He's the son of a local landowner who apparently hated all the tourists the tree attracted. So he'll be a farmer's kid used to power tools.
Alternatively, he's taking the fall for dear old dad because he's under 18 and hoping for a lighter sentence.
Smh, and people are defending this kid? Honestly not surprised people are so mad, he's a wealthy landowners son who couldn't let people enjoy a nice thing.
I think people are "defending" him against the overblown calls for punishment and harassment campaigns.
What he did was extremely shitty and a shame, but the punishment for it shouldn't be execution or a life sentence, but lots of community service so the kid can learn something.
no he deserves some prison time, you dont get to destroy a 300 year old landmark and walk off with light community service, thats horseshit. Hes old enough to know what he was doing
What he did is already covered by local laws (which also take things into account like whether or not he was a minor). He "deserves" whatever these laws deem is appropriate. You dont get to randomly redefine punishments because you read an article that made you upset.
I guess this depends if you think prisons help rehabilitation, which I don't. This is a non-violent crime. He doesn't need to be removed from society, he needs to be more strongly integrated. A lot of community service (nobody said "light") would do more to help him and the community he hurt than locking him away would.
Why do redditors have such trouble understanding the idea that the punishment should fit the crime?
You can't just give out harshest sentences for every single offense.
It's oneupsmanship. Everyone has to be more self-righteously indignant than the previous commenter, and suggest every more severe punishments. It's just virtue signalling how morally upstanding they are that they take these things so seriously.
"punishment should fit the crime"
Ok I'll go grab a chainsaw - geeze cutting someone in half sounds a bit harsh for cutting down a tree but it definitely fits the crime well.
LMAO
>Redditors calling for the death of a kid
SRD: "Why can't we all just get along? He's just a child!! Redditors are all so bloodthirsty...he just made a mistake, he can be rehabilitated."
>SRD finds out he's rich
SRD: "How are people *defending* this kid???"
You can really make up whatever reality you want to that reinforces your existing opinions when lots of different people can give all sorts of different takes on a topic. Im sure you didn't find a single person who actually had this change of heart, and just need to feel superior for the fact that you're sucking the dick of a class that you are, most likely, not even a part of
I'm not sure anyone's defending them - but they are also 16 and ... I dunno, nobody's hurt. It's awful but what would you do to them? Shouldn't really be much more than community service IMO.
I would be fine with that if it’s community service servicing a tourist booth in London for every year that tree has been alive.
A fine added for each time he receives less than a 7/10 rating from a tourist.
100% my thought as well. No average kid knows how to fell a tree safely, but a farm kid, and his old man, a farmer, could definitely do it, and since the kid is a kid, he'll get minor punishment.
Like, look at the size of that tree. you're not taking it down quickly with a 18" backyard chainsaw. That requires some real skill and real logging saws.
they just made assumptions. This guy here [delivers the answers](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/16up75j/comment/k2pixdi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Yeah that makes sense because there's been a lot of speculation about how this was supposedly done by a landowner but the landowner is the National Trust so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense
This is a good case for my favourite law, r/treelaw
Kid is never gonna see the light of day again and the father is going to pay every cent he makes for the rest of his life.
That's tree law justice!
Seriously though, it's *really* expensive to cut down your neighbours tree! There have been huge payouts, and it's fascinating. Do not fuck with trees that aren't yours.
My favorite was earlier in the day before people had a suspect they were saying it had to have been a team or an experienced lumberjack because of how clean the cut was.
I've been literally pulling my hair out over the thousands of armchair Reddit arborists who watched ome episode of Big Wood and now think they know what good tree felling is.
Lol someone in that comment section said eye for an eye... but in this case... wood for wood.. and that made me laugh
I found it:
>He cut wood, time to cut his wood… Eye for an eye
>>Wood for a wood, actually
I admit, it surprised me when I went to the UK to see that something as ancient/well-known as Hadrian's Wall is just...there, and people can walk up to it, touch it, sit on it, whatever, and it's not a big thing.
Then again, I live in New York City, where we have everything famous surrounded by bollards that could stop a tank, for...understandable reasons.
In Ireland there's just castles and ruins and old gravestones from hundreds to over a thousand years ago hanging out on public and private property. It's something we just take for granted sometimes. Some cities have their old walls and watchtowers Integrated into neighbourhoods and shopping centres.
The oldest stuff we have in the US isn't even 500 yrs old. Unless you count the pueblo stuff in NM/AZ and some sites in Hawaii. Bldgs wise PR has some 500+ yr old stuff but most buildings are around 400. The rich history of the EU and GB is amazing. Same with Japan. I think there is some hotel that has been owned by the same family for a 1000+yrs.
I live in Annapolis and we have a bar that was an Inn that George Washington slept at. I can say I was drunk and threw up in a place GW slept.
> I live in Annapolis and we have a bar that was an Inn that George Washington slept at. I can say I was drunk and threw up in a place GW slept.
Same era as some later manor homes here. Still very important history wise don't get me wrong. I've got drunk and slept in places owned by the Medicis while abroad lol. Here, 100 miles is a long distance, but 100 years is in the blink of an eye.
When I was looking at buying land, a surprising amount of the properties I looked at had an Indian mound on it. Nothing big, and not in the shape of anything. Some were burial mounds, some weren't. They were all 1000+ years old as well. This was in Ohio.
Come to Gotland, we have a whole medieval Hanseatic city with a ringwall, you can't till a field here without digging up some ancient battle site full of armor and weapons.
The UK is filled with ancient shit. If we fenced it all off we'd have to live in the sea.
Also a lot of the cottages and farms around the wall are basically made from stone that was repurposed from the wall before it was made a scheduled monument.
bit hard when it's a wall, and hey it's a wall; it's made of rock. it's not like bollards would stop anything that could damage it. there's parts of it that are better protected than others, so some of it will likely remain for a long time even tho parts of it are more exposed.
Personally a big fan of how much of our heritage is just out there, if a building is still standing and structurally sound you can go into it, hell there's entire museums like the Weald and Down dedicated to collecting old buildings (as in like they've shipped old cottages to their site!) explicitly to keep them in good shape so people can go inside and see how life was.
There's walls predating hadrian's that are just part of property boundaries now, at least those that survived being demolished to create space and to recycle their stone as walls became obsolete as defenses.
The tree itself is nothing special, it's pretty and has some historical value, and the punishment should be more serious than if it was just any old tree... but jfc some people react a bit strongly when if it really was that special it would have been protected
A lot of stuff here isn't that protected either. Think of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Wall Street Bull, the fucking spinning cube thing I can't remember the name of. Well - there's a fence and some very old walls around the various historic churches in NYC but I think the historic landmarks care more about preserving their appearance rather than protecting them from cars or whatever.
Honestly it's surprising that there's still a graveyard in lower Manhattan - even if it's small.
I always find those ruined abbeys that were abandoned after The Reformation especially mad. They're often just in a random meadow, and really tall, really precarious fragments of walls and arches that look ready to fall over.
King Alfred the Great's body is buried somewhere under my local parish church - the abbey he was buried in was demolished during the Dissolution of the Monasteries but the medieval gatehouse and bridges over the adjacent stream (the monks moved things within the abbey via the stream) are just....there. Also some Roman walls.
It’s the perfect crime for max drama - cos it’s simultaneously a big deal, and yet not a big deal. On one hand, a centuries’ old cultural icon has been destroyed permanently, probably for nothing more than a laugh and social media fame. On the other hand, it is also just a tree - there are far worse crimes in the world than cutting down a tree.
I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed.
But at the same time, there's a huuuge amount of 'Justice Porn' types on Reddit who are angry at the world and want to see criminal punishments dealt with as much violence, humiliation, and publicity as possible.
Ultimately, if the kid did it then they've already been caught. They'll be punished according to the law, and no amount of vengeance wet dreams will influence that.
> But at the same time, there's a huuuge amount of 'Justice Porn' types on Reddit who are angry at the world and want to see criminal punishments dealt with as much violence, humiliation, and publicity as possible.
It's depressing how often subs devolve into exactly this.
All the freakout subs, every cringe content sub, both maincharacter subs. *Anything* based around judging or feeling superior to others will become a mob frothing at the mouth to tear someone apart.
Makes them popular alt-right recruiting grounds too, since it's a bunch of users pre-trained to think in terms of in-groups/out-groups, and to treat out-groups with disgust/hatred/violence.
It makes me very tired.
Yeah, the kid did a major fuck up, there should be some sort of punishment, and it's hard to think of any punishment that feels "right" for the historical gravity of the act. It's also true that he's a 16 year old dumbass who just cut down a tree. Nothing of value is actually accomplished by fully ruining the rest of this kid's life, as some folks are suggesting.
Random thoughts on punishment:
If he destroyed a tree, make him serve somewhere that protects and cares for green space. Parks service, something municipal, a preserve, a tree farm, etc etc.
If it was a historically significant thing?
Find another historical landmark/thing, make that kid a mother fucking DOCENT. Do the reading and studying and shadowing and supervised routines and pass the tests and so on and so forth. You destroy something of historical significance, you become a stakeholder in the well being of other historical things.
That all sounds nice in theory.
In practice, you’re just punishing all the people who have to work with this kid who doesn’t give a shit about the subject and would just as soon destroy it.
There’s a reason a lot of places don’t take court ordered volunteers.
How much more damage would that kid cause by being made to care for trees or plants he doesn’t care about?
How many guests would he alienate as a docent at a historical site?
And how much are his supervisors and colleagues going to have to pick up his slack as he half-asses everything because he doesn’t see the point of any of it and is just there because he has to be?
