Former Subway spokesman pleads guilty to Child Porn charges.

OK, I'll grant that if somebody is willing to pay Jared $x, and that somebody realizes a return of $y, and that somebody is content that the return of $y on an investment of $x is a good deal, then Jared is, arguably, worth the $x.

But that still doesn't mean that the existence of Jareds and Pewdiepies is a good or defensible thing.

One of the arguments against communism is that it doesn't provide any incentive to excel: "Why should I aspire to be a neurosurgeon if I'm going to live in the same grim apartment block as a ditch digger and stand in the same bread queue as the ditch digger?"

But Jareds and Pewdiepies also undermine the incentive to excel: "Why should I go to college and incur a huge student debt that I may or may not ever be able to repay? Why should I strive to land a 'corporate job' that will entail an hour of commuting to an office, 9 hours of grinding work and another hour of commuting back home every single work day? Why should I do all that just so that I can earn less than somebody who squeals into a microphone while playing silly games or who grins in front of a camera while holding a sandwich?"

I'm not sure exactly what these guys make ...

Pewdiepie "earned" more than $7,000,000.00 in 2014.

@thegerg:

Why are people jealous/butthurt of how much someone else makes?

On the other hand, how many dumbasses are spending buttloads of money and going into crippling debt for their college degrees, only to not be able to find a well paying job afterwards? After thousands of dollars in college spending and years of studying in their fields, they say, "I put in the work to get the degree, so why is it not paying off?"

Why? Because putting in the work doesn't count for shit if it doesn't make you more valuable to someone who is paying.

That's the kind of thing I was talking about when I said that that's a dangerous attitude to have. I hate to put words in your mouth, but your position here seems to sort of rest on the notion that if you put in the work, the rest of the world owes you rewards. And no. The rest of the world doesn't owe you shit, even if you DO put in the work. That's not how the world works. People get rewarded based on their perceived value, NOT how much freaking work they did. And someone like Jared Fogle was objectively valuable to subway (before the child porn thing) because he was bringing in a shitload of money.

Dude was a fat porn addicted slob who only came up with the subway diet because there was one in his building and he was too busy jacking off and renting out porn to his bros to go out and get real food. We live in a messed up world when a guy like this has "value." It's also entirely unsurprising that he turned out to be a pedo who loves CP and sex with child prostitutes.

What you're forgetting is that very few people are able to get paid well simply for being celebrities. It might be a stupid decision for someone to drop out of college in order to try to become a Youtube celebrity, but that in no way changes the fact that high paid celebrities tend to earn their high pay by making a hell of a lot of money for someone else. In fact, the whole reason why that's a stupid plan is BECAUSE it's hard to do that. If you want to quit your medical school education in order to become the next Tom Cruise, then YEAH you're gonna fail. That's BECAUSE it's really fucking hard to be the next Tom Cruise. And the fact that it's really fucking hard to be the next Tom Cruise is a big part of why Tom Cruise makes so much money: there's a relatively short list of people who can bring in the money the way that Tom Cruise does.

Exactly the same with Jared Fogle (though I won't pretend that Jared Fogle is on the level of Tom Cruise). You're goddamn right that someone's an idiot if he drops out of college in order to lose weight eating sandwiches in the hopes of becoming the next Jared Fogle. Lots of people appear in advertising for the purposes of selling a product, and most of them aren't nearly as valuable as Jared Fogle was for Subway. It's really fucking hard to earn that much money for a company by appearing in ads, which is precisely why it's stupid to throw away the realistic potential for a promising career in order to try to be the next Jared Fogle. By stating that it's generally a bad career move to try to copy Jared Fogle's success, you're implicitly admitting that it's really fucking hard for someone to be as successful as Jared Fogle. And that is PRECISELY a big part of the reason why he deserved to get paid well.

So, how did they find out about this?

But that isn't always true, for example, abortion is legal in the United States yet nearly half of the adult population think it is immoral regardless of the law.

I severely doubt that if "the government lowered the age down to 10, everyone will just think sex with 10 years old is normal and not sick at all". Plenty of people would fan that abnormal and sick.

Chicken or the egg?

?

That would be some name though.

Hhahahaaaaaahaaahhha!!! BEST RESPONSE EVER

Incentive to excel is only driven by how much money one make from their job?

I would agree with you if monetary benefit is the only determining factor people consider when choosing career, but that's really not true. Also you can't take exceptional cases and use them to argue the norm; not every "let's play" youtubers make seven figure. On the other hand, average neurosurgeons salary far exceeds whatever the average pay is for youtubers. As for Jared, like most celebrities, a lot of that is pure luck of being seen by the right people in the right time. While there are good amount of individuals wanting to follow the "Hollywood dream", most people understand that the chances of breakout success is a lot less than a career which success is less based on the roll of dice and more on hard work and talent.

