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 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:43am 

Am I the only one who thinks swimming to an island 3 miles offshore is highly dangerous and stupid on its own even without sharks? What if there is a freak current that carry whole group of poachers out in the open ocean? They all would drown unless some random boater accidently finds them.
Only excuse for not having a boat I can imagine is because going by boat would be highly visible to authorities who enforce the parlemoen harvesting laws. Otherwise even a crude raft made from discarded timber, oil drums and coca cola bottles would be much safer alternative than swimming 3 miles in shark infested waters and would cost very little to build.
So yeah, that guy who get eaten deserve as much respect as a metal thief who gets toasted when trying to steal copper from electric substation.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 12:25pm 

Why the fuck would I care about some shit head like Coffee anyway? One of his moron brigade has already been banned twice for being an utter waste of bandwidth.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 02:04pm 

Slacker, either make a point about the topic itself or shut up. Pointlessly attacking Coffee a) doesn't make any goddamn points and b) is against the rules.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 04:50pm 

I do like it when nature rears it's ugly head and brings back some degree of payback for the destruction we humans cause. unfortunatly we have social broblems that make things inevitable.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 07:01pm 

Come on, if the stupid newbie wants to talk shit, let him. He's full of shit, everyone in the thread can see that pretty damn clearly. Little doofus wants to dig a hole for himself then hand the kid a shovel.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:15pm 

Explain what part of my argument for the poachers building or buying something to keep them from swimming on the surface of a major shark feeding ground with well documented hyper aggressive sharks was unsound again? The boat wouldn't have cost them much, and if the guys were getting as low as $10 on the pound and really only bringing in 5lb each they still would have had $600 a week between them; more than enough to get a boat, or boats. Sure they would have been extra hungry for a week, but every week after they would have been safer and made more money per amount of time spent in the water.

I'm also pretty happy to be on the side of Mike and AD.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:20pm 

In this case, they would have been MUCH wealthier than that. Typical price for a poacher is around 300 Rand per kilo. A reasonable manually hauled catch once per week puts them in the top 20% of south african income earners.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:30pm 

So when does a person deserve all the suffering they get, other than from stupidity? From the gist of this thread, AD feels that not all suffering is bad.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:36pm 

True, though I like that even low numbers show how stupid these poachers were.



I don't know that it's a line I want to try to draw. Emotional distance from the suffering certainly helps, it being their own fault and not harming anybody else in doing so is another factor, the reasons that it happened also factor in.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:41pm 

Actually, I read it more that he died because he was the slowest swimmer in the group and lagged behind the others. A real-life example that you don't have to be faster than the predator, just faster than the other guy(s) in your group.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 09:55pm 

Oh no. Suffering is bad. On the other hand, sometimes people earn it. I am not going to weep over the corpse of someone who drives drunk and hits a tree. If someone I know does that, I am more likely to be pissed at them for being that stupid than sad and depressed.

And sometimes, good can come out of suffering. Perhaps his friends will be safer in the future, after seeing their friend get... torpedoed... by a shark. Maybe they will stop poaching an endangered species and sever ties with whatever chinese crime syndicate pays their bills? Or more likely, a year from now, it will happen to one of them (yes, shark attacks are rare, but when you ring the dinner bell and go out enough times...)

Also, while I know suffering is bad, and react with sadness/rage to it in some circumstances (like that 8 year old burned to death by loggers)... when someone brings it upon themselves through their own stupidity--particularly when the mental image is sufficiently ironic or demonstrating some other aspect of literature or comedy-- I just dont. I react with schadenfreude. Maybe it is a "I laugh instead of weep for humanity" reaction, I am not that introspective.



Its both really. Someone in the group died because they were idiots:



He died because, while he did not have to outrun the proverbial tiger, he could not outrun his friends.

I think i will use this as a real life example in my natural selection lecture.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 10:04pm 

Putting themselves into a dangerous situation is arguably stupid.

But really, it wasn't that he was stupid, it's that he was stupid AND slow. The other guys were equally foolish, yet they are still alive, because they were just a bit faster. They might conclude this venture is too risky... or they might conclude what they need for next time is another slow swimmer to distract the shark.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 10:58pm 

Serves his family who will now starve right!

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 11:14pm 

I guess a random fairly rare encounter with a wild animal makes you stupid or something.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 11:27pm 

So I suppose we should winge whenever a mobster gets sentenced to life in prison because his family will suffer. That is what S. African abalone divers are. Mobsters. Willing members/contractors of/for chinese crime syndicates. They make Bank. The guy who got munched is in the top 20% of S. africa's wage earners, or thereabouts, if he manually hauls his catch and only goes out once a week. So, while yes, the family is in pain, and may experience a drop in their standard of living... That does not alter one bit the fact that a criminal died because of his own negligence in an absolutely brutal, bloody, oddly beautiful (in a slow motion train wreck, you want to look away but cannot kind of way), and wonderfully ironic way (being destroyed by the ecosystem he systematically harmed).

Ultimately, he is responsible for his actions and earned his death. The suffering of his family--to the extent said family even exists. "I need to poach to feed my family" is the common refrain of all poachers when they are caught, even if they have no family--is a separate matter, and I can feel sad for them, while also chuckling at the moron's death.



It would be random and rare were he swimming at a tourist beach. This guy pretended to be a slow moving seal at a seal colony. What part of "ringing the dinner bell" do you fail to grasp?

