Gawker, which sucks, just published this remarkable bit of drivel. Every line in it is wrong and I suggest you read the whole thing to get a sense of the magnitude of its wrongness. From the scare quotes around "crime" to describe "taking something that is not yours" to the admonition that you shouldn't call a fat child who steals from you fat because, hey, what about his feels to describing the actual victim of the actual crime as "sociopathic," every single thing about Jordan Sargent's piece is terrible. It's so terrible, in fact, that I half-expected to see one of those enormous "SATIRE" tags Facebook's adopting.
Alas, I think he's being serious. Even in this last line which is so astoundingly terrible it's ... well, go ahead and read it: "If you are nonviolently mugged by a child, continue to let him run along with his friends. The world will be a better place."
This is an objectively false statement. It's not even a bad opinion: it's a factually inaccurate thing to say. The idea that we should just tolerate packs of nonviolent utes grabbing everything that isn't nailed down and running off with it is such an awful one it's hard to fully fathom. Because, I can assure you, if we normalized theft of extremely expensive electronic devices as just another "boys will be boys!" situation, well, lots and lots of extremely expensive electronic devices will be stolen.
And here I thought Hamilton Nolan's "editors are dumbos" essay was going to be the stupid thing at Gawker that got me all riled up today.
Look, I can't believe this has to be said, but: If a slow, fat child steals your stuff you should not only chase that slow, fat child down and have him arrested but also humiliate him as harshly as you can and as publicly as you can in the hopes that other slow, fat children will be deterred from doing the same thing. And even if it deters exactly zero slow, fat children from embarking on a similar life of crime, you should do so anyway because stealing is wrong and thieves should be punished.
Decline. It's a choice. Please don't make it.