Trey Burke sued despite apology
Trey Burke has been named in a Macomb County lawsuit seeking over $25,000 in damages (minimum that has to be mentioned in the complaint).
This arises out of unfortunate joking about the guy on Twitter, that Shaq mocked, who turned out to have a rare disease. Shaq and Waka Flocka were also named as defendants. It is unknown if any of the other, non-wealthy, re-twetters were also named, but for some reason I doubt it.
While I feel bad for the guy, I do not think the actions were intended to be hostile AND all three apologized to him privately and publicly. In my opinion, this should not be a viable cause of action.
The defendants are wealthy and they made a social media mistake.
Law firms are businesses that need money and publicity.
If you have strong feeling about this and you are a recoverable potential party, please watch your comments.
I never knew Trey's name was Alphonso.
ABIII should have been his nickname
Is this a legitimate case, or just a cash grab hoping to settle outside of court?
... but I'm not taking legal advice from a clerk at a Ritz Discount store.
made me do the Dance of Joy.
Loved that show.
now I have the opening song of perfect strangers and my head. Way to go guys, way to go.
If the question is "does the lawsuit have a chance to succeed on the merits," the answer is no. This doesn't meet all of the elements of any of the causes of action they claim.
So whether it's a money grab, a principled stand by the plaintiff, or a thing he did because he was bored, the plaintiff won't 'win.'
As I stated in my OP, in my opinion, it is not a viable complaint. I will reserve further comment since we are dealing with people who file claims I don't think are viable based on things said online.
He prolly should pay something
Because every time you mock someone, you should definitely have to pay them. But only if you're rich.
Why the hell would you want to mock someone in the first place?
Making fun of a celebrity's drunken mistakes is satire. Taking a random picture off the internet of someone you don't know who is not a public figure and making fun of the way they look is not satire. It's being an asshole. I've never seen Colbert grab someone from the audience and make fun of the hairlip on TV.
I love satire, but it is intrinsically disrespectful of others feelings.
Except when you make yourself blue
In fact, people's beliefs should be the PRIMARY target of mockery. They are the least taboo targets by a long shot. We have control over how we go about being convinced and thus what we end up believing, and if we make stupid decisions, we should be ridiculed for it.
It's fair to critcize/satirize what people say or believe in the public forum. It's not fair to do the same for what people are, or what they look like (yes, I do realize people can/will claim grey area between the two in certain cases). It's fair for Michelle Beadle to take Stephen Smith to satirize Stephen Smith on his comments/beliefs about 'provocation' in domestic violence. It's not fair for her to satirize him because he's black, or she doesn't like his face. For the record, I'm very much in the camp of erring on the side of offending, before going all Farhenheit 451 on society. But in this case specifically, man, I just think it's such an asshole move for Shaq/Burke to make fun of some random dude's face for millions to view in a public way.
Plus, satire is mock done with a purpose; to point out logical flaws or beliefs. Mocking the way someone looks accomplishes none of that. It's still just being as asshole.
In other words satire is counterproductive.
This is tone-trolling nonsense. Ridiculous beliefs deserve ridicule.
Satire breaks desensitization. Sometimes people don't realize they hold ludicrous beliefs until people make fun of them. I don't agree with the kid-gloves approach. Rational arguments are only effective once you crack the shield and get people wondering why they're being mocked.
I would just like to point out that your position is ridiculous and I hereby heap ridicule upon it, because it deserves it.
Wow, that was productive. Don't you just feel your shield cracking under the weight of my non-gloved blows?
Basically it's just a way to justify being an ass for the sake of being an ass. Mocking is easier and more fun than opening actual dialogue (that might require questioning YOUR OWN beliefs, yuck!), so let's build a theory to justify it. Your "mock ludicrous beliefs" works if you own a monopoly on defining "ludicrous". But in the world where people honestly sincerely believe things you think are ludicrous, if your default response is "just make fun of them" then you're going to get one of three reactions: they will immediately get defensive/aggressive, they will be shamed/annoyed into not publicly stating their beliefs as much, but will still hold them, or they'll honestly reconsider their position. The first two will be orders of magnitude more common than the third.
There's a difference between "mocking" and "satire". Good satire makes you laugh, maybe get a bit red in the face if you're the target, but makes you think. It has an honest intent to make the targets reconsider or look at things in a new way through humor. Mocking is just making someone feel bad / making yourself feel superior, and who cares what the target thinks cuz they're backward idiots amirite?
The line between "satire" and "mocking" is particularly fine when it's the powerful mocking the less powerful. Then it looks an awful lot like bullying and you're more likely to create sympathy for the target.
There's a difference between "mocking" and "satire".Correct. I guess because the above poster didn't feel the need to make this distinction, I missed it. I appreciate this. I should have added that mockery MUST be followed or supplemented with rational arguments and evidence. I'm also a bit myopic, as I can't remember the last time I was one of the "powerful mocking the less powerful."
But I'm pretty sure mine didn't understand that.
"persuasion by means of sound logic is far more effective and respectful than mocking a person" Well, it's certainly more persuasive than mocking a person, but sound logic isn't actually that persuasive (e.g., climate change deniers). Appealing to emotions, pointing out personal gain, etc. are far more effective.
