Ars Technica writer Peter Bright aka @DrPizza arrested for 'enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity'

I always wondered why Ars Technica had a “Windows and Microsoft” writer who hates Windows and Microsoft and uses/prefers Apple products. Hopefully they would get someone actually qualified now.

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Eh it doesn’t tell you anything as people have already pointed out. I guess “pansexual” could be interpreted as including pedophilia (and animals i suppose) but you can’t go assuming that from this. I would have figured he was just into kink.

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Thank you for that clear explanation.

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GODDAMNIT!

from 2017 (grabbed from the comments under his last article)

kiddingme

it seems it was in plain sight all along; the FUCK is wrong with you?

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I’ve been on Ars since the 1990’s, when I was drawn to the site by Hannibal’s CPU reviews and architecture guides. (Remember PowerPC vs Pentiium III? Those were the days, my friends!)

Peter Bright was, back then, incredibly pro-Microsoft. In particular, I recall he had something of a blind spot as to the market harm their monopoly could do. I certainly crossed posts with him about that in the forums a couple of times.

I think it took the stagnation of Internet Explorer and the misfire that was Windows 8 for him to realise that Microsoft’s sheer size was leading them to make terrible decisions - that they were effectively the new IBM.

(But to be honest, given what I now know about him, I’m not going back to re-read some articles and confirm that. I can separate the artist from the art - but it takes a little time, and it’s too damned soon right now.)

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because your gut tells you so? i mean if things are so well covered up… how do you know? should we argue about flat earth and moonlandings next?

i for one would like maybe just one peer reviewed study that says “elites” ( what does that word even mean to you? ) or politicians are some how more prone to sex crimes than the average non-elite non-politician.

like if you earn 250,000 a year, do “they” send you a pamphlet on how to hurt children? or is it that you have to sacrifice children to mammon first? what if you are elected to congress? and, does this guy even fit either of those two categories?

there’s enough honest, factual critisism to lay at the feet of republicans, democrats and the game of thrones producers, why even bother to make up conspiracies? aren’t police abuse of power, the war on drugs, the wars for oil, white supremacy, climate change, the wealth gap, gerrymandering, and that final season bad enough?

or heck, this specific crime. next thing we’ll know bright will be claiming it’s a false flag, and that he was really trying to report on sex trafficking instead. cause that’s the way fact-free thought will lead you.

( sorry to all. i’m ranting for a friend. )

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Well obviously, the question is, are they going to scrub the site of all his content? :thinking:

If it was my site? I would.

He did specifically say “If they’re legal” in that stream, though. I mean 18, 19… those are teenagers too. Age of consent varies by state I think. I hate looking this stuff up because it makes me feel super gross.

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TFA says the person he was talking to was posing as the parent, not the child. It’s plausibly ambiguous whether the conversation was a fantasy scenario between adults – which will no doubt be the gist of his defence – although I’m not sure how much further law enforcement could ethically go in testing whether he really meant it. And this is not an area where anyone should expect to be given the benefit of the doubt.

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Also WHAT THE EVERLOVING F**K

… had responded to a message the agent posted a day prior in which she purported to be a mother seeking to connect with people who could teach her children about “birds and the bees.” The complaint states that in subsequent messages, the agent informed Bright that she had a 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

I mean, there’s some network out there where parents regularly sign up to have their kids molested? Or is it the kind of site where people would expect the “kids” to be like … of legal age, like some kind of fake fantasy roleplay thing with all adults?

It has to be the latter. It has to be!

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I always considered him a Microsoft sycophant and mentally filtered articles with his byline as opinion.

I dont give a fuck! it was specifically mentioned a 15-year old and the main thing is the age difference anyway which would put the older person in the position of power. and for “consent”; I know how stupid I was with 15. as it is said in that thread

for you: not a teenager

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Yes, I’m aware. I was making an intuitive leap, in that “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”.

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You can be any of those without being a pedophile or engaging in sexual assault or abuse in general etc. The fact Dr. Pizza apparently engaged in all them shouldn’t be a mark against other poly, pan, or pervy individuals.

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I understand the knee jerk reaction but he’s not an op ed, he wrote technical stuff that might be useful in the future even if the author is a piece of shit.

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I think the issue is not being poly, pan, or pervy, it’s the fact it’s in his professional twitter bio.

The sociologist Erving Goffman wrote a book called “the presentation of self in everyday life” which basically says we have different “masks” we wear in different contexts

In my experience, people text to be a few steps away from their public, professional face.

(Hence me not using the same nym here on BB I do offsite- I don’t try to punch down,but sometimes my edgy humor backfires and I like having a semi-private space to work on my hot takes :slight_smile:)

So when someone is being very “out there” in the same “face” they use for their professional work, you have to wonder - what’s present in the self they don’t share? Keep in mind this guy was Extremely Horny On Main. That’s the red flag: on main.

Or to put it more simply: the issue isn’t being pan, poly, and pervy, it’s that if you’re putting that out there like you’re sharing your favorite ice cream flavor, you either lack boundaries (classic warning sign from the gift of fear) or that’s literally the best attempt you could make at normal and there’s darker things lurking under the surface.

(Also IIRC “pervy” isn’t usually a synonym for BDSM, so if someone has already said they’re pan and poly, what exactly is someone supposed to take away from that other than “Yikes!”)

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I dunno, I’ve read other articles where parents are the ones who more or less pimp out their kids or groom them for abuse. So somethign is fucked with the moms usually. There are also moms whose brains shut down to the fact the father or step father is abusing the kid(s). Some of it probably stems from their abuse.

People are broken :confused:

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It’s not.

Sorry.

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I hate to shatter your illusions, but the biological ability to create offspring ≠ ability to actually care for and protect them.

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I get your point but it sounds a lot like “don’t ask don’t tell”. Like homophobes claiming they don’t care if people are gay as long as they don’t “rub your face in it” while ignoring the myriad of ways that straight sexuality is broadcast.

It also is a strange argument. People have been found to be molesting children with every conceivable public persona.

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Including members of an organization whose very name was used as shorthand for “good, upstanding individual” (YMMV) and would freak out at even a ehiff of that appearing in a member’s public profile.

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