The law is only part of it. In most of the U.S., the age of consent is actually 16 and only a small handful of states set it at 17 and 18. However, if a 30-year old man had consensual sex with a 16-year old girl in a state where it was legal I can almost guarantee that he will be labeled a pedophile (even though the correct term in that particular situation would be an ephebophile) and may find themselves being shunned or worse. Doug Hutchison got called a pedo and received death threats for marrying Courtney Stodden when she was 16 and he was 50.

@magicalclick: what's the limit for you. Like how young of a person can a 30 year old be involved with disregarding the law

Fair enough. Your arguments are sound. I'll never like the idea that PewdiePie can earn millions of dollars a year by behaving like a toddler while playing Flappy Bird, but I'll chalk up that obscenity to the insipidity of the people who have made him popular.

I know all these surprise celebrity scandals. What's next, Snoop Dogg joining the Black Panthers and promoting black militancy the government? Justin Bieber joining a street gang? Taylor Swift joining ISIS? Donald Trump joining a biker gang? Channing Tatum spying for Putin?

Limbaugh. I really want to see that angry Hutt on his face. Please let it be Limbaugh.

Breaking News: Rush Limbaugh has been arrested for a hit and run, after he ran down three pedestrians crossing a cross-walk. When asked why he didn't stop for them, Rush said "Hey, I was in a rush".

:-\

People would object to consent being lowered to 10, because we're used to it being at 18. Had consent been at 10 from the start, it wouldn't have been an issue because society's already used to it.

So, it really is impossible to say what the effect of a standard would be when there's already a standard implemented. Chicken or the egg.

I would dispute that that is always true, while laws certainly influence what it is considered "acceptable" there are some issues which people find intrinsically intolerable and society would never get used to regardless of laws regulating it one way or another.

For example I don't see this "chicken v egg" dichotomy applying when a civilian commits murder.

Considering the French Revolution and the American Revolution, that is not correct. That said, the more relevant issue is giving regard to morals that are not limited to a single country or time period.

You guys are always so liberal until it comes to pedophilia, aren't you? WELL EXCUUUSE HIM.

@magicalclick: Again, I do not have reason to accept the notion that morals should be determined by society or time period thus the derivative of that is the desperation of said people as a non-factor for determining validity, but rather the approbation of any moral should be the relevance of it as a determinant in any society as a framework for development. This would require local variables to quantify as instantiations of default forms of "good" morals. This is an ongoing discussion in philosophy and ethics, and they have not really been discussed, thoroughly, in this thread.

I would advise any user to speak very carefully about this topic, moving forward.

@BranKetra: "I would advise any user to speak very carefully about this topic, moving forward."

Why?

Anyway, before I went outside, Comedy Central aired the Jared episode.

@PSP107: While sharing opinions, including unpopular ones, on GameSpot is fine, it needs to not violate of CoC or Terms of Use. Especially with a situation like this, it is probably for the best. It is a reiteration of what GameSpot said, earlier to keep this thread on an acceptable path.

Pedophiles are among the lowest form of filth, period. He'll get his.

It should, yes. Yet, here you are, huffing and puffing.

Here in Spain I think the age of consent is 13, possibly even 12. And yet, if an adult is having sex with a 13 or 14 year old, people will find it gross and immoral. 10 is right out of the question, even if it were legal. Age of consent is a difficult subject, because it's hard to draw a line where a line won't fit (at one age it's too old for an age of consent, because teens are old enough to reasonably have had sexual encounters, yet at another age it's too young, because most can't be expected to be mature enough for said sexual encounters...). Despite being a difficult line to draw, simply drawing it way too early won't make everything alright in the views of the people.

Essentially: yeah, you're right, the law doesn't trump morality. The law is based on morality, hence gay marriage being legalized, the death penalty being questioned and so on and so forth.

@magicalclick: The following link should lead you to information about the legality of derivative works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

This is based on the moral that works by original artists should be considered theirs originally and the derivatives of said works should be, in part, controlled by the artist whose work said derivatives are based on. While I do not know if derivative works are mathematically proven as derivatives, currently, there is certainly a logical process which is required to determine them earning the status of derivative of an original work in terms of politics and government.

In the same way, other aspects of society can be determined as derivatives of aspects of society. Even so, desperation for something in a particular time period is representative of the faults of a society in a given time period rather than the humanity of it all. Emotionally influential, of course, but validity is not determined by emotion, alone. In fact, relying too much on emotions can lead to incorrect judgment which is why also important are logos and ethos, logic and credibility, respectively.

I was mentioning that I do not agree that cultural relativism is a reliable view as a whole. Instead, I have reason to agree with the proposal that there are certain traits necessary in every society for any society to exist such as members agreeing to not kill each other which would be considered a "good" moral, philosophically. In a way, you could think of that as a default trait of every society. That said, there is some truth to the proposal that is cultural relativism such as the idea of localized knowledge only known within a given culture to those raised in said culture from childhood.

@magicalclick: My advice about being careful when discussing this topic was intended for users, in general. I hope you did not get the wrong message.

This inconclusive situation is unfortunate. We can look into that for you.

I'm pretty okay with being morally against people like fogle