Yes becuase you're in their brain and you know they were intentionally mocking him for his disability. When I first looked at the picture of the guy I didn't see disability, I just saw a guy with dental issues doing an overbite to appear to look tough. Perhaps Shaq was thinking he was just making fun of a regular dude who was trying to front?
Assuming makes an ass out of you and you.
Not to mention, Shaq makes fun out of everything and every one, and I highly doubt he had any clue this guy had a disability.
I don't need to be in their brains because their actions showed their intentions. The fact the guy had a rare genetic disorder is completely irrelevent. If he was just a 'regular' dude with bad teeth and an overbite trying to look tough, he's still just some random guy who Shaq thought was ugly and mocked publicly on twitter to thousands of other sheeple who then followed suit. That's still an asshole move.
I just watched a Ricky Gervais HBO special where he mocked/satired obese people for 45 minutes, all while saying "I'm not having a go." It was very funny but I guess he's an asshole?
Everyone who's followed Shaq for 25 years knows he loves nothing more than to clown around. He meant no harm, he just meant to generate fun, but sometimes jokes bomb.
Many celebrities are lauded as so wonderful just for even showing up and paying attention to people, and speaking with them and signing autographs. How do you know Shaq wasn't thinking to himself "I'm gonna make this dude's day by paying him attention, and showing that I'm perfectly content showing myself to be an ugly bastard too by making a face?"
I'm 99% sure Shaq and Trey didn't know the dude had a disability. Only if they did would your point hold any water.
I already knew he had the disorder before seeing the photo, but the guy pretty obviously looked like he had some kind of problem.
When the thing that people believe is flat-out wrong, pointing out their errors is not just okay, it's often the right thing to do. If they believe the Earth is flat, or that the Earth is 6,000 years old and humans rode dinosaurs to work, or that organic foods contain more nutrients, saying "you're wrong" is good. We don't have the need to tolerate incorrect "beliefs" just because people firmly believe them.
Besides, in any setting, challenging people on what they believe (including, and possibly especially, through satire) is an appropriate exercise.
People drove cars built out of stone and wood and had to be started and stopped with thier feet.
Instead people used dinosaurs like kitchen appliances and to excavate rocks before we had machines to do that stuff.
I think that is where the confusion comes from.
You've never *ever* posted a meme? A picture of Lloyd Brady? Ever?
I'm not condoning the choice to mock anyone, and I actually completely agree with your philosophy.
But even so, it seems ridiculous to me that making a joke about someone would result in the joke maker having to pay the subject of his joke...even if it was a bad joke, made in bad taste. And again, only if the joke maker happens to be rich.
It's the time honored tradition by which we force others to conform to standard social norms through peer pressure.
taking away some of their money is the only way to make "rich" people understand.
If WWIII ever breaks out, we are done for. 50 years ago, someone mocked you and you went outside and settled it with a few punches. Then you went and drank a beer together afterwards. Now you just go to court and someone gives you $25000. What a joke.
Of course 50 years ago it was a lot harder to mock someone to an audience of hundreds of thousands. Then again, if Shaq mocked me, the first thing I'd think of would be to take it outside and throw a few punches.
Or the last thing?
Well, it would probably be both.
Touche
Frankly, I'd much prefer not to go back to those times.
Huge fallacy there. "Let's have one thing like it was 50 years ago" does not at all imply "let's have everything like it was 50 years ago."
Yeah but what that guy said was complete crap and not true 50 or 100 years ago either. Its a huge fallacy that people are softer today. Oh no we recognize the impact that things have on people, depression is a real disease our society has gone to shit. Its machismo bullshit, it has never been true and people 50 years ago were just as big of assholes and just as petty as they are today.
If you really believe millenials are a nightmare to manage you should just retire right now. IMO it takes a lot more courage to to adress the issue of why your old mamagement techniques aren't connecting with the yonger workforce as opposed to sitting back on your heels and ranting about how things used to be. Sorry for the rant (and sorry if you aren't actually managing millenials).
Jesus christ no we are not, I am sorry that you feel like the ability to threaten your child with physical abuse has somehow taken away the ability to parent but thats just a lazy excuse. I was never hit once and neither was anybody I know and most of my friends are working 60 hours a week in entry level jobs after successful college careers just like people who were fortunate enough to go to college 50 years ago. Sure millenials think more should be given to them, but if you have a problem with millenials blame your own damn self, it was your generation who raised us to be pretentious and think we were owed everything. Pretty much every physoclogical study has shown positive reinforcement to be better for development of a child. It requires more work, you can't cop out by beating your kid or just by giving in and getting them a toy, you actually have to take time with the kid and not everyone does that but that doesn't make the approach wrong. Giving a kid a toy to shut them up is being a lazy parent, hiting a defensless child to get them to shut up is also being a lazy parent.
Society isn't soft today, you just equate violence and physical aggresion with strength, just like the other poster did with his comment about wwIII, which is also dumb since those tough sons of a bitches had such clear victories in vietnam and korea. Everyone likes to remember the past as better, thats great, have fun with that but morals aren't degrading they are getting stronger every year, society is better now than it was 50 years ago, more innovation is happening than ever before and we are taking small baby incremental steps to an actually equal society, if that means some people are a little pretentious at 22 then that works for me.
Our constitution was written by slave owners. I'd prefer that this country didn't follow the wisdom of a bunch of racists. Time to tear up the constitution...