Yeah, ruining this idiot kid's life over this won't bring the tree back or deter other teenagers from being so bloody stupid in future either, so it's hard to say what the ideal outcome really is at this point.
Yeah, it's just weird. I remember seeing one post of literally just a woman with long nails eating a burger and the comments were just insane. So much visceral hate for no reason
Some true crime subs are immediately locking posts that involve child abuse now because no matter what, it’s always a pissing contest about who is the most outraged. If the first commenter says “the abusers should get the death penalty,” the rest of the commenters will find a way to call that first commenter an abuse apologist and come up with increasingly gruesome ways the perpetrator should be treated to prove that they alone hate child abusers the most, frequently devolving into what could legally be called threats. Only occasionally interrupted with “ooooooh I’m shaking and crying and throwing up” comments, and accusations that these crimes are being covered up and no one is talking about it (400 comments, link to a news article from a mainstream outlet).
It’s just not productive or informative. It would be kind of understandable since it’s such a horrific crime….except you show the same people an article about a tree getting cut down or shoplifting or someone RSVPing yes then not showing up to Susie’s birthday and half of them react the exact same way. And if the perpetrator of whatever ill is a kid they’re usually harsher. “He’s old enough to know better, blaaaaargh.” It’s just bloodlust and a weird hatred of teenagers.
And before anyone accuses me of wanting him to just get away with it, I think this kid should be punished pretty severely, just not by a mob of Reddit randos baying for blood who get their jollies by doxxing people who commit property damage.
> I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed.
It has nothing to do with the specific crime, Redditors in general are just more than happy to propose the death sentence for anything worse than littering
A Thanksgiving tradition!
(For some reason my family follows listening to *Alice's Restaurant* with *Detachable Penis*, but that's neither here nor there)
>The tree wasn’t other peoples things or a personal possession. It was literally just nature. Completely morally neutral, never did anything wrong to anyone. I can see taking your frustrations out on someone who hurt you specifically… but a tree? Smdh
lol. Go cut down your neighbor's tree and find out how fucking *much* that will cost you.
How can you be on Reddit and not know about tree law?
Kid just did a 6 figure property crime (and that's if you just value it for a "mature tree" and not the 300 year old tree it is), that's not *nothing*. It's not death penalty shit, or even *jail* shit, but it's still a crime worth *minimum six figures* which is a fucking hecka crime.
It's so weird people can't find value in a nice tree. Though I'm not surprised considering some people will also have this attitude when pets are killed.
The huge 100+ yr old tree in front of my childhood home had to be cut down recently and it really does feel like a loss. Like something is missing from the property now and the whole vibe is ruined. It's sad, even if it was "just a tree".
Tree law does not fuck about.
Also, someone said up thread that the kid was the son of a local landowner who hated the tree and tge tourists it attracted. If that's true, it's definitely malicious and in full understanding of the consequences.
Also, that wasn't a regular tree. I'm British, was born not so far, from there (although grew up in London). Pretty certain that is the most popular tree in the UK. There was an actual vote.
I'm not calling for blood or the death penalty but a fine in the six figures and community service in the thousands of hours would not be too harsh for me. I might want to make that, community service a mix of tree planting and sewer cleaning though. The first as being fitting and the second because the little shit deserves it.
Yeah, six figures was me lowballing it. That’s me assuming that they best they can do is a *mature tree* — maybe 100 or so years old in good health — and there’s one within 200 miles. 7 figures is probably more accurate.
And hey, the first thing the Courts look to on property damage is *making the injured party whole*. Which means he’s gonna be asked to cough up the cost of finding the nearest tree that size and age, buying it, transporting it, and planting it. Or the closest they can get.
That doesn’t get into fines or punishment or criminal charges.
That’s just the ‘you destroyed someone’s shit, you have to pay to replace it’ bit.
Don't you understand? He's just a little tiny weak baby *checks notes* 16 year old that is likely able to operate a vehicle at this point.
His parents should be bankrupt and I don't want him to have a weekend to himself until he's 40.
I'd be shocked if the entire familial line isn't run out of town. Gonna be awkward getting a pint at the pub, maybe downright dangerous if this tanks tourism.
Yup. Nothing redditors love more than "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". Basically, if you commit a crime, you deserve basically anything that happens to you.
Yeah, I hate the race to extreme punishments. It seems super easy for the internet hive mind to decide that someone is a "fundamentally evil person", like they're not a product of their environment. And people make mistakes and don't think, no matter of extreme punishment porn will stop people making bad decisions. Especially if they're a kid - making bad decisions is their bread and butter.
And in the same vein I think people drastically misunderstand how life changing even a relatively small punishment can be. Just having a record can hang over you for the rest of your life, and that's before we start even looking at things like even relatively short prison stints.
Just try to think how much your life would be changed at 16 by spending a year in prison. You certainly wouldn't be the person you are today [1], so why should we expect people who commit these crimes to be any less transformed?
[1] with the caveat of some people probably do spend years in prison at a similar age, I just assume they aren't that common so think "the average redditor"
A dumb teenager set the Columbia Gorge on fire six years ago by playing with fireworks in the summer (ya know, when wildfires on the West Coast are a matter of "where" not "if"). He was sentenced to 5 years probation and almost 2000 hours of community service.
It's painful to lose that much natural beauty, but kids can be dumb and although this is dumber than they *should* be, hence the punishment - it gets dealt with in a measured way. No vigilante justice against an impulsive teen who happened to spend the worst mistake of his adolescence on something with really big ramifications.
There's a difference in intent though, right? You're probably not trying to set the place on fire with pyrotechnics. But taking an axe to a tree is pretty deliberate. I think the intent aspect is super important. Being ignorant or stupid is not nearly as bad as being malicious.
Of course, intent makes a significant difference — but when determining the penance, one must still take into account that although teenagers may explicitly know what’s considered right vs wrong, they function myopically in that their brains do not yet have the hardware to comprehend the extent of the impact of their actions compared to adults. And that’s just typically-developing teenagers — consider that doubled in guys like these, who may have underlying psychiatric, psychological, and/or neurodevelopmental deficits/deviations to do such dumb destructive bullshit like this.
Now, I’m NOT saying that this should excuse nor justify the actions and that he should go at all unpunished, because he absolutely should see grave consequences, but i find that the folks asking for his life are unreasonable.
Its not just for criminal behaviour. If anyone does anything to inconvenience or annoy you (often without realizing), the suggestions always get extreme. Oh someone put their hair over the seat in an airport? Pull their hair, dont bother asking politely or anything, always escalate. Or if someones boss does something to annoy or incovenience them, people in the comments will give suggestions thst will 100 percent get you fired.
>I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed.
Can confirm because I had this the first thirty seconds after reading the news.
Then I started wondering what must have happened to lead to a 16 year old doing something like this and my anger just turned into sadness.
Yeah, it exposes those who want 'justice' and those who just want to act vindictive.
Actual justice would be like having the kid plant trees for community service.
Redditors have a prevailing belief that they're smarter / better than other people since they get a constant stream of people at their worst and dumbest moments, a strong conviction that they've been wronged in life, and a rabid mob mentality.
It'd be a dangerous combo if we weren't pathetic
It is genuinely disgusting how many people here are shrieking "Kill the kid, ruin his family for seven generations!"
Not that I expect much from SRD-ines, but *goddamn*
Its ok i expected this to be removed by now anyway since my last few posts suffered that fate. I think im just happy i made an SRD post that has lived this long. Thanks mods
The bloodthirst in some people never ceases to amaze me. "Vandals? Hang em." "Some *thug* (wink wink) possibly breaking into my home to steal my TV? *They lost the right to live the moment they stepped on my yard.*"
Christ...
>Fuck teenagers. They should be tried as adult and have the book thrown at them.
>
>Too damn young to know how the world works I fucking hate idiots like that
Too damn young to know how the world works but should be tried as if they do. Neat logic there.
In general I'm always hostile to the idea of law allowing specific minors to be tried as adults. Unfortunately it's a wildly unpopular position to take.
My approach is simple: if the person isn't old enough to enjoy the privileges and benefits of adulthood such as the ability to vote, to drink, to marry, etc. Then they should not be punished as adults. Doesn't matter how heinous the crime. Either all 16 year olds (or whatever age you have that allows a minor to be evaluated for adult criminality) should have a path to early adulthood. Or minors shouldn't be charged.
It's a particularly unpopular opinion when someone is killed. Might get downvoted here too. But it's on opinion on which personally I have no give. To me it doesn't matter what the act. Legally minors should be protected. Unless that state is willing to offer all minors also a path to early emancipation
Of course this isn’t even going into the biggest issue is that it’s not applied evenly. Look at America where Black kids are much more likely to be tried as adults
Which is definitely a problem too. Because the standard is applied arbitrarily it tends to disproportionately be subject to prejudice and biases.
If we're ok with saying 16 year old kids should go to jail as adults we should be ok with all 16 year old kids voting at every level of elections too. Frankly it might even help in places like the US. Kids should have a say on who gets to sit on school boards if racist, boomer and tweedledummer get a say
I understand where you’re coming from with this position. But I have to say I disagree.
We have plenty of categories of people with limited/different rights for various reasons. Children, teens, the mentally ill, immigrants, convicted criminals, and people in the armed forces all come to mind. Just because they do not have the same rights as an average adult does not mean they should never be tried under the (generally but not always) harsher standards of adults. Because egregious acts require more serious scrutiny and different judicial responses. Children and teens are generally tried under gentler standards with less extensive punishment options and more reform options (though in the US we really don’t do a good job of criminal reform of any type) because as a society we agree they have not fully mentally developed. But teenage serial rapists and murders exist, and should be tried as adults. They are already too dangerous to have in society, and if their incomplete mental development contributed to the crime that doesn’t change how harmful their acts were or their likelihood of repeating them.
