cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/news/p/1395876/streamer-troll-johnny-somali-found-guilty-on-all-counts-sentenced-to-south-korean-prison-l
Ramsey Khalid Ismael — better known as Johnny Somali, the infamous American streamer arrested in Japan, Israel, and South Korea for his provocative behavior — has been imprisoned in South Korea.
The great tragedy is that S Korea commuted his 3 year potential sentence to just 6 months.
deleted by creator
Wow, I never even knew that was a thing
You can do that?
deleted by creator
Appeal is still possible and likely. But yea I agree, it’s a crazy low sentence
For a nonviolent crime?
Punitive justice isn’t justice. In the case a short sentence is appropriate. He’s punished for 6 months and then barred from the country. How would the cost of 3 years of imprisonment benefit South Korean citizens? Seems like an unnecessary cost.
My opinion would change if it was a violent crime.
And don’t misinterpret me. I don’t like the guy at all, I just dislike governments and unnecessarily long prison sentences more
I would generally agree with you. Unfortunately this is the system we have and I will admit, there is a personal pleasure in seeing consequences for this shit. In general I am also for prison abolition and restorative justice. I’m not as principled on this as I would like, I guess. That’s definitely a point for me to keep working on. I do however wonder what would make someone like this… rehabilitate.
Having said that, I will say the sharing of sexual deepfakes is definitely violent in an already extremely misogynist world where violence against women is often based on ideas of ownership of women’s bodies and violence. There is a specific sort of violence to it that I can not fully comprehend as a masc person, but that is definitely violent in nature. Not just violating, but explicitly violent. This act only further contributes to the underlying violence of misogyny, I think is what I’m getting at.
Thanks btw for your response, I think you make a good point.
Oh wait a minute I only heard about the statue bit, the deepfakes does change my mind a bit. It’s certainly not victimless in that case. I’m still not comfortable with 3 years, but more than 6 months seems more appropriate in thay case
Yeah he got off really light apparently. The prosecution wanted 3 years so 6 months seems way off. Makes an appeal seem almost inevitable.
Used to frequent a streaming site for telestreaming robots. I remember the owner getting excited when Ice Poseidon contacted them because of his popularity, thinking it would help traffic. Community warned her it was playing with napalm. She invited him anyway. It only attracted a shitload of griefers, incels and filth that never fully went away after he quickly became bored and left. Site was never the same.
This piece of shit was somehow even more annoying so you love to see it.
Mf was so annoying they sent him to the gulag
If they do a prisoner exchange with North Korea anytime in the near future, they should send this guy to them. Just because. Maybe it will teach the arrogant US citizens to behave better in other countries.
Note, I’m not saying that about the US citizens that are considerate human beings.
As a prank.
Exactly. It’s just the natural consequences of a social experiment.
Now that he’s convicted, an interesting question might be “is there enough evidence to convict him in other countries who have extradition treaties with South Korea?”…
I have limited sympathy for people who make their living by bothering people.
Probably, but that’s generally not done. He’s been convicted and after he serves his sentence he’ll be deported, which means he probably won’t be given a visa to enter any other country.
He will also be on the sex offender registry, so definitely no visa.
Japan probably won’t do anything more. I believe he has an entry ban for some time here (probably 5 years from whenever he was gone), but I don’t recall the exact details.
"I know for a fact that I’m not going to go to jail. Not one day in jail. I’m going to laugh my ass off when all these motherf***ers are saying I’m going for 30 years, 20 years, five years, 10 years. I’m not even going to do one day, bro. They’ll give me a fine and say, ‘Don’t come back to Korea.’ You’re the one that’s going to look so dumb when I don’t get any jailtime or anything. Bro, I’m going to laugh like a f**king villain.
amazing.
He got 6 months, so he wasn’t too far off, unfortunately.
at the end of the day, his only crime is being annoying. He didn’t kill someone, didn’t steal anything, etc. So 6months seems fair.
And it’s six months of hard labor without access to a smartphone. He’ll either lose his mind or actually reconsider his life choices.
Plus he had to register as a sex offender in Korea, and thus has to register in America on his return or face 10y, so who’s got money on him failing to register?
Under the Trump administration I don’t think he will have any problems with not registering.
He’s not white though
If we’re lucky, he will annoy the wrong person and get the shit kicked out of him. Maybe he’ll learn.
This made my day. He thought he was untouchable and now is in a forced labor camp for 6 months.
Dude is just one of the worst humans.
