Blogger Stabbed To Death After Internet Abuse Seminar (theguardian.com)

A prominent Japanese blogger has been stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet. The Guardian reports: Media reports said Kenichiro Okamoto, better known by his blogger name Hagex, died on Sunday evening after reportedly being attacked by a man he had argued with online. The suspect, Hidemitsu Matsumoto, allegedly followed Okamoto into the toilets after he had ended his talk at a venue in the south-western city of Fukuoka.

Okamoto was stabbed several times before staggering out of the toilets after his assailant, who fled on a bicycle, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. Okamoto, who sustained stab wounds to the chest and neck, was taken to hospital where he was confirmed dead. His attacker reportedly handed himself in almost three hours after the attack.

Comments

I must have read this right when it came out.

[grep -v '.*' *]

stabbed to death minutes after giving a seminar on how to resolve personal disputes on the internet.

Not to be snarky here, but my first thought after reading this was "So I guess that's exactly NOT what you should do, huh?" (Sorry to be morbid.)

At least the guy turned himself in soon afterwards. But he bothered the guy online, even kept making new IDs to hassle the guy after the previous one was disabled.

What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself.

Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the right wings more moralistic throw the gays out of my cake shop because, Jesus? As opposed to the stalking and occasional murder of doctors providing care to abortion clinics?

Fuck the pretend outrage of the right over poor rich girl Trumpian getting kicked out of a middle class dyke haven.

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[Green Mountain Bot]

Freedom to be an asshole doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of being an asshole.

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[drinkypoo]

I have a different theory that I'm not sure I want to fully go into here, but I'll summarize. I suspect that about 10% of the population sees everything in black and white terms.

In a more or less recent conversation here about bad cops, someone brought up a possibly apocryphal but plausible-sounding anecdote about a cop suggesting that there's about 15% good cops, 15% bad cops, and the rest are followers who will just go along with whatever is happening. We could argue about the percentages (both in policing, and the general population) but I think a similar effect is at work in simply thinking. About 15% of people think, about 15% of people refuse to think, and the rest just go along with whatever is happening around them. If the people around them are thinking, they will give it a go. If the people around them aren't, they won't.

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[jeff4747]

They need to look at our progressive American way of doing things instead: throw people out of your restaurant, get them fired, and gather in mobs outside their house.

Or the conservative American way of doing things, throw people out of your bakery or restaurant, get them fired, gather in mobs outside their house, shoot them at church, firebomb their business....

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, us Nazi's are really gearing it up now. Please report to the closest MAGA center for your "mandatory entertainment"

The new definition of genocide: To send people back to their home country who were not allowed to be here instead of letting them in, costing us billions in fraud for education, medical,and benefits.

Re:I must have read this right when it came out.

[Zontar The Mindless]

There aren't so many Nazis still running around. They've mostly aged out. So you're not talking about Nazis, you're talking about "people who I don't like, and so label Nazis so I'm free to advocate violence against them". Don't do that.

He's not. He's talking about people marching around with RaHoWa banners and torches, chanting "Blood and soil! Blood and Soil!"

And like most intelligent people, he's decided that people who look like Nazis, act like Nazis, and talk like Nazis are, for all practical purposes, Nazis.

You are either a sympathiser or incredibly naïve to interpret it otherwise. Which is it?

(That's a rhetorical question; it's pretty obvious from your sig that you are in fact an apologist for such types.)

Worst argument ever?

[The Cynical Critic]

So I guess we can safely assume that he wasn't as great at resolving internet arguments as he thought he was?

Because an argument that lead to one of the parties getting to pissed off they decided to find the other in meatspace so that could stab them to death can't have ended particularly well...

Re:Worst argument ever?

[HalAtWork]

How do you resolve an argument with a deranged person? That's a different type of negotiating skill

The illusion of safety

[MikeRT]

I'm not going to make this a gun issue because it's about self-defense in general. In a homogeneous, low-crime, high-trust society like Japan they could probably get away with just reexamining basic laws on mace and things like that. What really matters is something that doesn't get through the smug, protected, middle class set until it's thrown in their face:

If someone wants to kill you, ain't a lot the government can do to stop it with preemptive legislation. If your coworker is willing to kill you, they can just bring a steak knife from home, follow you into the break room or bathroom and attack you. They don't need guns. They just need to be more concerned about killing you than getting away with it with their freedom intact.

And that was clearly the case here.

Re:The illusion of safety

[BadDreamer]

The issue with guns isn't if someone is determined to kill you. As you note, once someone reaches that point (which is very difficult to reach), there isn't much that will stop them.