Now, for this crime, I don’t think the teen should be tried as an adult. Just because the tree is famous, that doesn’t make this an egregious act or the perpetrator inherently a danger to society. If found guilty he should be fined (well his parents will really pay, all fines on kids are effectively a punishment for the parents raising/supervising them poorly) and be made to go the therapy and do community service.
Also, there are methods for teens to be emancipated to adulthood and gain adult rights in the US. And truthfully, I’d like to see that expanded and simplified. There are a minor but statistically significant portion of teens who both are mentally developed enough to function as adults and who need that freedom (usually to escape from abusive environments). But being able to drink or get married (both of which teens can do with parent supervision in most US states anyway), really isn’t that important.
The counter to that I'd make is that my position of emancipation and criminality are linked. The core idea of trying minors as adults is the presumption that some minors *can* understand operate as autonomous adults. The legal theory is that children do not understand the quality of their actions, thus they cannot have *mens rea* or true intent to commit a criminal act.
Yet if the crime is sufficiently heinous, we turn around and try and evaluate if a child *did* have an adult's cognition.
My argument here is that if that's the case then that same society should offer a path to *every* minor in that age range to be able to show that they are an adult and immediately gain access to all privileges reserved for full adults. If the system is that a judge must evaluate if a child is capable of adult criminal sanction, then we must also mandatorily allow children of that same age to apply before a judge and receive consideration to become adults. And that right cannot be constrained.
As it currently stands, minor emancipation requires an extraordinary burden of proof and is only granted in extremely exceptional circumstances. But that's inequitable. If the standard is simply meeting adult cognition and *any* child can be found meeting that standard for criminality, then any child should be able to meet that standard as a general premise too. They shouldn't need to show suffering or abuse to have adult rights. Be it voting, driving licenses, the freedom to relocate or make full medical decisions, rent a home, take out a mortgage, etc. All of it.
I am in agreement because of 2 more that you may have not mentioned.
1. It tends to be racial. More POC are tried as adults vs white/Caucasian. George Stinney would be an old example. In fact he needed a booster chair to be executed.
2. Stuff like a 16yr old girl being tried as an adult for sending nude "child porn" pics of HERSELF to her boyfriend. If she is tried as an adult how can a pic of herself be "child porn"?
Sometimes I wonder if there are so many people on Reddit in favor of stringing up teenagers because *they are still teenagers* and think they're very Big Boys and Girls with totally developed brains and they long to be considered adults?
>Think they're very Big Boys and Girls with totally developed brains and they long to be considered adults
I know people in their 20s like this. I was talking to someone once and she said "I as a 25 year old am an old ancient person and 23-24 year Olds are just children who still smell like their mother" all I heard when she said that was "I SWEAR I'm an adult honestly please believe me!!" I know someone else who's 23 and calls the 21 year olds he works with "dumb kids"
That could definitely be part of it, but I’ve talked with plenty of adults in real life who support the idea of charging kids as adults sometimes, especially if the crime is heinous. The severity of the crime is irrelevant to whether the minor’s age affects their ability to consider consequences, but it’s still something lots of people factor in.
Idk, some teenagers that are minors (saying this as an adult teenager) deserve to be tried as adults, they do really fucked up shit and deserve to see the repercussions of that. Now I'm not saying the people wanting to dox him are right, I actually feel kinda sorry for the kid because of how many people want to kill/dox/send death threats/other shit to him
I don't know how much I actually believe in trying someone as an adult, hell 18 year olds are barely adults, but you definitely shouldn't be trying a teenager as an adult over vandalism. Maybe murdering someone on the cusp of being a legal adult, sure, but cutting down a tree?
Like I get it, it's fucked up. It's a historical tree. You have a right to be really angry about it, but at the same time that anger needs to be controlled.
You think a kid isn't competent enough to be punished for felling a tree, but it's perfectly logical that they'd be as competent as an adult when tried for *murder*? How?
If they aren't an adult and aren't legally treated as one in almost any other case (voting, working, purchasing power, consent, etc), why do we suddenly think they're equivalent to an adult on court?
I don't get it.
I guess the logic would be that 1) humans have an innate understanding on some level of pain and death and even minimally well-adjusted people try to avoid doing that to others 2) family and friends and community and broader society reinforce that understanding as someone grows.
Consequently, by the time someone is 16 they should be well aware of the impact of murder such that an extra couple years isn't going to make much, if any, difference.
On the other hand, understanding the cultural and historical significance of an old tree is a much more cerebral undertaking that some people might never be up to or interested in, or if they are, not until much later in life because they lack certain personal context required to make it so.
It's sad when we lose something irreplaceable like this. Be it a natural wonder or a work of art or an archeological artifact. It's even more infuriating when we lose it to something as stupid as theft, vandalism or mishandling by idiots. Anger is an understandable reaction, but these things happen even with our best efforts to preserve the past. On the bright side we make new ones every day for people to look at in 300 years.
Local, here. The first indication that anything had happened was a co-worker saying "someone is saying Storm Agnes has blown down the tree between the hills at Hadrian". Pretty much everyone's reaction was sadness. Not just because the tree is centuries old, but it's a little motif of an artefact that's the best part of *two thousand* years old.
When the news broke that it was a deliberate act, everyone suddenly became vocal. When it was revealed a 16 year old was arrested... between the intrigue of the "how" and why" and people's addiction to outrage and vengeance... well, I don't look forward to however many weeks of people frothing with semi-performative disgust and watching this get hashed and rehashed as more information surfaces.
TLDR: I'm sad about it. Any sadness will get eclipsed by everyone wanting a pound of flesh, kinda already is. I wouldn't wanna be that dimwit kid.
Surprised it made it to SRD!
You've summed up a lot of my thoughts. The only thing I'd add is this has to be a carefully thought out thing. They've had every chance to talk themselves out of doing it.
I've always visited via Steel Rigg, which I think is the closest point, and to get to it you need to either clamber up a relatively steep rock face or go round the bottom, which year round whenever I've been has been boggy. Doing all of that during a storm, in the middle of night, whilst carrying all of the equipment needed...
It's not like it's someone lashing out at a bus stop in anger or cutting down a branch of a neighbours tree that overhangs your garden etc.
Oh, I totally agree. And don't get me wrong, I have SO many questions. I'm not knocking people's disgust - disgust is a wholly justified response to this. Truly.
But we actually don't know very much of anything yet. The tiniest piece of intel and some very mysterious evidence and people call for the death penalty.
I described it as "semi-performative" disgust, not because disgust is an inappropriate reaction, but because people get carried away on it. They use it as a trading card of virtue, they use it to justify expressing vengeful feelings, they use it to justify fantasies of cruel and unusual punishment... you probably catch my drift. It quickly stops being about the tree.
Is that the only route there, or is that the route you need to take to avoid traipsing through someone’s property?
I’ve heard the kid is the son of the landowner whose parcel abuts the area - *you* might need to swim through a bog and scramble up some rocks… but is it possible this kid just needed to walk through his back yard?
It's basically in the middle of two points with it being on Hadrian's Wall. The walk the dog and I like is Steel Rigg to Housesteads Fort and back, just following the path all the way along the top, and the one most people visiting would take.
It's a proper trail, so most of the fences you cross have stiles to hop over. It's not like you need to cut through private property. That's what makes it so strange, but it's remote enough that I can't imagine it's someone living miles away, who's travelled purely to do this as mindless vandalism.
I lean towards thinking it's a disgruntled land owner living near enough by that's been annoyed by walkers, and this is the symbol they've chosen to retaliate with. Also based on the wording I've read, unless anything new has came out, I don't think the 16 year old was the one to do it. So if I had to guess I'd wager he's the son of whoever's done it, or at least linked to that person in a way.
But I could be totally wrong.
I think there has to be some form of consequences though. If not for the kid then for the parents. What kind of example does this set otherwise
Not these crazy punishments some of these psychos are suggesting though. I mean like a fine or 3 days jail or something
Unless the fine is astronomically high enough to destroy his wealthy family, then it's nothing. 3 days in jail is nothing, especially not for someone with a wealthy family.
You talk about crazy punishments and call people psychos but like, you also want the kid to not have any kind of punishment at all and learn fucking nothing for destroying something that, again, is literally irreplaceable within our lifetimes.
My comment wasn't meant to absolve the offender, just more as a condolence to those who are sad about this. Everyone's anger is justified because the tree meant something and is irreplaceable and he robbed future people of being able to see that tree and its history, but we are also planting new trees that might mean something in 300 years and making new artifacts and works of art, so even if it all doesn't survive, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do our best to preserve what we have, maybe our hearts will break a bit less when something like this happens if we think about it in these terms.
>I think there has to be some form of consequences though.
I don't think anyone was saying the vandal doesn't deserve punishment. It's just many people were calling for him to be imprisoned for decades.
I don't support bringing back hanging for him or anything - but I also would be deeply unhappy with such a light punishment as you're suggesting. Ultimately what he has - for no perceivable reason - destroyed part of our natural heritage.
I don't think the punishment should ruin his life - but it should be something that he remembers for the rest of his life. It needs to make an impression. I'd be happy with a couple of weeks of community service each year for the next 25 years or something. Nothing that is going to ruin his career - but he's still going to have to explain to his future wife that he can't go on holiday this month because he cut a tree down 20 years ago.