Forced labor camps in South Korea is just a legal term.
https://www.corrections.go.kr/corrections_eng/1905/subview.do
They’re not cracking rocks with sledgehammers in the desert.
This guy is like a reverse hostage. Countries will threaten to release him if they don’t get what they want.
It’s an SCP. The containment procedure is to livestream his location at all times and make it legal for everyone to beat him up.
Maybe outlawing people needs to come back as a penalty.
That has to be one of the more punchable faces I have seen. And I do not advocate violence. But he might be n exception.
deleted by creator
Now I used to like RWJ, but it did become a bit cringe and corporate over the years, so I’m genuinely surprise how watchable that video was.
Now all I want to see is the video of him getting punched.
okay. controversial opinion time
this was all extremely dickish troll behavior but i don’t think A PRISON CAMP is necessarily the most rehabilitative experience. punitive justice doesn’t fucking work and nobody deserves to be put through A PRISON LABOR CAMP regardless of how much of an annoyance they were being
in an ideal world there would mechanisms in place to educate this fuckhead without needlessly traumatizing and brutalizing him. sensitivity training. cultural education. empathy and dignity. true justice that will actually change his behavior
but prison camp? i bet he’s gonna come outta this twice as much an enormous douchebag
He’s a douchebag that’s used to acting as such without consequences (or even with profit). A prison labor camp sounds like exactly the sort of wakeup call this guy needs
he has done this many times, and not in korea too.
OTOH maybe this will ground him a bit more and he will be a more self-reflective douchebag.
I agree with your sentiment but when a human being is this antagonistic towards every country he visits then it’s justified. Definitely a slipper slope moment but just look at this:
Ismael was certain he wouldn’t be imprisoned, saying in a stream: "I know for a fact that I’m not going to go to jail. Not one day in jail. I’m going to laugh my ass off when all these motherf***ers are saying I’m going for 30 years, 20 years, five years, 10 years. I’m not even going to do one day, bro. They’ll give me a fine and say, ‘Don’t come back to Korea.’ You’re the one that’s going to look so dumb when I don’t get any jailtime or anything. Bro, I’m going to laugh like a f**king villain.
“I did go there. I recognized all the charges. I said I was guilty. I did say all that s**t because it’s going to be a fine. I’m just going to pay it and leave. You can’t go to jail for this s**t. You can’t.”
It’s so hard to be sympathetic to this piece of trash.
Its almost impossible to have not at least sentenced him to 1 day after something like that if a prison sentence is legitimately on the table.
Its not about punishing the guy. It is about sending a message that this will not be tolerated. Also, different cultures are different, culturally.
different cultures are different, culturally.
i’m pretty sure torture is just as brutal in every culture. something merely being a cultural difference doesn’t immediately make it worthy of keeping around. for example, should we respect japanese culture’s weird obsession with sexualizing underage characters? NO! it being different than what we’re used to doesn’t automatically make it okay
Yea, when something that is apart of your culture causes harm to others, it shouldn’t be apart of your culture. Phase it out. Acknowledge it, but phase it out and teach why you phased it out.
We should strive for kindness and care when it comes to culture both of our own and others.
The spoiler is he won’t learn the lessons he needs to learn from a labor camp. Even in the most idealized form of a labor camp.
Sadly true. I won’t lie, I hope by the thinnest of hopes that he does change. I’d never shy from someone wanting to be a better person…dependent on what they have done. But that’s just my opinion.
We just need to give those who commit crimes the tools to heal and learn from the hurt they caused. We don’t generally, and various unideal things happen after people are released from humiliating, degrading, dehumanizing, and exploitative conditions.
Not getting caught when they do their next crime or hurt the next person is likely on a lot of people’s minds. It’s happened with my sibling who just continued to escalate their behavior after every incarceration. They never learned their lesson. They never got offered real help. Their life is a revolving door of hurting others and losing their freedom for brief spells. They have no starting point to begin to understand the hurt that they routinely cause. They can’t get a job and participate in society even if they wanted to get better and do things right because they face discrimination in hiring and their opportunities are limited.
Personally, I feel that punishment just amplifies the violence and dysfunction, especially in the horrid conditions of the US prison system and forced labor camps like the story we are discussing. Being discriminated against in employment/not being offered opportunities/given a chance by society locks them into crime and destitution. I just can’t honestly imagine that brings the good out of many people…
Bad take
Link shared by somebody else down below, but it’s not really a labor camp as you might be thinking. It’s more of a rehabilitation into the workforce program.
https://www.corrections.go.kr/corrections_eng/1905/subview.do
I don’t know. Maybe a few weeks behind a rock with a whip behind his back might teach him to be mindful of where he is the next time he’s going to act like an idiot
Please… he got 6 months for all the shit he pulled. It was so much more than just dickish trolling.
