Tom Smith has always been able to get attention by being offensive, and he does push the limits. I think he's got the chops to figure out that yes, there IS a limit beyond which it's no longer funny and not do it again.
The other guy... especially with the "Oh, I didn't really do anything THAT wrong" reaction... no. Just no. He would never be welcome in my home again, if I knew him personally; if I were running a con, he'd be persona non grata, for precisely the reasons mentioned above. Ghod knows what ELSE he might pull in the name of a "joke", and if he did it at a con, it could hurt everyone there.
Which is kind of funny, since I once had my whole office going for 5 minutes on "I was at [university] for lunch and there was a bomb scare" on April 1 -- but claiming that your child has been kidnapped is several orders of magnitude beyond that. And failing to understand WHY people are so pissed is what puts him beyond the pale.
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The other guy... especially with the "Oh, I didn't really do anything THAT wrong" reaction... no. Just no. He would never be welcome in my home again, if I knew him personally; if I were running a con, he'd be persona non grata, for precisely the reasons mentioned above. Ghod knows what ELSE he might pull in the name of a "joke", and if he did it at a con, it could hurt everyone there.
Which is kind of funny, since I once had my whole office going for 5 minutes on "I was at [university] for lunch and there was a bomb scare" on April 1 -- but claiming that your child has been kidnapped is several orders of magnitude beyond that. And failing to understand WHY people are so pissed is what puts him beyond the pale.