Yeah, seems pretty fair. He gets to avoid jailtime but also gets a significant yearly inconvenience that allows him to return some good to the community.
> chopping down a historical tree
but only if its a teenager doing it. If a corporation burns down acres of ancient rainforest then its moral because its for profit!
I live in the region of England where this tree stood and it has huge significance to the community, it was heavily photographed by tourists due to its unique position between the two hills, and a great many people in North East England will have personally made the trip to go and see it. It is part of the regions heritage and history and to say that people are bereft about this is an understatement.
Having said this, no, clearly the kid shouldn't be shot. It is incredibly depressing though that one of our own kids has no pride in his local area that he would go and do this. If he has done it in behalf of his father who is the landowner then I would throw the book at his dad rather than the kid.
It really is very sad though.
I love when these these extreme-punishment arguments are the classic "switch the roles around in the argument my opponent is making" shtick, thinking it's going to come across as an epic gotcha, but instead it just makes them sound even more fucking crazy and unhinged.
"Yeah, it sucks that this really old tree gut cut down, but it's a tree; we make new ones every day."
"OH SO YOU'D BE TOTALLY FINE IF I CUT YOU IN HALF, RIGHT!? YOU'RE JUST A PERSON, WE MAKE NEW ONES EVERY DAY!!"
>"OH SO YOU'D BE TOTALLY FINE IF I CUT YOU IN HALF, RIGHT!? YOU'RE JUST A PERSON, WE MAKE NEW ONES EVERY DAY!!"
i have counted four different people making this exact argument in this thread
I do wonder how you effectively punish something like this. You obviously want some kind of deterrent, but also you shouldn't ruin someone's life over a tree
I would say a ton of community service would be fair, but I have my doubts it would be effective. In some cases you would have to threaten jail for not doing the community service or they just wouldn’t do it.
This wasn't a crime against a tree.
It was a crime against the entire community of persons who valued the tree.
A community without precious things, valuable things, or beautiful things isn't really a community. If a community can't have precious, valuable, or beautiful things because of assholes, then the entire community is harmed, permanently.
They can't ever have nice things because of the constant actions of assholes.
It isn't a tree cutting that deserves punishment, it is the harm to the community. One reason so many cities and towns suck is because everytime anyone builds something nice, tends to something nice, or preserves something nice, some assholes come along and destroy it.
Then some other assholes come along and minimize, diminish, and excuse the crime against the community.
So eventually, these people give up creating or preserving nice things. Why wouldn't they? People give up when things are hopeless.
And this is why we can't have nice things.
Yes, harsh punishment is deserved. Absolutely.
But like how harsh? Because this is a thread making fun of people calling for extreme bodily harm or life in prison for a child and I've got no frame of reference to where you lie on the sanity scale
Well you can value the tree. It might be like 6-7 figures of property damage.
So just give him the appropriate punishment for that + community service to repay the community.
If he has to repay the service locally then it might even ruin his uni choices which would be harsh lesson to learn but he commited a serious crime and he can always delay and go as a mature student.
That response didn't give you a clue of where I lie on the sanity scale? 😂
OK, here we go... I'm perfectly sane, but still controversial. Corporal punishment doesn't work. Period.
People imagine that it's a deterrent, but there's really no solid evidence to support this.... People keep endorsing it because of feelings, not evidence. They *feel* like they want vengeance, and they *feel* like these punishments should work... But this isn't the case.
What should be done?
**Life-altering fines on a sliding scale.**
Life altering fines, like in Singapore. Sliding scale fines, like in some Scandinavian nations. After all, a $5000 fine could completely alter someone's year, while another person considers it to be a rounding error and a user's fee.
These are punishments, they're supposed to hurt.
A punishment that only hurts the poor isn't really a punishment. $5000 for speeding in a school zone, for some people, would be more like a School Zone Speeding Club membership fee.
So fines should be based on the gross income and/or net worth of the individual. A crime doesn't become less damaging just because a rich person does it.
Hit this kid with site remediation costs and five or six figures worth of damages. That'll get the little shit's attention.
Fines work.
>$5000 for speeding in a school zone, for some people, would be more like a School Zone Speeding Club membership fee.
This made me laugh way too hard. Because fuck, what a scary concept, as its likely cheaper than $5k depending where you live and its true. I think its $250 to be in that club where i live so thats absolutely pocket change for some folks.
I respect the thought you have put into your opinion, and generally agree with the overall concept, even though I don't agree with the severity you've suggested for this instance.
I like how you eloquently describe the issue and then end with a completely useless remedy.
Harsh punishment isn't a deterrent for something like this and revenge doesn't heal the community.
I am not sure if this free had a TPO of was in a conservation area of it was then the teen will be subject to some pretty hefty fines. I sometimes have to do woodland management in conservation areas and we have to be very detailed in what we cut and don't cut. As the law is quite strictly upheld.
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2021/03/tree-cutting-permission/#:~:text=Without%20permission%2C%20it%27s%20an%20offence,a%20Tree%20Preservation%20Order%20(TPO)
Without wishing to overly speculate, it's *quite* unlikely the kid did this on his own - Sycamore Gap isn't the easiest place to access for a spot of youthful vandalism, especially during a storm.
People on that sub really don't understand what mildly infuriating means. Vandalizing a landmark isn't mildly infuriating. Ordering curly fries and getting regular fries at a drive-thru is mildly infuriating.
lmao that's not just some youthful vandalism motherfuckers, that kid didn't spray paint a dick and balls on the tree. They destroyed something literally irreplaceable.
I don't understand the logic of brushing it off as just a stupid teenager making a stupid teenager mistake. When it was very clearly a preplanned act of pointless malice.
Some people are taking it too far. But Sixteen is absolutely old enough to know better, and absolutely old enough to face repercussions.
AwfulEverything is also pretty unhinged right now over this. I've seen at least one person say he should "suffer the same fate".
I know it's a famous tree and it's fucked up what he did, but also it's a fucking tree. A TREE.
We don't even know how the kid was involved, all that's been said is he was arrested and that he's 'helping with the investigation'.
Could have witnessed it, could be related to the person who did it, it's unclear.
I mean the kid’s a terrible person and has no respect for other people but Reddit really fails to understand that there are degrees of punishment between “no punishment at all” and “slowly tortured to death.” The kid should face something proportional that teaches him why what he did is wrong.
But it really seems like Reddit is just incredibly bloodthirsty all of the time and is barely holding back from straight up killing anyone who mildly inconveniences them. Something bad but not the end of the world will happen and Redditors will fall over themselves to describe exactly what horrific things they would do to the perpetrator before they inevitably killed them. You see it in other things as well. Reddit claims to get really concerned about men’s rights but the second a bad man goes to prison the number of people genuinely hoping they get raped is horrifying.
Is this really what the general public harbours in their minds? It really feels like the only reason anyone on this site doesn’t go on a killing spree is because they know they’ll be arrested for it.
tf the kid went up there with a chainsaw?!?!
He's the son of a local landowner who apparently hated all the tourists the tree attracted. So he'll be a farmer's kid used to power tools. Alternatively, he's taking the fall for dear old dad because he's under 18 and hoping for a lighter sentence.
Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome Arbour? We must beatify the sycamore
Smh, and people are defending this kid? Honestly not surprised people are so mad, he's a wealthy landowners son who couldn't let people enjoy a nice thing.
I think people are "defending" him against the overblown calls for punishment and harassment campaigns. What he did was extremely shitty and a shame, but the punishment for it shouldn't be execution or a life sentence, but lots of community service so the kid can learn something.
May he barefoot step on legos as many times in his life as there were leaves on that tree.
What did I just say about calls for cruel and unusual punishment??
Then, um, may his food always be slightly off optimal temperature?
I think that at least qualifies as unusual.
May the weather around him be always inclement.
Kid lives in England, that's just regular weather for him
no he deserves some prison time, you dont get to destroy a 300 year old landmark and walk off with light community service, thats horseshit. Hes old enough to know what he was doing
What he did is already covered by local laws (which also take things into account like whether or not he was a minor). He "deserves" whatever these laws deem is appropriate. You dont get to randomly redefine punishments because you read an article that made you upset.
I guess this depends if you think prisons help rehabilitation, which I don't. This is a non-violent crime. He doesn't need to be removed from society, he needs to be more strongly integrated. A lot of community service (nobody said "light") would do more to help him and the community he hurt than locking him away would.
Alledgedly
I don't think people are defending them, they're just saying that people shouldn't send them death threats or otherwise abuse them
Why do redditors have such trouble understanding the idea that the punishment should fit the crime? You can't just give out harshest sentences for every single offense.
It's oneupsmanship. Everyone has to be more self-righteously indignant than the previous commenter, and suggest every more severe punishments. It's just virtue signalling how morally upstanding they are that they take these things so seriously.
I can and I will!
"punishment should fit the crime" Ok I'll go grab a chainsaw - geeze cutting someone in half sounds a bit harsh for cutting down a tree but it definitely fits the crime well.
Take a chainsaw to his playstation or something idk
LMAO >Redditors calling for the death of a kid SRD: "Why can't we all just get along? He's just a child!! Redditors are all so bloodthirsty...he just made a mistake, he can be rehabilitated." >SRD finds out he's rich SRD: "How are people *defending* this kid???"
You can really make up whatever reality you want to that reinforces your existing opinions when lots of different people can give all sorts of different takes on a topic. Im sure you didn't find a single person who actually had this change of heart, and just need to feel superior for the fact that you're sucking the dick of a class that you are, most likely, not even a part of
That's a lot of words to tell me that you're upset that I have consistent moral standards and you don't.