He deserved far more. He got off easy. But it serves two purposes. For one, korea got their message across. Don’t come here to fuck around. And second, they don’t want to pay for him being in their prison.
In an ideal world, people don’t pull this shit to begin with. So we’re already well past an “ideal world scenario”. It’s not this guys first rodeo. These people will never learn unless they face some real, actual consequences.
Yeah. The prosecutors were pushing 3 years. I think he deserves MORE than 6 months.
I have to agree with the last guy. Ideal world, to me, means people can get the support they need to resolve their issues. Ideal isn’t utopia, it’s just as good as we should be doing as a society.
I also think people should get help to resolve their issues.
This guy’s issue is that he’s just an asshole that never faced any real consequences for his actions and therefore thinks it’s ok to go and fuck with people.
This wasn’t his first rodeo. Japan gave him a slap on the wrist and deported him. Clearly it wasn’t enough.
I don’t think expecting people to behave themselves whilst traveling is approaching utopia. That’s just common decency.
Instead of prison where we know people commonly experience rape, abuse, neglect, and forced labor — imagine he was forced to live in some new branch of punitive enforcement that sits between prison and mental asylum. A place where he’s forced to sit with counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists… imagine he’s treated with dignity as a human, like something is clearly wrong with him, and like we can actually help solve that problem directly for him. He could be sentenced to this place for something like “at most 2 years, unless the authority believes he’s ready earlier.” It’s like a conversion camp, but to help immoral people understand why they might want to act morally within society. Wouldn’t that be a little more ideal than something like prison?
Edit: could even follow-up release with required training for personal finance, hospitality, and the like… to include community service hours and required check-in with a probation officer that works with mental health professionals.
You seem to be under the impression that he’s anything other than just a giant asshole. He walks around streaming himself disturbing and fucking with strangers. He know his actions are wrong. He knows he’s being an asshole. He has admitted as much with no shame. He doesn’t care.
I don’t think what you described would be more ideal than prison. I think prison is exactly the place that was constructed just for cases like his. Maybe this time he will learn.
And hopefully others will think twice before trying to be a copycat
You seem to be under the impression that he’s anything other than just a giant asshole.
Yeah, actually. I don’t believe in essences. Under my personal philosophy, we humans are more like information perturbation machines with extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. It’s close to saying you aren’t anything except the uniquely weighted combination of all your prior experiences, having been processed through the human scope of awareness and memory (if distinguishing the two is even fair here).
That said, nobody is nothing except “just a giant asshole.” I mean that physically, you can’t. You’re stuck in a constant state of becoming something, not being something, which is a necessary consequence of having your human awareness.
The boys deviance from our expectations has to do with his upbringing. We should be able to use specialist services to counterweight that upbringing. And I’d go as far to say, we really should be taking this approach to punishment. Because our current version of just hiding them away in an isolated brick room where nobody except similar deviants and Correction Officers can reach them… that in particular is a rather barbaric approach, in my opinion.
I think prison is exactly the place that was constructed just for cases like his. Maybe this time he will learn.
And what about being “constructed just for cases like this” means it was the right approach? The concentration camps in the holocaust were also constructed for purpose, yet I hope you wouldn’t use the same argument for those.
You’re stuck in a constant state of becoming something, not being something, which is a necessary consequence of having your human awareness.
Yeah well he is in a constant state of becoming an even bigger asshole.
It’s sounds like a beautiful philosophy you have. But it’s just not applicable to how the world looks like.
And no. I would not use the same argument for fucking nazi concentration camps. Which is a really dumb strawman but you know what. Just for you.
They were not constructed to punish and reform. They were constructed to murder people. People whose only crime was not being “German”.
You think they’re similar in any way to a South Korean prison? If not, why even being it up?
I know this would be cruel and unusual but live stream him the entire time and donate proceeds to relevant charities.
Get rekt.
ahahahahaha
fafo
I’m OOtL on this one… who is he, and what did he do?
Keep in mind, it’s only 6 months. Hollow victory.
Spending 6 months of your life in prison is not insignificant. Incarceration is a serious punishment.
He has to register as a sex offender when he eventually gets deported to the US… lmfao
So you’re saying he has a future career in government?
Nope. The orange man only like pink people.









