I feel like this is a lot like the polarized reaction to the "North Pond Hermit" in Maine, where a lot of cishet dudes originally reacted similarly to the story as though he were a "folk hero", a symbol of resistance and living off the grid or whatever
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And it was Danny Lavery who led a huge backlash saying what this guy objectively actually did was steal from families for 27 years and put countless little kids in fear
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GeorgeHemingto1
...okay, i'm reading an article about him and it seems like the places he was stealing from were mostly summer houses? Like, second houses? Yeah, fuck people who are mad about their cabin that they live in for a week every summer getting burgled tbh.
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Replying to @iridienne @GeorgeHemingto1
Lavery's objection was not to the monetary value of the theft (which, sure, was minimal, just what he needed to survive) It was what he felt was the sheer horrific nature of the physical violation, creeping around people's homes as they slept
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GeorgeHemingto1
Sure, but they were rich people and these weren't their "homes". I mean, i suppose you shouldn't steal from people? But i have a lot more sympathy for penniless burglars than for rich people who own summer cabins in Maine.
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It doesn't surprise me that Lavery is the opposite though, frankly. I have zero use for Daniel Lavery.
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Replying to @iridienne @GeorgeHemingto1
*shrug* I admit, at the time I was one of the people sympathizing with the guy, whom I saw and still see as very different from something like the Killdozer story, no violence, no revenge, just someone who couldn't live a normal life trying to find another way to live
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But Lavery was very harsh about his belief that this was still a toxic masculinity fantasy, of being a "hermit" who abandons all your responsibilities to the rest of society while still being dependent on society to live
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And deciding that it's just easier to live your life without working by stealing and violating boundaries and consent repeatedly rather than talking to people and making an arrangement that isn't based on deceit
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I'm still of two minds about it, like what I think is paradoxical is that if this guy had made a normal middle-class living off of skimming credit card numbers or something, Lavery's objections would all be moot, but he'd also lose all his folk-hero defenders
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He's a folk hero *because* what he did was, to some degree, shocking, it violates typical middle-class morality, it feels taboo Even though I think he would agree with me that a way of being a "hermit" that didn't involve touching anyone else's stuff would've been better
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