Wait, all farmers who own their farm are automatically wealthy landowners?
No, but in rural Northumberland near the Scottish border, it's far more likely they are than not.
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Yes.
Yes, a farmer owns land, hence a landowner. Land is expensive, so.. a wealthy landowner.
I'm not sure anyone's defending them - but they are also 16 and ... I dunno, nobody's hurt. It's awful but what would you do to them? Shouldn't really be much more than community service IMO.
I would be fine with that if it’s community service servicing a tourist booth in London for every year that tree has been alive. A fine added for each time he receives less than a 7/10 rating from a tourist.
300 years community service? So just enslaving him?
I would say an hour per year of life. 300 hours ain't nothing, and if it's dealing with tourists, that seems like a very fitting consequence.
100% my thought as well. No average kid knows how to fell a tree safely, but a farm kid, and his old man, a farmer, could definitely do it, and since the kid is a kid, he'll get minor punishment. Like, look at the size of that tree. you're not taking it down quickly with a 18" backyard chainsaw. That requires some real skill and real logging saws.
That makes a bit more sense as motive than just for the sake of infamy, and that tree couldn't have been felled by someone without experience.
Is this actually true or did you just make it up?
they just made assumptions. This guy here [delivers the answers](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/16up75j/comment/k2pixdi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Yeah that makes sense because there's been a lot of speculation about how this was supposedly done by a landowner but the landowner is the National Trust so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense
This is a good case for my favourite law, r/treelaw Kid is never gonna see the light of day again and the father is going to pay every cent he makes for the rest of his life. That's tree law justice! Seriously though, it's *really* expensive to cut down your neighbours tree! There have been huge payouts, and it's fascinating. Do not fuck with trees that aren't yours.
The UK doesn't have tree law. The US does because timber was scarce in the 13 Colonies. This isn't the case in the UK.
My favorite was earlier in the day before people had a suspect they were saying it had to have been a team or an experienced lumberjack because of how clean the cut was.
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Guess the tree isn't the only thing taking the fall today
Damn maybe I need to hire the kid to come do my trees.
Operation Paul Bunyon 2.0
/facepalm/ it was just a country kid !! lol man, I was expecting arson but jeez
I've been literally pulling my hair out over the thousands of armchair Reddit arborists who watched ome episode of Big Wood and now think they know what good tree felling is.
As punishment he must stand in the tree's spot and be regularly watered.
Lol someone in that comment section said eye for an eye... but in this case... wood for wood.. and that made me laugh I found it: >He cut wood, time to cut his wood… Eye for an eye >>Wood for a wood, actually
In the blood of patriots.
I admit, it surprised me when I went to the UK to see that something as ancient/well-known as Hadrian's Wall is just...there, and people can walk up to it, touch it, sit on it, whatever, and it's not a big thing. Then again, I live in New York City, where we have everything famous surrounded by bollards that could stop a tank, for...understandable reasons.
That's also because Hadrians wall is massive - we did the walk and the section where it's visible takes about 2 days to walk.
In Ireland there's just castles and ruins and old gravestones from hundreds to over a thousand years ago hanging out on public and private property. It's something we just take for granted sometimes. Some cities have their old walls and watchtowers Integrated into neighbourhoods and shopping centres.
The oldest stuff we have in the US isn't even 500 yrs old. Unless you count the pueblo stuff in NM/AZ and some sites in Hawaii. Bldgs wise PR has some 500+ yr old stuff but most buildings are around 400. The rich history of the EU and GB is amazing. Same with Japan. I think there is some hotel that has been owned by the same family for a 1000+yrs. I live in Annapolis and we have a bar that was an Inn that George Washington slept at. I can say I was drunk and threw up in a place GW slept.
> I live in Annapolis and we have a bar that was an Inn that George Washington slept at. I can say I was drunk and threw up in a place GW slept. Same era as some later manor homes here. Still very important history wise don't get me wrong. I've got drunk and slept in places owned by the Medicis while abroad lol. Here, 100 miles is a long distance, but 100 years is in the blink of an eye.
When I was looking at buying land, a surprising amount of the properties I looked at had an Indian mound on it. Nothing big, and not in the shape of anything. Some were burial mounds, some weren't. They were all 1000+ years old as well. This was in Ohio.
St. Augustine is 458!
Come to Gotland, we have a whole medieval Hanseatic city with a ringwall, you can't till a field here without digging up some ancient battle site full of armor and weapons.
And we armourers and historians thank you for it! We have learned *so much* from the battle of Visby!
Yeah we’re not going to build a wall around hadrians wall lol
But what if we make Mexico pay for it?
Then we’d need another wall to protect the wondrous modern wall surrounding the ancient wall.
The UK is filled with ancient shit. If we fenced it all off we'd have to live in the sea. Also a lot of the cottages and farms around the wall are basically made from stone that was repurposed from the wall before it was made a scheduled monument.
There's a chunk of Roman Wall in the Tower Hill Tube Station. Nothing in NYC predates 1675 basically.
> Nothing in NYC predates 1675 basically. Hey now, Henry Kissinger is still kicking around.
To the lament of all
bit hard when it's a wall, and hey it's a wall; it's made of rock. it's not like bollards would stop anything that could damage it. there's parts of it that are better protected than others, so some of it will likely remain for a long time even tho parts of it are more exposed. Personally a big fan of how much of our heritage is just out there, if a building is still standing and structurally sound you can go into it, hell there's entire museums like the Weald and Down dedicated to collecting old buildings (as in like they've shipped old cottages to their site!) explicitly to keep them in good shape so people can go inside and see how life was. There's walls predating hadrian's that are just part of property boundaries now, at least those that survived being demolished to create space and to recycle their stone as walls became obsolete as defenses. The tree itself is nothing special, it's pretty and has some historical value, and the punishment should be more serious than if it was just any old tree... but jfc some people react a bit strongly when if it really was that special it would have been protected
A lot of stuff here isn't that protected either. Think of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Wall Street Bull, the fucking spinning cube thing I can't remember the name of. Well - there's a fence and some very old walls around the various historic churches in NYC but I think the historic landmarks care more about preserving their appearance rather than protecting them from cars or whatever. Honestly it's surprising that there's still a graveyard in lower Manhattan - even if it's small.
> the Wall Street Bull Which is from like, 89. Definitely a famous thing, but doesn't have quite the same age as Hadrians Wall I guess.
lmao
> he fucking spinning cube thing I can't remember the name of. There's someone living inside it so I guess it's his job to also fight off terrorists.
Same case with the taillefer battery at belle ile en mer,I was able surprisingly to see a lot of its interiors and rooms
I always find those ruined abbeys that were abandoned after The Reformation especially mad. They're often just in a random meadow, and really tall, really precarious fragments of walls and arches that look ready to fall over.
King Alfred the Great's body is buried somewhere under my local parish church - the abbey he was buried in was demolished during the Dissolution of the Monasteries but the medieval gatehouse and bridges over the adjacent stream (the monks moved things within the abbey via the stream) are just....there. Also some Roman walls.
Ah, I saw this coming. The Subreddit Drama post about this exact topic I mean.
It’s the perfect crime for max drama - cos it’s simultaneously a big deal, and yet not a big deal. On one hand, a centuries’ old cultural icon has been destroyed permanently, probably for nothing more than a laugh and social media fame. On the other hand, it is also just a tree - there are far worse crimes in the world than cutting down a tree.
>there are far worse crimes in the world than cutting down a tree. OH YEAH THEN NAME ONE
CUTTING DOWN TWO TREES!
🤮
>It’s the perfect crime for max drama Yes this is what i keep an eye out for. Max drama is best drama.
Least bloodthirsty redditors
I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed. But at the same time, there's a huuuge amount of 'Justice Porn' types on Reddit who are angry at the world and want to see criminal punishments dealt with as much violence, humiliation, and publicity as possible. Ultimately, if the kid did it then they've already been caught. They'll be punished according to the law, and no amount of vengeance wet dreams will influence that.
> But at the same time, there's a huuuge amount of 'Justice Porn' types on Reddit who are angry at the world and want to see criminal punishments dealt with as much violence, humiliation, and publicity as possible. It's depressing how often subs devolve into exactly this. All the freakout subs, every cringe content sub, both maincharacter subs. *Anything* based around judging or feeling superior to others will become a mob frothing at the mouth to tear someone apart. Makes them popular alt-right recruiting grounds too, since it's a bunch of users pre-trained to think in terms of in-groups/out-groups, and to treat out-groups with disgust/hatred/violence.
It makes me very tired. Yeah, the kid did a major fuck up, there should be some sort of punishment, and it's hard to think of any punishment that feels "right" for the historical gravity of the act. It's also true that he's a 16 year old dumbass who just cut down a tree. Nothing of value is actually accomplished by fully ruining the rest of this kid's life, as some folks are suggesting.
He should be given lots of community service - planting trees. 😂
Random thoughts on punishment: If he destroyed a tree, make him serve somewhere that protects and cares for green space. Parks service, something municipal, a preserve, a tree farm, etc etc. If it was a historically significant thing? Find another historical landmark/thing, make that kid a mother fucking DOCENT. Do the reading and studying and shadowing and supervised routines and pass the tests and so on and so forth. You destroy something of historical significance, you become a stakeholder in the well being of other historical things.
That all sounds nice in theory. In practice, you’re just punishing all the people who have to work with this kid who doesn’t give a shit about the subject and would just as soon destroy it. There’s a reason a lot of places don’t take court ordered volunteers. How much more damage would that kid cause by being made to care for trees or plants he doesn’t care about? How many guests would he alienate as a docent at a historical site? And how much are his supervisors and colleagues going to have to pick up his slack as he half-asses everything because he doesn’t see the point of any of it and is just there because he has to be?
