safe and happy and won't have to deal with that shit.
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Jun 12 '17
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Jun 12 '17
Yeah I can see younger me not really liking the answer no. Or more accurately, not knowing how to deal with no. I would get that it means you aren't in to me, but if I was crushing on you then my feelings wouldn't just change either and I think it's those conflicting things that would have been tough to handle.
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u/Mini_Reddish Jun 12 '17
Meh. Do stupid shit. Win stupid prizes I guess. Arguing with, condemning, or pardoning them is really pointless at this point in my opinion. They know the effects of what they've done and have to live with it so it's not like they haven't learnt.
Although it did give me something to read for a few minutes at least.
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Jun 12 '17
tbqh I'm just glad I'll never be a judge and have to deliberate over something like this.
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u/pariskovalofa Jun 12 '17
This would never go to trial. A dare isn't a threat or anything legally actionable, unless there's a lot of unmentioned backstory there with psychological manipulation or a relationship with a significant power differential and stuff.
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u/FifaFrancesco Jun 12 '17
Exactly. If I dare you to electrocute yourself, it's still your fault for actually going through with it.
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u/BolshevikMuppet Jun 12 '17
That's... not precisely true.
Let's assume we can get past the infancy issue here (which is the single biggest preclusion to charges in this case). At that point there are a bunch of potential charges, few of which depend on "power differential."
First and foremost, I'd throw down depraved indifference murder (also called depraved heart, its name varies by jurisdiction). It doesn't necessarily require a direct act causing death.
Next I'd do some kind of misdemeanor manslaughter (not felony murder, as her other crime is in my jurisdiction a misdemeanor) based on anti-hazing/anti-bullying laws. These are schoolchildren, after all.
Then you've got ordinary manslaughter (willful and wanton conduct), including some cases where people have been prosecuted for precisely this kind of "encouraging someone to kill themselves."
And finally a whole host of lesser offenses including the above-mentioned hazing/bullying laws.
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u/pariskovalofa Jun 12 '17
Double-dog dating someone to do something dangerous is actionable? I would think there's a huge gap between that and the kind of anti-hazing stuff that actually goes to trial.
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u/ZekeCool505 Jun 12 '17
I seem to recall hearing about it in a very different situation, would you mind expanding on what counts as a "Depraved Heart" murder? I'm a bit morbidly curious.
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 12 '17
unless there's a lot of unmentioned backstory there with psychological manipulation
But... there was a lot of mentioned backstory with psychological manipulation.
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u/4YYLM40 Jun 12 '17
a relationship with a significant power differential and stuff.
Which is exactly what there was.
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u/dinosaur_friend Jun 13 '17
I'm confused. At age 12 I knew better than to endanger people like that. Knowing to not endanger others is a basic life lesson you're taught in grade school and have reinforced by adults around you and throughout your childhood. I guess she and the boy must have grown up in a community where kids weren't monitored enough. Neglect leads to outlandish acts like this. Kids trying to one-up each other on everything because their parents don't pay enough attention to them. But I could be completely wrong about this.
At least the girl feels remorse. She should concentrate on doing what she can to make the world a better place and preventing senseless deaths like the boy's. Here's to hoping this is a troll account.
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u/CastInAJar Jun 13 '17
I bet you knew not to stand in front of a train at twelve too. She and all her friends all made the equally bad decision of standing in front of the train tracks.
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u/SnapshillBot Jun 12 '17
Snapshots:
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This Post - archive.org, megalodon.jp*, snew.github.io, archive.is
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u/Khaelgor Jun 12 '17
Well, yes, that is manslaughter. There's no externuating circumstances in her her story, beside she was under "insert your country's age of majority here".
(Because minors can't understand murder, as we all know.)
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u/MegasusPegasus Jun 12 '17
I hope you're not a lawyer, because criminally negligent homicide and/or involuntary manslaughter doesn't really work like that. Extenuating circumstances? No, the fact is that she did not instigate his death through negligence.
Remember the woman who died from holding in her pee for a radio contest? Think of that, the radio station was on the hook for a civil suit with a massive payout to the family. The radio hosts didn't go to jail for murder.
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u/BolshevikMuppet Jun 12 '17
The problem here is that neither of you are precisely right.
Ignoring that you have three different crimes which you're treating somewhat interchangeably, the actus reas of criminally negligence homicide is not necessarily that the negligent act directly "instigate" someone's death. Superseding and intervening cause is an issue far more in civil negligence than criminal law.
Would I say it's a slam dunk? Absolutely not. Do I think there's a colorable argument for misdemeanor manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter, or criminally negligent homicide? You bet.
Remember the woman who died from holding in her pee for a radio contest? Think of that, the radio station was on the hook for a civil suit with a massive payout to the family. The radio hosts didn't go to jail for murder.
The difference being that those hosts had no ability to anticipate that someone would kill themselves by holding their pee (or even that it was possible).
Here, the girl knew or should have known that if she dared the boy to play chicken he would. And by the very description (playing chicken) knew it was dangerous.
Again, the above poster is wrong to say it unambiguously is manslaughter. But saying it unambiguously isn't a crime isn't much more correct.
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u/Khaelgor Jun 12 '17
That's really fucking stupid.
'Oh, I dare you to do <insert lethal thing>'
*other person does it and dies*
'Whoops, welp, isn't my fault anyway.'
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u/pariskovalofa Jun 12 '17
A dare isn't manslaughter.
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u/BolshevikMuppet Jun 12 '17
Definitively? No.
Inherently? No
Could it be? Maybe. In addition to hazing being a misdemeanor in a lot of jurisdictions (making this misdemeanor manslaughter), manslaughter doesn't necessarily have to take the form of directly inflicting the deadly injury.
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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jun 12 '17
The problem here is that we're not charging someone with a crime. The specific legal name for what she did doesn't matter, what we're discussing is whether or not his death is her fault. Which it clearly is.
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u/maenads_dance Jun 12 '17
When I was eight, and my brother was six, the pond in our backyard froze over. We woke up very early on a Sunday, while our parents were asleep, put on our coats and boots and went outside to play. We went down to the pond, and I started to walk around on the edge of the ice. My brother didn't want to follow me, because he was scared; but I told him he was a scaredy-cat and a baby and that he had to do it because I was the oldest. We ran around all over the top of that frozen pond. I can still remember how black the ice was - in other words, how fragile.
We came back to the house before the parents woke up, but our neighbors called home because they could see footprints all over the pond. I was in a lot of trouble, but I am still so, so grateful that I didn't get my brother hurt.
(See also: the time I broke my brother's tooth by daring him to a bike race the first day he got off training wheels when we were 12 and 9 respectively. Thank god for bike helmets. Thank god we're still speaking)