Really? I thought it was very humanizing and interesting to see the guy behind it all. He clearly caught up in the money and attention. Ofcourse he was a complete asshole, but he was self aware and felt bad about what he did. He is just the epitome of a troll - feeding off of other's misery. Schadenfreud to the Nth level.
That struck me as crocodile tears -- the telling moment for me was when Garfield asked him if he'd post pictures of his own mother or sister, and he reacted as if the question were completely absurd.
I decided then that he was either stupid, sociopathic, or both. In any case, you can't be sincerely sorry about that sort of behavior, and still do it regularly for fun.
The question WAS absurd given the context. He clearly explains right before that he does it because he enjoys doing the job - he enjoys trolling people, and he enjoys the money. He isn't doing it because he has some sick set of principles. He is NOT for instance saying that all pictures of naked people should be posted on-line or anything like that. So if he's doing it completely for his own enjoyment, why would he post pictures of his naked mom or sister? Why would he want to troll himself? Like he says, that doesn't make any sense.
The fact that Garfield didn't try to understand his motivations was what shocked him. Garfield's attempt at painting him as a sociopath was a wonderful piece of editing (and frankly defamation). Unfortunately OTM does this all the time. They feign objectivity for most of the interview, and then generally towards the end they editorialize in some small way so that they don't come off as sympathetic.
So, your logic is that because he's motivated by the enjoyment of making people miserable (without their consent), he's not a sociopath?
Garfield's point was that this is the thoughtless sadism of a cruel child, not that the guy is somehow worse because he's unwilling to inflict the same pain on his family that he inflicts on strangers.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not excusing his behavior. He's not a sociopath because she shows remorse and cares about the people around him. The guy wasn't making excuses for himself. He's not operating on some righteous framework, which Garfield's question implies. He's not saying he's doing it because he thinks it's the right thing to do. He knew what he was doing was wrong and he feels bad about it, but he was simply enjoying it too much to stop.
If I steal a candy bar and you ask me why I did it and I said "Well I felt bad, but it looked tasty and I really wanted it". Asking me then if it's okay for other people to steal stuff from me is a dumb question to ask. The only goal of the question it to try to shame me. The awkward silence was awkward b/c Garfield asked a dumb question. It was trying to shame the guy and show some hypocrisy. But there is no hypocrisy. He's fucking people over, and making himself rich. The guy already knows he's mistreating others.
The idea that it's OK to derive fun and profit from doing to other people what you would not want for yourself strikes me as exactly a sick principle, actually.
Obviously consent is the issue. It's the releasing of someone's personal pictures without that person's consent that I'm considering to be the unwanted activity.
I would actually find him less malevolent if he said he would post pictures of his mother or sister. The fact that he won't shows that he only does it to inflict misery on others to make him feel better, not any sort of "porn should be free" pseudo-GNU bullshit that some of the other revenge porn operators like to rant about.