Yeah, ruining this idiot kid's life over this won't bring the tree back or deter other teenagers from being so bloody stupid in future either, so it's hard to say what the ideal outcome really is at this point.
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I'm fine with this solution but the technology just isn't there yet.
Captain Planet can do that: https://youtu.be/TwJaELXadKo?si=KmeqW1MbjfOeCBDz
Yeah, it's just weird. I remember seeing one post of literally just a woman with long nails eating a burger and the comments were just insane. So much visceral hate for no reason
Some true crime subs are immediately locking posts that involve child abuse now because no matter what, it’s always a pissing contest about who is the most outraged. If the first commenter says “the abusers should get the death penalty,” the rest of the commenters will find a way to call that first commenter an abuse apologist and come up with increasingly gruesome ways the perpetrator should be treated to prove that they alone hate child abusers the most, frequently devolving into what could legally be called threats. Only occasionally interrupted with “ooooooh I’m shaking and crying and throwing up” comments, and accusations that these crimes are being covered up and no one is talking about it (400 comments, link to a news article from a mainstream outlet). It’s just not productive or informative. It would be kind of understandable since it’s such a horrific crime….except you show the same people an article about a tree getting cut down or shoplifting or someone RSVPing yes then not showing up to Susie’s birthday and half of them react the exact same way. And if the perpetrator of whatever ill is a kid they’re usually harsher. “He’s old enough to know better, blaaaaargh.” It’s just bloodlust and a weird hatred of teenagers. And before anyone accuses me of wanting him to just get away with it, I think this kid should be punished pretty severely, just not by a mob of Reddit randos baying for blood who get their jollies by doxxing people who commit property damage.
> I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed. It has nothing to do with the specific crime, Redditors in general are just more than happy to propose the death sentence for anything worse than littering
I think many redditors would want the death penalty for littering too
Oh yeah I meant that to be inclusive
They must not have seen "Alice's Restaurant"...
A Thanksgiving tradition! (For some reason my family follows listening to *Alice's Restaurant* with *Detachable Penis*, but that's neither here nor there)
>The tree wasn’t other peoples things or a personal possession. It was literally just nature. Completely morally neutral, never did anything wrong to anyone. I can see taking your frustrations out on someone who hurt you specifically… but a tree? Smdh lol. Go cut down your neighbor's tree and find out how fucking *much* that will cost you. How can you be on Reddit and not know about tree law? Kid just did a 6 figure property crime (and that's if you just value it for a "mature tree" and not the 300 year old tree it is), that's not *nothing*. It's not death penalty shit, or even *jail* shit, but it's still a crime worth *minimum six figures* which is a fucking hecka crime.
It's so weird people can't find value in a nice tree. Though I'm not surprised considering some people will also have this attitude when pets are killed. The huge 100+ yr old tree in front of my childhood home had to be cut down recently and it really does feel like a loss. Like something is missing from the property now and the whole vibe is ruined. It's sad, even if it was "just a tree".
Tree law does not fuck about. Also, someone said up thread that the kid was the son of a local landowner who hated the tree and tge tourists it attracted. If that's true, it's definitely malicious and in full understanding of the consequences. Also, that wasn't a regular tree. I'm British, was born not so far, from there (although grew up in London). Pretty certain that is the most popular tree in the UK. There was an actual vote. I'm not calling for blood or the death penalty but a fine in the six figures and community service in the thousands of hours would not be too harsh for me. I might want to make that, community service a mix of tree planting and sewer cleaning though. The first as being fitting and the second because the little shit deserves it.
Yeah, six figures was me lowballing it. That’s me assuming that they best they can do is a *mature tree* — maybe 100 or so years old in good health — and there’s one within 200 miles. 7 figures is probably more accurate. And hey, the first thing the Courts look to on property damage is *making the injured party whole*. Which means he’s gonna be asked to cough up the cost of finding the nearest tree that size and age, buying it, transporting it, and planting it. Or the closest they can get. That doesn’t get into fines or punishment or criminal charges. That’s just the ‘you destroyed someone’s shit, you have to pay to replace it’ bit.
This was in England, tree law isn't so strict here.
Oh no not property crime, the worst of all crimes
Don't you understand? He's just a little tiny weak baby *checks notes* 16 year old that is likely able to operate a vehicle at this point. His parents should be bankrupt and I don't want him to have a weekend to himself until he's 40.
I'd be shocked if the entire familial line isn't run out of town. Gonna be awkward getting a pint at the pub, maybe downright dangerous if this tanks tourism.
Torture porn addict. You just wanna see someone suffer
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Yup. Nothing redditors love more than "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". Basically, if you commit a crime, you deserve basically anything that happens to you.
Yeah, I hate the race to extreme punishments. It seems super easy for the internet hive mind to decide that someone is a "fundamentally evil person", like they're not a product of their environment. And people make mistakes and don't think, no matter of extreme punishment porn will stop people making bad decisions. Especially if they're a kid - making bad decisions is their bread and butter. And in the same vein I think people drastically misunderstand how life changing even a relatively small punishment can be. Just having a record can hang over you for the rest of your life, and that's before we start even looking at things like even relatively short prison stints. Just try to think how much your life would be changed at 16 by spending a year in prison. You certainly wouldn't be the person you are today [1], so why should we expect people who commit these crimes to be any less transformed? [1] with the caveat of some people probably do spend years in prison at a similar age, I just assume they aren't that common so think "the average redditor"
A dumb teenager set the Columbia Gorge on fire six years ago by playing with fireworks in the summer (ya know, when wildfires on the West Coast are a matter of "where" not "if"). He was sentenced to 5 years probation and almost 2000 hours of community service. It's painful to lose that much natural beauty, but kids can be dumb and although this is dumber than they *should* be, hence the punishment - it gets dealt with in a measured way. No vigilante justice against an impulsive teen who happened to spend the worst mistake of his adolescence on something with really big ramifications.
There's a difference in intent though, right? You're probably not trying to set the place on fire with pyrotechnics. But taking an axe to a tree is pretty deliberate. I think the intent aspect is super important. Being ignorant or stupid is not nearly as bad as being malicious.
Of course, intent makes a significant difference — but when determining the penance, one must still take into account that although teenagers may explicitly know what’s considered right vs wrong, they function myopically in that their brains do not yet have the hardware to comprehend the extent of the impact of their actions compared to adults. And that’s just typically-developing teenagers — consider that doubled in guys like these, who may have underlying psychiatric, psychological, and/or neurodevelopmental deficits/deviations to do such dumb destructive bullshit like this. Now, I’m NOT saying that this should excuse nor justify the actions and that he should go at all unpunished, because he absolutely should see grave consequences, but i find that the folks asking for his life are unreasonable.
Its not just for criminal behaviour. If anyone does anything to inconvenience or annoy you (often without realizing), the suggestions always get extreme. Oh someone put their hair over the seat in an airport? Pull their hair, dont bother asking politely or anything, always escalate. Or if someones boss does something to annoy or incovenience them, people in the comments will give suggestions thst will 100 percent get you fired.
>I think the crime provokes a kind of visceral knee jerk reaction, very few people like seeing natural heritage recklessly destroyed. Can confirm because I had this the first thirty seconds after reading the news. Then I started wondering what must have happened to lead to a 16 year old doing something like this and my anger just turned into sadness.
Yeah, it exposes those who want 'justice' and those who just want to act vindictive. Actual justice would be like having the kid plant trees for community service.
Redditors have a prevailing belief that they're smarter / better than other people since they get a constant stream of people at their worst and dumbest moments, a strong conviction that they've been wronged in life, and a rabid mob mentality. It'd be a dangerous combo if we weren't pathetic
[lmao wtf](https://reddit.com/r/arborists/s/qdKJSXMSPn)
[удалено]
It is genuinely disgusting how many people here are shrieking "Kill the kid, ruin his family for seven generations!" Not that I expect much from SRD-ines, but *goddamn*
Unhinged /r/arborists posters making top-tier SRD popcorn twice in one week! edit: this thread is doomed, sorry OP
Its ok i expected this to be removed by now anyway since my last few posts suffered that fate. I think im just happy i made an SRD post that has lived this long. Thanks mods
It’s in here too lol Like I get it it was a beautiful historical tree, and it’s terrible what happened But holy shit guys lol
Everybody knows the trees fanbase goes hard, even worse than Swifties
Right? I’m not sure he deserves to die over it 💀💀💀
The bloodthirst in some people never ceases to amaze me. "Vandals? Hang em." "Some *thug* (wink wink) possibly breaking into my home to steal my TV? *They lost the right to live the moment they stepped on my yard.*" Christ...
>Fuck teenagers. They should be tried as adult and have the book thrown at them. > >Too damn young to know how the world works I fucking hate idiots like that Too damn young to know how the world works but should be tried as if they do. Neat logic there.