Car accidents are rare. I am unlikely to get into a car accident per incident of driving. However, there are things I can do that will massively increase that probability like driving drunk, not obeying traffic signals, and speeding 50 mph over the limit. That is what this guy did. He did everything wrong. The only way he could have increased his probability of attack further is to rub himself down in chum.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 11:47pm 

Ignore this post.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 11:52pm 

Whether he deserved to die or not doesn't matter; you have no rot to take pleasure in his death or the suffering of his family.

Edit: that's the issue here; nobody cares if you say "he deserved to die because he was an abalone poacher"

People get upset because you take pleasure in his death.


What sociopathy?

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-12 11:58pm 

When on earth did I say that I laugh at his weeping wife? Oh, wait. I didnt. I said the two were separate, and I can feel two different sets of emotions with respect to the suffering of his family, and his own death. But please, continue setting your strawmen on fire.



And I respect people like Romulan Republic who dont laugh when they watch 1000 Ways to Die, or read the Darwin Awards. The individuals who do those things, like Flagg, decrying me for this particular incident are hypocrites not worthy of my respect.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:01am 

For fuck's sake, when did this board become a bunch of Miss Manners hand-wringers? A poacher got killed by a wild animal. That's irony. That's blackly humorous. The world is a dangerous place and sometimes we laugh at the ways it finds to kill us.

If a robber got crushed by a bank vault door, it would be tragic, and it would also be hilarious.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:05am 

I'm a hypocrite? You had a hissyfit over Chards killing a snake, yet take glee in the death of a human being and I'm a hypocrite? Get fucked you sociopath.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:21am 

Vendetta Rule violation, much? How much effort are you willing to put in to solve a situation you find morally sub-optimal? Because in order to avoid the issue with snakes Chardok has at his house, I actually went down there and looked for them so they could be relocated. And I hardly threw a hissy fit (good pun though). I noted that the snake's death was needless, that there were other options that were better, and went about trying to make sure those other options were explored.

Yes you are. Am I? No. There is a big difference between killing someone/something you dont need to--in which case you are making a poor moral choice, as a moral agent, responsible for your actions and their consequences-- and getting yourself killed because you were too negligent/greedy/stupid to do the right thing, or do the wrong thing in the right way.

If Person A were to intentionally slash Person B's femoral artery, I would be pissed, because that someone made a wrong moral choice and victimized someone else.

If Person A held firecrackers in their lap while throwing them out of his car, dropped his zippo, and blew out his femoral artery... well... that happens to be an actual darwin award, and I will be damned if it is not hilarious.

Does this concept of moral agency and responsibility for one's actions and how they apply in different cases not compute for you?



You were saying? You admit to taking pleasure in someone's death, for the exact same reason I am taking pleasure in this person's death. This person died because he was greedy (and top 5th of wage earners in country is not a meager living), stupid, and during the commission of a serious crime with links to the international drug trade. How does this not meet the very criteria for morbid hilarity that you yourself have specified?

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:25am 

It would be hilarious because there would be a direct correlation between the 2 and the person would be taking a stupid risk. Like my earlier example of a bullfighter being gored to death. If this guy had been out hunting sharks and got eaten by one due to him doing something dumb it would be funny. As it is, he was doing to best to provide for his family doing something unrelated to sharks and was eaten alive in an extremely rare occurrence. The fact is that you risk death by any number of things any time you get into the ocean for any reason.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:35am 

Hold the phone. You are splitting hairs over that? Really? That is your defense?

So, if I am out poaching rhino horn and I do something stupid while doing so like try to move a cobra out of my path and get bitten, that is not funny. But if the rhino tramples me to death, that is? What the fuck is the difference? In either case, I am doing something I should not be doing. I am doing that thing in a stupid way. And that thing bites me in the ass, and I die.

What the hell is the qualitative difference? Say I engage in armed robbery, and shoot myself in the face when cleaning my gun later? Where the fuck are you drawing your imaginary lines in the sand?

And what part of "behaving like an injured or otherwise perfect prey item at a seal colony with great whites around massively increases the probability of being eaten" do you not understand? Or do you just ignore the parts of posts that are inconvenient for you? Oh yes. Because you are apparently a dishonest little fuck-stick.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:40am 

Uh, you did note last page where AD linked to several news articles from respected sources about how South African abalone poachers tend to be linked with international drug cartels, right? So, more likely than not, this guy wasn't doing this to "provide for his family" anymore than John Gotti, Al Capone, or Lord Gino were trying to provide for theirs.

I don't know about you, but if any one of them were to die in a marginally ironic way due to negligence in the commission of a crime, I'd at least view that as karma biting their ass, if not funny.

 Post subject: Re: South African Poacher Gets Air-Jawsed

Posted: 2012-01-13 12:42am 

Considering the rarity of shark attacks compared to the commonness of snake bites, yes the cobra bite would be funny.


Armed robbery doesn't necessitate that being funny as cleaning a loaded gun is stupid enough on its own to qualify.



You keep ignoring the incredible rarity of being attacked by a shark, so who's the liar exactly? And the profile of a seal is better embodied by that of a paddling surfer waiting for a wave (surfers are the most common GW attack victims as well) so I bet you just splooge with glee every time one of them gets eaten, right?