Wow 105 pages devoted to this guy...
He's the gift that keeps on giving.
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Wow 105 pages devoted to this guy...
He's the gift that keeps on giving.
original reddit post (removed).
I think the bigger impact is admitting that he was cheating on his wife, repeatedly over a period of at least 3-4 years. I would guess that most people feel that he was being as self-serving as he could, and the actual numbers are much, much worse. That he was using prostitutes to do it just makes it that much worse, and his admission (both previously and in his video) that he lacks self-control and felt that his wife could not keep him satisfied makes it worse still.
This is not about a guy who visited a call girl a couple of times. This is about a husband who betrayed his wife, willfully and cynically, for a very long time. And who seems more upset that people are judging him, than he is that he did this to his own family. You could understand someone staying a Patron over a couple of trips to a brothel. His actions are on a whole different level, and most people cannot make excuses for it in good conscience.
I would not be surprised if his subscriber numbers keep sliding until the only ones left are the absolute die-hards and people who aren't aware of what is happening and/or aren't keeping tabs on their $1/month contribution.
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Yes, the WTS encourage the membership to eschew higher education and lucrative jobs where they may have to spend extra hours working. The time that is saved is available for study and preaching work. So they promote lower-wage jobs and then they wonder why financial support is down. Not the best thought-out plan.
As for the crime of insult, it appears to be their version of defamation. There appear to be a few countries that treat defamation as both a civil and criminal matter. I guess it would work out well for a person who has a talent for exasperating the people around him... they can't tell him how they really feel, for fear he might call the cops.
i was never a jdubb, only a bible student.
there are two main questions i have.
let me preface that by saying that i do not believe the bible is true, or the word of god.
The story makes it seem that David raped Bathsheba. I doubt that she had the option of refusing his summons, or may have feared for her life if she turned down the king. And she couldn't have been a willing participant, or god would have rendered judgment upon her for adultery. Either god conveniently let her slide on that (an action that directly led to her husband's murder), or she was innocent of any wrongdoing.
It's a chilling story, when you consider that the people who paid with their lives were the innocent husband and the innocent infant, who was stricken with a deadly malady in order to punish David (who, unlike his unfortunate child, had the opportunity to repent and avoid a death sentence). Plus, his pairing with Bathsheba leads to the birth of Solomon, a great king who also loses his way (but not before becoming part of the lineage that leads to the birth of Jesus... at least in Matthew's gospel).
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I imagine it was because the responses were meant to be public...
I think the recipients were happy to make their replies public. It's got to be satisfying to do it when you know that the obnoxious, melodramatic blowhard who is trying to convince his followers that he's fighting the good fight against evil bullies will grind away a few millimeters of tooth enamel watching your reply.
I think he's painted himself into a corner with this. Loudly proclaiming his intent to protect himself via legal action, he has a lawyer email a sloppy 'letter of warning' that is little more than a roll of the dice. Now he watches as the recipients mock and roast him ruthlessly in response. What does he do? Drop it and pretend it didn't happen? Make more bombastic threats? Try actual legal action? There doesn't appear to be a scenario where he doesn't find himself in a deeper hole with only a shovel in his hands.
yep, the vacation is over, it's time to go to work------for free!
ðŸ˜ðŸ˜¢ðŸ˜“😰😡.
https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/.
Keep in mind that difficult times are often very good to millennialist cults like the JWs. People start to feel anxious and unsure about the future, and many will be quick to hedge their bets when someone tells them that the scary times are the precursor to paradise on Earth. We like to have comfort and assurance that things will be alright, and this feeling is heightened when circumstances seem the most dire. "Bad news" is great recruiting fodder, which is why many JWs seem obsessed with telling you how awful everything is, all the time.
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Well, he certainly found a cure for their boredom...
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Is this going to end up a big wet fizzled out nothing burger?
I think it might be something close to that, at least in the short term. The police investigation may go nowhere unless (a)they get the victim to step forward and cooperate and/or (b)they find such a preponderance of evidence that they can make a case without the victim's cooperation. The latter is probably very difficult for such an old case. The former... who knows?
It's possible that there will not be a clear outcome, and he'll focus on that case in the hopes that people will forget the stuff he already admitted to. It's that stuff --the stuff in his book and in his video-- that will be a stain on his reputation until/unless he owns up to it. He may well fade into irrelevance. Spending hours per day trying to keep his YouTube comments sections clear of mockery and derision will be the least of his issues in the long run.
He's also cut off from many (all?) of the avenues of activism that he enjoyed before. Who will want to be involved with someone who has such a bad reputation (and again, this is just from the things he admitted to)? He no longer lends legitimacy to someone's interview show or documentary; he's an embarrassing distraction to the work they want to get done. He's the guy who treated his wife like dirt for many years, and any new information that could come to light would only make him look worse.
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"I'm going to have to add you to the lawsuit" is my new favorite meme.
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It seems as if "rights of personality" are a form of copyright protection. Does anyone have more insight into how this works, in Croatia or the UK? In the USA, copyright infringement would more likely be handled through the use of a DMCA complaint filed with Youtube (or whichever other media site was used). There are, however, limits to how this can be used- the Fair Use principle means that parts of his video can be used as part of a video discussing or critiquing (or, yes, criticizing) him. There is also the fact that he enjoys just this sort of protection from the WTS for his extensive use of their footage, and the fact that Youtube will punish misuse of the copyright enforcement system (ie, if you file false/frivolous DMCA claims, you risk having your channel sanctioned as a result).
Indeed, you might have expected this to be his first avenue of action if he was being maliciously defamed. For one, it's much easier and would be much more effective. But if you're wrong, or just trying to use those tools to hit back at your detractors, you might end up in a much worse spot- sanctioned for your attempts to silence them, which would lead to more videos from those same detractors. And they'd probably be even harsher than the ones he was trying to get shut down.
As for their claims of the crime of insult, that only matters if you're doing so on Croatian soil. There are some European countries that treat defamation as a criminal matter, but I don't think the UK is one of them. And the USA treats it as exclusively a civil matter. It's an empty threat, all the more so for being printed in bold and underline.
I do like the touch at the end where, after making threats and demands, they add "if You [sic] are willing to resolve this situation in an amicable manner." Again... LOL.