But when a gun is involved, there is no need to be determined to kill you. All it takes is a quick squeeze on a trigger. Something which is easy to do in anger, or accidentally, or just out of annoyance.

The point of gun legislation is not to get at the people who are determined to kill you no matter what. It's to get at the people who don't, but who with a gun might kill you anyway.

Re:The illusion of safety

[ScentCone]

No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you.

And yet guns (with and without owners seriously trained in self defense strategies, tactics, and legalities) are legally and constructively used hundreds of thousands of times every year to prevent violent assault or to mitigate one in progress. Guns have saved the lives of countless people that someone else wanted to kill. You seem to think that most violent assaults that end in someone's murder are all carried out by rational movie hit-men who spent the previous scene flipping through a folder of photos and getting a briefing from their handler before heading out in a late model BMW to kill their target. Here's the thing: no, you can't stop everyone intentional murder. But people defending themselves from violence - including the murderous variety - successfully use guns thousands and thousands of times every month. You seem to be suggesting that because the average person isn't likely to be able to stop a carefully planned murder that, therefore, all of those people who DO defend themselves should just give up and let their attackers have their way.

Re:The illusion of safety

[Notabadguy]

Killing somebody in anger is only "easy' if you're a psychopath. It's hard to imagine a non-psychopath saying such a thing. Who's anger raises to the level of murderousness? That's serious mental illness - which is the real violence problem in society.

I'll tell you who does want to kill you though - Mao, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Leopold II, and Hitler. They are empirically far more dangerous.

Killing someone in anger *is* easy. That's a crime of passion, and it happens all the time, around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You don't have to be a psychopath, nor a sociopath for that, you only need to recognize that humans are prone to fits of extremes. In fact, being a psychopath is the absolute opposite of killing someone in anger. It's killing someone without feeling anything. I think I'm probably a psychopath; but I haven't killed enough people to tell.

I said all that to say this - human life is cheap. There are more of us every day. There haven't even been any significant wars or depopulation events in living memory to make us feel fragile as a species. There are plenty of people who can look around themselves and see that no one is particularly important. Taking a life is socially repugnant, but ultimately irrelevant.

If you've seen the movie "Punisher" or movies like it and thought, "Those men deserved to die," you're closer to the latter. If you refuse to watch it, or have seen it and thought, "He has no right to kill those men" you're closer to the former. In the context of this article, I treat everyone with respect - even people I hate, and it amazes me every time I see someone provoke another intentionally to rage - because you never know who might be ready to justify killing you - ranging from that blind rage crime of passion, to the coldly calculated, "I can make the world a little better for their absence."

Wrong assumption

[sinij]

Deceased made wrong assumption - that you could resolve arguments and reach understanding with all people. This is just not true.

Additionally, Internet is unlike person-to-person communication in a way that you don't screen your audience for sanity and you don't get non-verbal clues giving you an early warning that someone is about to blow the lid.

More so, once people made up their mind it is virtually impossible to change their mind with logic. People change their behavior and convictions due to pain (social or otherwise) and not due to being convinced by evidence and reason.

As such, the only rational approach to online and social media discourse is to act pseudonymously and acrimoniously.

Re:Wrong assumption

[sinij]

Unfortunately, doxing is a thing regardless of how you behave. There are plenty of rational, civil, and well-meaning people that were dragged by a social mob. It is almost arbitrary on who gets targeted and why.
 
  Acting rationally and civilly is a handicap if your goal is to advance your ideas. Slogans and soundbites, shaming and insulting, and marginalization and uncharitable vilification of opposing views is by far more effective.
 
This isn't how it should be, but this is how it is. Our society and norms are not designed for instant, global, and non-individual communication.

Re: Okamoto Killed in Fukuoka

[cayenne8]

Sounds like they need "sensible knife laws" in Japan....

Re:How Could This Happen...

[lgw]

When are you guys going to start a revolution with your pea-shooters? I heard that is why you need them: to protect us from a tyrannical government. So...when?

If it's ever necessary, it will happen the same way it did last time. Citizens with guns, mostly ex-military and led by ex-military, will take military armories on the first day of the war. Military bases are gun-free zones, after all. (Yes, really, a soldier can't even carry his own personal gun on base.)

Half the militia that fought the British troops in the Battles of Lexington and Concord were exactly the cliche - bunches of dumb, poorly trained hicks all related to one another. But half weren't, and they accomplished something.

If you don't know US history, it might surprise you that the war started when the governor sent troops to confiscate military-style weapons from the populace. Didn't work out well for him, in the end.