Comment by badlibrarian
11 days ago
I don't like talking about this, but first hand knowledge is rarer by the day, and there are entire organizations profiting off this mythology. It's pissing me off. Aaron is not a data point to build stupid metaphors around. He was a bright and broken child.
Aaron attracted influential and creepy people and was ill-equipped to handle it. He was also working through a period of sexual awakening while being used by older people to advance their agendas. Little of it would meet contemporary standards of appropriate behavior given his physical and psychological state. I spent some time with him before this went down and was horrified by what I saw.
I was not in a position to help him address his mental health, nor in the right physical location to have positive influence, which is what was needed. Then he cracked under the pressure of this and nobody could get through. This was obvious to all involved at the time and that's the part of the prosecution that still makes no sense to me, from all institutions involved. They all have blood on their hands.
It's not hard to find continuing bad behavior by individuals near him at the time. I've given up on them being held accountable. Let the child rest.
> He was a bright and broken child
i wasn't there and i didn't know him, but talking about a 26 year old man like this makes it seem like you're just taking away his autonomy
Aaron was a figure in the community for a long time, beginning when he was a child
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broken child?
Citation please
"One of the early victories for me was persuading a young boy of 14 or 15 years of age, named Aaron Swartz, to become the technical architect of the Creative Commons. It took a little persuading, but I told him that this is what he had to do." --Lawrence Lessig
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Cost_of_...
Doctorow, Kottke and others didn't seem to think it was odd that a 14 year old was being flown around the country without his parents present. They pre-gamed at a house instead of a bar because Aaron was too young; the host, then nearly twice his age, later dated him. Didn't end well. And then things really didn't end well.
Epstein made his first contribution to MIT that same year (2002). Lessig arranged for Joi Ito to meet Aaron a year later. According to MIT, Joi Ito met Epstein for the first time one month after Aaron died in 2013.
In the most charitable reading of the situation, Aaron was robbed of his childhood.
> I don't like talking about this
I can see why it's difficult, but I think your post provides some much-needed context.
I strongly dislike this comment because it's the type of thing some anonynmous person can post online with no credibility or accountability and massively mischaracterize a situation to downplay the very awful things that people did to Aaron and instead place more of the blame on him. We saw the same shit happen constantly with Julian Assange.
The post isn't downplaying the things that people did to Aaron though?
Most of us are here anonymously, no? Personally, I choose to trust that my fellow HNers are (by and large) real people speaking in good faith. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time reading any comment thread here at all.
RE: I was not in a position to help him address his mental health,...
I just had a friend commit suicide last week and have been feeling the same, if only I was there. Another friend (a mental health nurse) shared this:
"Fortunately or unfortunately I don't think we can hold ourselves responsible responsible for the decisions of others"
Can you give any more details ? I've never heard about this but sad if true
There is a great documentary about him (The Internets Own Boy) and a book (The Idealist)
What does his sexuality have to do with any of the points raised by OP?
It's some context about his struggles.
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This really isn’t the tone you should adopt on this forum
His profile says he wrote for Wired, so I'm inclined to cut him some slack. He spent 4,000 words and six Pantone colors talking about SMS for logins, but never found time to write that powerful, 40 year old men were flying a 14 year old around the country without his parents present, so maybe not.
Sickly Jewish kid has his childhood stolen, gets radicalized, hangs himself is a much more painful story to read. More importantly, it demands actual answers. No wonder it never got told. It's not exactly Brighton Beach Memoirs.