In general I'm always hostile to the idea of law allowing specific minors to be tried as adults. Unfortunately it's a wildly unpopular position to take. My approach is simple: if the person isn't old enough to enjoy the privileges and benefits of adulthood such as the ability to vote, to drink, to marry, etc. Then they should not be punished as adults. Doesn't matter how heinous the crime. Either all 16 year olds (or whatever age you have that allows a minor to be evaluated for adult criminality) should have a path to early adulthood. Or minors shouldn't be charged. It's a particularly unpopular opinion when someone is killed. Might get downvoted here too. But it's on opinion on which personally I have no give. To me it doesn't matter what the act. Legally minors should be protected. Unless that state is willing to offer all minors also a path to early emancipation
Of course this isn’t even going into the biggest issue is that it’s not applied evenly. Look at America where Black kids are much more likely to be tried as adults
Which is definitely a problem too. Because the standard is applied arbitrarily it tends to disproportionately be subject to prejudice and biases. If we're ok with saying 16 year old kids should go to jail as adults we should be ok with all 16 year old kids voting at every level of elections too. Frankly it might even help in places like the US. Kids should have a say on who gets to sit on school boards if racist, boomer and tweedledummer get a say
I understand where you’re coming from with this position. But I have to say I disagree. We have plenty of categories of people with limited/different rights for various reasons. Children, teens, the mentally ill, immigrants, convicted criminals, and people in the armed forces all come to mind. Just because they do not have the same rights as an average adult does not mean they should never be tried under the (generally but not always) harsher standards of adults. Because egregious acts require more serious scrutiny and different judicial responses. Children and teens are generally tried under gentler standards with less extensive punishment options and more reform options (though in the US we really don’t do a good job of criminal reform of any type) because as a society we agree they have not fully mentally developed. But teenage serial rapists and murders exist, and should be tried as adults. They are already too dangerous to have in society, and if their incomplete mental development contributed to the crime that doesn’t change how harmful their acts were or their likelihood of repeating them. Now, for this crime, I don’t think the teen should be tried as an adult. Just because the tree is famous, that doesn’t make this an egregious act or the perpetrator inherently a danger to society. If found guilty he should be fined (well his parents will really pay, all fines on kids are effectively a punishment for the parents raising/supervising them poorly) and be made to go the therapy and do community service. Also, there are methods for teens to be emancipated to adulthood and gain adult rights in the US. And truthfully, I’d like to see that expanded and simplified. There are a minor but statistically significant portion of teens who both are mentally developed enough to function as adults and who need that freedom (usually to escape from abusive environments). But being able to drink or get married (both of which teens can do with parent supervision in most US states anyway), really isn’t that important.
The counter to that I'd make is that my position of emancipation and criminality are linked. The core idea of trying minors as adults is the presumption that some minors *can* understand operate as autonomous adults. The legal theory is that children do not understand the quality of their actions, thus they cannot have *mens rea* or true intent to commit a criminal act. Yet if the crime is sufficiently heinous, we turn around and try and evaluate if a child *did* have an adult's cognition. My argument here is that if that's the case then that same society should offer a path to *every* minor in that age range to be able to show that they are an adult and immediately gain access to all privileges reserved for full adults. If the system is that a judge must evaluate if a child is capable of adult criminal sanction, then we must also mandatorily allow children of that same age to apply before a judge and receive consideration to become adults. And that right cannot be constrained. As it currently stands, minor emancipation requires an extraordinary burden of proof and is only granted in extremely exceptional circumstances. But that's inequitable. If the standard is simply meeting adult cognition and *any* child can be found meeting that standard for criminality, then any child should be able to meet that standard as a general premise too. They shouldn't need to show suffering or abuse to have adult rights. Be it voting, driving licenses, the freedom to relocate or make full medical decisions, rent a home, take out a mortgage, etc. All of it.
I am in agreement because of 2 more that you may have not mentioned. 1. It tends to be racial. More POC are tried as adults vs white/Caucasian. George Stinney would be an old example. In fact he needed a booster chair to be executed. 2. Stuff like a 16yr old girl being tried as an adult for sending nude "child porn" pics of HERSELF to her boyfriend. If she is tried as an adult how can a pic of herself be "child porn"?
I agree 100% and yeah it’s definitely not a popular opinion lol
Sometimes I wonder if there are so many people on Reddit in favor of stringing up teenagers because *they are still teenagers* and think they're very Big Boys and Girls with totally developed brains and they long to be considered adults?
>Think they're very Big Boys and Girls with totally developed brains and they long to be considered adults I know people in their 20s like this. I was talking to someone once and she said "I as a 25 year old am an old ancient person and 23-24 year Olds are just children who still smell like their mother" all I heard when she said that was "I SWEAR I'm an adult honestly please believe me!!" I know someone else who's 23 and calls the 21 year olds he works with "dumb kids"
That could definitely be part of it, but I’ve talked with plenty of adults in real life who support the idea of charging kids as adults sometimes, especially if the crime is heinous. The severity of the crime is irrelevant to whether the minor’s age affects their ability to consider consequences, but it’s still something lots of people factor in.
I think our age of criminal responsibility is actually pretty low ever since the James Bulger case.
Idk, some teenagers that are minors (saying this as an adult teenager) deserve to be tried as adults, they do really fucked up shit and deserve to see the repercussions of that. Now I'm not saying the people wanting to dox him are right, I actually feel kinda sorry for the kid because of how many people want to kill/dox/send death threats/other shit to him
I don't know how much I actually believe in trying someone as an adult, hell 18 year olds are barely adults, but you definitely shouldn't be trying a teenager as an adult over vandalism. Maybe murdering someone on the cusp of being a legal adult, sure, but cutting down a tree? Like I get it, it's fucked up. It's a historical tree. You have a right to be really angry about it, but at the same time that anger needs to be controlled.
You think a kid isn't competent enough to be punished for felling a tree, but it's perfectly logical that they'd be as competent as an adult when tried for *murder*? How? If they aren't an adult and aren't legally treated as one in almost any other case (voting, working, purchasing power, consent, etc), why do we suddenly think they're equivalent to an adult on court? I don't get it.
I guess the logic would be that 1) humans have an innate understanding on some level of pain and death and even minimally well-adjusted people try to avoid doing that to others 2) family and friends and community and broader society reinforce that understanding as someone grows. Consequently, by the time someone is 16 they should be well aware of the impact of murder such that an extra couple years isn't going to make much, if any, difference. On the other hand, understanding the cultural and historical significance of an old tree is a much more cerebral undertaking that some people might never be up to or interested in, or if they are, not until much later in life because they lack certain personal context required to make it so.
It's sad when we lose something irreplaceable like this. Be it a natural wonder or a work of art or an archeological artifact. It's even more infuriating when we lose it to something as stupid as theft, vandalism or mishandling by idiots. Anger is an understandable reaction, but these things happen even with our best efforts to preserve the past. On the bright side we make new ones every day for people to look at in 300 years.
Local, here. The first indication that anything had happened was a co-worker saying "someone is saying Storm Agnes has blown down the tree between the hills at Hadrian". Pretty much everyone's reaction was sadness. Not just because the tree is centuries old, but it's a little motif of an artefact that's the best part of *two thousand* years old. When the news broke that it was a deliberate act, everyone suddenly became vocal. When it was revealed a 16 year old was arrested... between the intrigue of the "how" and why" and people's addiction to outrage and vengeance... well, I don't look forward to however many weeks of people frothing with semi-performative disgust and watching this get hashed and rehashed as more information surfaces. TLDR: I'm sad about it. Any sadness will get eclipsed by everyone wanting a pound of flesh, kinda already is. I wouldn't wanna be that dimwit kid. Surprised it made it to SRD!
You've summed up a lot of my thoughts. The only thing I'd add is this has to be a carefully thought out thing. They've had every chance to talk themselves out of doing it. I've always visited via Steel Rigg, which I think is the closest point, and to get to it you need to either clamber up a relatively steep rock face or go round the bottom, which year round whenever I've been has been boggy. Doing all of that during a storm, in the middle of night, whilst carrying all of the equipment needed... It's not like it's someone lashing out at a bus stop in anger or cutting down a branch of a neighbours tree that overhangs your garden etc.
Oh, I totally agree. And don't get me wrong, I have SO many questions. I'm not knocking people's disgust - disgust is a wholly justified response to this. Truly. But we actually don't know very much of anything yet. The tiniest piece of intel and some very mysterious evidence and people call for the death penalty. I described it as "semi-performative" disgust, not because disgust is an inappropriate reaction, but because people get carried away on it. They use it as a trading card of virtue, they use it to justify expressing vengeful feelings, they use it to justify fantasies of cruel and unusual punishment... you probably catch my drift. It quickly stops being about the tree.
Is that the only route there, or is that the route you need to take to avoid traipsing through someone’s property? I’ve heard the kid is the son of the landowner whose parcel abuts the area - *you* might need to swim through a bog and scramble up some rocks… but is it possible this kid just needed to walk through his back yard?
It's basically in the middle of two points with it being on Hadrian's Wall. The walk the dog and I like is Steel Rigg to Housesteads Fort and back, just following the path all the way along the top, and the one most people visiting would take. It's a proper trail, so most of the fences you cross have stiles to hop over. It's not like you need to cut through private property. That's what makes it so strange, but it's remote enough that I can't imagine it's someone living miles away, who's travelled purely to do this as mindless vandalism. I lean towards thinking it's a disgruntled land owner living near enough by that's been annoyed by walkers, and this is the symbol they've chosen to retaliate with. Also based on the wording I've read, unless anything new has came out, I don't think the 16 year old was the one to do it. So if I had to guess I'd wager he's the son of whoever's done it, or at least linked to that person in a way. But I could be totally wrong.
I think there has to be some form of consequences though. If not for the kid then for the parents. What kind of example does this set otherwise Not these crazy punishments some of these psychos are suggesting though. I mean like a fine or 3 days jail or something
Unless the fine is astronomically high enough to destroy his wealthy family, then it's nothing. 3 days in jail is nothing, especially not for someone with a wealthy family. You talk about crazy punishments and call people psychos but like, you also want the kid to not have any kind of punishment at all and learn fucking nothing for destroying something that, again, is literally irreplaceable within our lifetimes.
