cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/news/p/1395876/streamer-troll-johnny-somali-found-guilty-on-all-counts-sentenced-to-south-korean-prison-l
Ramsey Khalid Ismael — better known as Johnny Somali, the infamous American streamer arrested in Japan, Israel, and South Korea for his provocative behavior — has been imprisoned in South Korea.
okay. controversial opinion time
this was all extremely dickish troll behavior but i don’t think A PRISON CAMP is necessarily the most rehabilitative experience. punitive justice doesn’t fucking work and nobody deserves to be put through A PRISON LABOR CAMP regardless of how much of an annoyance they were being
in an ideal world there would mechanisms in place to educate this fuckhead without needlessly traumatizing and brutalizing him. sensitivity training. cultural education. empathy and dignity. true justice that will actually change his behavior
but prison camp? i bet he’s gonna come outta this twice as much an enormous douchebag
I agree with your sentiment but when a human being is this antagonistic towards every country he visits then it’s justified. Definitely a slipper slope moment but just look at this:
It’s so hard to be sympathetic to this piece of trash. Plus it seems like he’s not even doing 3 years. He’s fine.
Its almost impossible to have not at least sentenced him to 1 day after something like that if a prison sentence is legitimately on the table.
Please… he got 6 months for all the shit he pulled. It was so much more than just dickish trolling.
He deserved far more. He got off easy. But it serves two purposes. For one, korea got their message across. Don’t come here to fuck around. And second, they don’t want to pay for him being in their prison.
In an ideal world, people don’t pull this shit to begin with. So we’re already well past an “ideal world scenario”. It’s not this guys first rodeo. These people will never learn unless they face some real, actual consequences.
Yeah. The prosecutors were pushing 3 years. I think he deserves MORE than 6 months.
I have to agree with the last guy. Ideal world, to me, means people can get the support they need to resolve their issues. Ideal isn’t utopia, it’s just as good as we should be doing as a society.
I also think people should get help to resolve their issues.
This guy’s issue is that he’s just an asshole that never faced any real consequences for his actions and therefore thinks it’s ok to go and fuck with people.
This wasn’t his first rodeo. Japan gave him a slap on the wrist and deported him. Clearly it wasn’t enough.
I don’t think expecting people to behave themselves whilst traveling is approaching utopia. That’s just common decency.
Instead of prison where we know people commonly experience rape, abuse, neglect, and forced labor — imagine he was forced to live in some new branch of punitive enforcement that sits between prison and mental asylum. A place where he’s forced to sit with counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists… imagine he’s treated with dignity as a human, like something is clearly wrong with him, and like we can actually help solve that problem directly for him. He could be sentenced to this place for something like “at most 2 years, unless the authority believes he’s ready earlier.” It’s like a conversion camp, but to help immoral people understand why they might want to act morally within society. Wouldn’t that be a little more ideal than something like prison?
Edit: could even follow-up release with required training for personal finance, hospitality, and the like… to include community service hours and required check-in with a probation officer that works with mental health professionals.
You seem to be under the impression that he’s anything other than just a giant asshole. He walks around streaming himself disturbing and fucking with strangers. He know his actions are wrong. He knows he’s being an asshole. He has admitted as much with no shame. He doesn’t care.
I don’t think what you described would be more ideal than prison. I think prison is exactly the place that was constructed just for cases like his. Maybe this time he will learn.
And hopefully others will think twice before trying to be a copycat
Link shared by somebody else down below, but it’s not really a labor camp as you might be thinking. It’s more of a rehabilitation into the workforce program.
https://www.corrections.go.kr/corrections_eng/1905/subview.do
Its not about punishing the guy. It is about sending a message that this will not be tolerated. Also, different cultures are different, culturally.
i’m pretty sure torture is just as brutal in every culture. something merely being a cultural difference doesn’t immediately make it worthy of keeping around. for example, should we respect japanese culture’s weird obsession with sexualizing underage characters? NO! it being different than what we’re used to doesn’t automatically make it okay
Yea, when something that is apart of your culture causes harm to others, it shouldn’t be apart of your culture. Phase it out. Acknowledge it, but phase it out and teach why you phased it out.
We should strive for kindness and care when it comes to culture both of our own and others.
Reading more. It doesn’t sound like what type of camp I was thinking. I’m still sure it probably needs updates to ideas and whatnot, but I also don’t think punishments should be totally easy. As well as learning what got him in this hot water, he definitely deserves to harshly punished with what would best fit the crime.
The spoiler is he won’t learn the lessons he needs to learn from a labor camp. Even in the most idealized form of a labor camp.
Sadly true. I won’t lie, I hope by the thinnest of hopes that he does change. I’d never shy from someone wanting to be a better person…dependent on what they have done. But that’s just my opinion.
We just need to give those who commit crimes the tools to heal and learn from the hurt they caused. We don’t generally, and various unideal things happen after people are released from humiliating, degrading, dehumanizing, and exploitative conditions.
Not getting caught when they do their next crime or hurt the next person is likely on a lot of people’s minds. It’s happened with my sibling who just continued to escalate their behavior after every incarceration. They never learned their lesson. They never got offered real help. Their life is a revolving door of hurting others and losing their freedom for brief spells. They have no starting point to begin to understand the hurt that they routinely cause. They can’t get a job and participate in society even if they wanted to get better and do things right because they face discrimination in hiring and their opportunities are limited.
Personally, I feel that punishment just amplifies the violence and dysfunction, especially in the horrid conditions of the US prison system and forced labor camps like the story we are discussing. Being discriminated against in employment/not being offered opportunities/given a chance by society locks them into crime and destitution. I just can’t honestly imagine that brings the good out of many people…
he has done this many times, and not in korea too.
He’s a douchebag that’s used to acting as such without consequences (or even with profit). A prison labor camp sounds like exactly the sort of wakeup call this guy needs
OTOH maybe this will ground him a bit more and he will be a more self-reflective douchebag.
I don’t know. Maybe a few weeks behind a rock with a whip behind his back might teach him to be mindful of where he is the next time he’s going to act like an idiot
Bad take
Could you imagine if he was quietly black sited and came back from lake laogai all “there is no war in ba sing se” upstanding citizen?
Also, I think this is more vocational training anyway, so probably not far off from the educational system you want anyway.