@objectinspace I mean, this is one f’ed up society. We’re trying to place individual blame on these people when, tbf, who tf lets troll extortionists just eat people? Seems like their skill set could be put to much better use. And wow, these people could really have used some good counseling and psych support—no one talks to anyone else, wives apparently have to depend on others for money? This is a society in serious need of help.
@krisnelson It was a multiple choice pole! You are supposed to rank them in order from most to least culpable, unfortunately Mastodon polls don't support that.
@objectinspace lol, sorry, I couldn’t resist being difficult! Really though, if you insist I pick then it’d have to be the troll as the only one who committed any chargeable crimes in most/all states (or was the troll just “standing his ground” in Florida?)
@krisnelson You can't charge a troll with a crime! Trolls are well established as lower lifeforms and thus exempt from the right to a fair trial. The real question is why a local malitia hasn't been formed to shoot the troll for preying on these poor defenseless promiscuous young ladies.
@krisnelsonr The original prompt has a boatman character to represent the capitalist society that charges you to rout around the problem rather than dealing with it directly. (masto only supporst 4 poll options, sadly) You could add on a lot more characters though like the social worker who missed an appointment, police who consider the troll bridge a "no-go zone," or perhaps a judge who locks people up for adultary creating moral hazzard for aiding and abetting. Lots of ground to explore!
@objectinspace I agree generally with the results here. I was caught between "wife" and "troll" and went with "troll"—because ultimately, no-one is more responsible. But everyone is a little bit responsible,, and I think that order is good.
@queenslight@objectinspace@simon All of this depends on where the value judgements are. We are not told whether the husband disapproves of the wife being with her lover. We don't even know that he knows about it. Then there's the lover who may not have the money. The way it's told, the wife has a choice and she makes it. But, that choice depends on other factors. If it's about free will, then it's her fault? Maybe? Or is it the capitalist?
@ppatel@queenslight@simon That precisely is why I think this is so fun: the weightage people pretty much. That's why I like it: you can create justifications to condemn or defend all of them. The choices people make are thus more a reflection of where their preconceived notions are about behavior. My favorite example is the one I highlighted earlier, where people blame the husband: well, if she was unfaithful, she must have had a reason! Why didn't he listen to her? Maybe he's cheating too!
@objectinspace@queenslight@simon Yes. I prefer to look at it from the unanswered questions perspective rather than speculating about motives and guessing wild things from the limited information available.
@queenslight@simon You could argue that the troll can't be blamed for doing what the troll does, like if you get attacked by a bear in the woods. Why is the troll even allowed to be there? Who let that happen?
@objectinspace I love this. But if the wife stayed on her butt one night without yada yada with her lover, she wouldn't be dead and eaten by a super stupid troll. Books teach us, trolls aren't that smart. So, close-minded troll, ate an adulteress. But also not sure of my answer either. They all have a fault. The husband for refusing and the lover who decided he's poor and had no money, then the wife for going across in the first place and the troll for well, being absolutely unthoughtful of how otherwise to solve the toll problem he had. That's one tough one, friend. :)
@SuperSpaceObject To clarify, the troll is hanging around the bridge to eat people 'cause that's what he do. The purpose of the toll is to avoid the area with the troll in it. Originally this was a boatman, to represent the capitalist society that imposes a cost for protection--but mastodon only supports four poll options :( Also, you can pick multiple choices! Whoever is above your own personal culpability line is fine.
@objectinspace Oh, I seee. Also, I don't use masto as a software so I have like 20 choices. Your poll doesn't look like multichoice. It let me select one only which is strange if multi choice is a setting for masto polls.
@SuperSpaceObject Oh that's weird. It should have four options and you can pick as many of those as you want. There aer suposed to be five but I couldn't add them all!
@objectinspace@SuperSpaceObject Oh, I figured out why it didn't work with multiple choices. Because the app I used to vote on my phone on the other instance might have a little bug, voted via semaphore and was able to multi vote, which resulted in very weird bugged answers on my end, I think our multiple choice polls are bugged here. also wow, ushc a boatman. But if the bridge existed, why would you need a boatman? that's the other question.
@objectinspace I genuinely believe there’s not enough information presented to answer this question. In order for there to be responsibility, there has to be some amount of culpability and awareness in my opinion, which we don’t know in this scenario how or whether the troll has. In this situation, the troll would have different levels of responsibility if they were an analog, four, say, an obviously lose street light fixture that the woman could see from the other side was probably going to fall on her vs a waiting gunman, for example.
@tmmahaff I agree generally--but that's the fun! You can make up backstories for all of these people that justify their actions to varrying degrees. FWIW, the original version of this story has an "assassin" in place of the troll, but I think "murderer" better conveys the intended meaning, IE a person who kills people, as opposed to someone tasked to kill a specific person.
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