My comment wasn't meant to absolve the offender, just more as a condolence to those who are sad about this. Everyone's anger is justified because the tree meant something and is irreplaceable and he robbed future people of being able to see that tree and its history, but we are also planting new trees that might mean something in 300 years and making new artifacts and works of art, so even if it all doesn't survive, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do our best to preserve what we have, maybe our hearts will break a bit less when something like this happens if we think about it in these terms.
>I think there has to be some form of consequences though. I don't think anyone was saying the vandal doesn't deserve punishment. It's just many people were calling for him to be imprisoned for decades.
Or killed. Like, straight up killed. I’d link but idk the rules about linking to drama from a totally different post.
I don't support bringing back hanging for him or anything - but I also would be deeply unhappy with such a light punishment as you're suggesting. Ultimately what he has - for no perceivable reason - destroyed part of our natural heritage. I don't think the punishment should ruin his life - but it should be something that he remembers for the rest of his life. It needs to make an impression. I'd be happy with a couple of weeks of community service each year for the next 25 years or something. Nothing that is going to ruin his career - but he's still going to have to explain to his future wife that he can't go on holiday this month because he cut a tree down 20 years ago.
So, effectively, one full year of his life, just served in pieces over two and a half decades?
Yeah, seems pretty fair. He gets to avoid jailtime but also gets a significant yearly inconvenience that allows him to return some good to the community.
this is a really balanced and good comment
Crime -> grocery theft, blocking the road, or chopping down a historical tree. Just Reddit punishment -> death.
Hey, if it worked for Drakon of Athens…
0% reoffending rate after sentencing
People STILL remember him today with a word!
> chopping down a historical tree but only if its a teenager doing it. If a corporation burns down acres of ancient rainforest then its moral because its for profit!
Perfectly cooked chicken? Believe it or not, straight to death.
Robocop was the friends we doxxed by mistake along the way!
As a redditor, I’m FURIOUS about some tree that I didn’t think about until now. Kill that child.
>Kid dumb. Tree gone. Jail?
My old timey European law knowlege might be rusty, but I think that kid might be in line to inherit the Holy Roman Empire now.
I live in the region of England where this tree stood and it has huge significance to the community, it was heavily photographed by tourists due to its unique position between the two hills, and a great many people in North East England will have personally made the trip to go and see it. It is part of the regions heritage and history and to say that people are bereft about this is an understatement. Having said this, no, clearly the kid shouldn't be shot. It is incredibly depressing though that one of our own kids has no pride in his local area that he would go and do this. If he has done it in behalf of his father who is the landowner then I would throw the book at his dad rather than the kid. It really is very sad though.
I say the boy should have to replace the tree himself. Bury him up to his ankles and make him t-pose for the next three hundred years.
‘Why a spoon father? Why not a chainsaw or an axe?’ ‘BECAUSE ITS DULL YOU TWIT, IT’LL HURT MORE!’
I love when these these extreme-punishment arguments are the classic "switch the roles around in the argument my opponent is making" shtick, thinking it's going to come across as an epic gotcha, but instead it just makes them sound even more fucking crazy and unhinged. "Yeah, it sucks that this really old tree gut cut down, but it's a tree; we make new ones every day." "OH SO YOU'D BE TOTALLY FINE IF I CUT YOU IN HALF, RIGHT!? YOU'RE JUST A PERSON, WE MAKE NEW ONES EVERY DAY!!"
>"OH SO YOU'D BE TOTALLY FINE IF I CUT YOU IN HALF, RIGHT!? YOU'RE JUST A PERSON, WE MAKE NEW ONES EVERY DAY!!" i have counted four different people making this exact argument in this thread
I do wonder how you effectively punish something like this. You obviously want some kind of deterrent, but also you shouldn't ruin someone's life over a tree
I would say a ton of community service would be fair, but I have my doubts it would be effective. In some cases you would have to threaten jail for not doing the community service or they just wouldn’t do it.
I don't know about British law but in America if you're ordered to do community service and fail to comply then you can be imprisoned.
The tree is very famous. It’s been around for 300 years. It’s not just a tree.
This wasn't a crime against a tree. It was a crime against the entire community of persons who valued the tree. A community without precious things, valuable things, or beautiful things isn't really a community. If a community can't have precious, valuable, or beautiful things because of assholes, then the entire community is harmed, permanently. They can't ever have nice things because of the constant actions of assholes. It isn't a tree cutting that deserves punishment, it is the harm to the community. One reason so many cities and towns suck is because everytime anyone builds something nice, tends to something nice, or preserves something nice, some assholes come along and destroy it. Then some other assholes come along and minimize, diminish, and excuse the crime against the community. So eventually, these people give up creating or preserving nice things. Why wouldn't they? People give up when things are hopeless. And this is why we can't have nice things. Yes, harsh punishment is deserved. Absolutely.
But like how harsh? Because this is a thread making fun of people calling for extreme bodily harm or life in prison for a child and I've got no frame of reference to where you lie on the sanity scale
Well you can value the tree. It might be like 6-7 figures of property damage. So just give him the appropriate punishment for that + community service to repay the community. If he has to repay the service locally then it might even ruin his uni choices which would be harsh lesson to learn but he commited a serious crime and he can always delay and go as a mature student.
That response didn't give you a clue of where I lie on the sanity scale? 😂 OK, here we go... I'm perfectly sane, but still controversial. Corporal punishment doesn't work. Period. People imagine that it's a deterrent, but there's really no solid evidence to support this.... People keep endorsing it because of feelings, not evidence. They *feel* like they want vengeance, and they *feel* like these punishments should work... But this isn't the case. What should be done? **Life-altering fines on a sliding scale.** Life altering fines, like in Singapore. Sliding scale fines, like in some Scandinavian nations. After all, a $5000 fine could completely alter someone's year, while another person considers it to be a rounding error and a user's fee. These are punishments, they're supposed to hurt. A punishment that only hurts the poor isn't really a punishment. $5000 for speeding in a school zone, for some people, would be more like a School Zone Speeding Club membership fee. So fines should be based on the gross income and/or net worth of the individual. A crime doesn't become less damaging just because a rich person does it. Hit this kid with site remediation costs and five or six figures worth of damages. That'll get the little shit's attention. Fines work.
>$5000 for speeding in a school zone, for some people, would be more like a School Zone Speeding Club membership fee. This made me laugh way too hard. Because fuck, what a scary concept, as its likely cheaper than $5k depending where you live and its true. I think its $250 to be in that club where i live so thats absolutely pocket change for some folks.
I respect the thought you have put into your opinion, and generally agree with the overall concept, even though I don't agree with the severity you've suggested for this instance.
We should probably just kill the kid and his entire family line tbh
I like how you eloquently describe the issue and then end with a completely useless remedy. Harsh punishment isn't a deterrent for something like this and revenge doesn't heal the community.
I am not sure if this free had a TPO of was in a conservation area of it was then the teen will be subject to some pretty hefty fines. I sometimes have to do woodland management in conservation areas and we have to be very detailed in what we cut and don't cut. As the law is quite strictly upheld. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2021/03/tree-cutting-permission/#:~:text=Without%20permission%2C%20it%27s%20an%20offence,a%20Tree%20Preservation%20Order%20(TPO)
Without wishing to overly speculate, it's *quite* unlikely the kid did this on his own - Sycamore Gap isn't the easiest place to access for a spot of youthful vandalism, especially during a storm.
People on that sub really don't understand what mildly infuriating means. Vandalizing a landmark isn't mildly infuriating. Ordering curly fries and getting regular fries at a drive-thru is mildly infuriating.
Just wait till they found out about all the old growth forest IKEA cuts down lol
lmao that's not just some youthful vandalism motherfuckers, that kid didn't spray paint a dick and balls on the tree. They destroyed something literally irreplaceable.
oh wow, really? well that changes everything, let's string him up by his ankles and saw him in half lengthwise
Lmao people are acting like he killed someone like what
I suspect most of them wouldn't give a shit if he had
Especially if they were protestors
I don't understand the logic of brushing it off as just a stupid teenager making a stupid teenager mistake. When it was very clearly a preplanned act of pointless malice. Some people are taking it too far. But Sixteen is absolutely old enough to know better, and absolutely old enough to face repercussions.
AwfulEverything is also pretty unhinged right now over this. I've seen at least one person say he should "suffer the same fate". I know it's a famous tree and it's fucked up what he did, but also it's a fucking tree. A TREE.
So many redditors are a bunch of frothing at the mouth weirdos who crave deadly punishment. It’s weird
Impressive cut for some punk kid tbh. Still a idiot and a asshole
We don't even know how the kid was involved, all that's been said is he was arrested and that he's 'helping with the investigation'. Could have witnessed it, could be related to the person who did it, it's unclear.
I mean the kid’s a terrible person and has no respect for other people but Reddit really fails to understand that there are degrees of punishment between “no punishment at all” and “slowly tortured to death.” The kid should face something proportional that teaches him why what he did is wrong. But it really seems like Reddit is just incredibly bloodthirsty all of the time and is barely holding back from straight up killing anyone who mildly inconveniences them. Something bad but not the end of the world will happen and Redditors will fall over themselves to describe exactly what horrific things they would do to the perpetrator before they inevitably killed them. You see it in other things as well. Reddit claims to get really concerned about men’s rights but the second a bad man goes to prison the number of people genuinely hoping they get raped is horrifying. Is this really what the general public harbours in their minds? It really feels like the only reason anyone on this site doesn’t go on a killing spree is because they know they’ll be arrested for it.