Three years ago, lawyer Jordan van den Berg was an obscure TikTok creator who made videos that mocked real estate agents.
But today the 28-year-old is one of the most high-profile activists in Australia.
Posting under the moniker Purple Pingers, Mr van den Berg has been taking on the nation’s housing crisis by highlighting shocking renting conditions, poor behaviour from landlords, and what he calls government failures.
It is his vigilante-style approach - which includes helping people find vacant homes to squat in, and exposing bad rentals in a public database - that has won over a legion of fans.
Some have dubbed him the Robin Hood of renters.
He’s encouraging squatting, which is stealing. He’s an awful person.
How is this stealing? At most it’s prohibiting passive income on capital investment.
Stealing is taking someone’s property without permission. That’s what squatting is. By encouraging squatting, this person is encouraging stealing and that makes them an awful person.
Holy shit, they took the whole house? That’s impressive!
Honestly if I ever own a house and someone steals it without me noticing… They can keep it.
Squatting is not “taking property” especially if the property in question is vacant. The property is still there and will stay there when the squatters leave.
It’s very much stealing property. The same way a crime is committed when someone is raped. The victim still has their body afterwards, but a crime has been committed.
That’s the weirdest comparison I’ve seen yet. Yes rape is rape and rape is a crime but rape is not stealing. I really don’t see the point you are trying to make.
Rape is stealing as well. You’re taking something from someone they didn’t freely give you.
My point is that stealing is bad and shouldn’t be encouraged.
No what the fuck. Rape is literally not taking something from someone. Rape is taking control over someone abusing some kind of power be it physical or nonphysical and forcing them into sexual activities.
Both are bad, rape is considerably worse, and I think I’m done arguing with your bs
Just gonna play devils advocate and say they both involve entering without permission…
It’s not BS. Rape is bad, stealing is bad.
Theft is a crime but not all crimes are theft. If I punch you in the face that isn’t theft. The only way someone could consider rape to be theft is if they considered women to be property.
The problem here is that you seem to value your own property rights over the right of individuals to have shelter. Sure, it’s not an ideal situation; in an ideal society “squatting” shouldn’t occur, but we live in a society where people are forced to choose between being homeless or squatting in someone’s property. If you think they should forgo their right to shelter to preserve your right to property then you are the awful person.
No name calling on this sub. You are blocked.
Holy shit my guy. “Someone vaguely disagreed with me and used the same verbiage I used on someone else, time to block them”. Touch grass, please, for your sake as much as ours.
Ah, but you see, it’s not hypocritical because rules are just weapons to use against your opponents, and we’re suckers for not using it against them first. /s
It’s better to block people than engage in back and forth that won’t go anywhere.
“I’m not here to engage in discussion, I’m just here to make people listen to me and I only want to hear people who agree with me.”
Okay then.
Removed by mod
Removed, civility.
Removed by mod
It was phrased as a conditional, they weren’t DIRECTLY saying the other person was awful, they were saying “people who do x are awful.” It leaves it open to the idea that the original commenter does not do x and is therefore not awful.
In YOUR case, yeah, calling someone awful breaks the civility rule.
Does the rule only apply if they’re name-calling other commenters and not the subject of the article? If not then mke_geek’s original comment should be removed since he directly calls the subject of the article an awful person with no conditional.
Personally I think this rule is being a bit over-enforced and none of these comments should have been removed. Being overly strict with civility rules allows bad actors to take advantage of “civility politics” to shut down dissent.
Edit: except maybe the one calling them a dickhead, I get why that one was removed. The ones that just reflect their own words back at them I think should be left alone.
Clearly stated in rule 5:
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Name calling. Blocked.
You’re an awful person. Stealing is what capitalists use land ownership for.
No name calling on this sub. You are blocked.
There’s entire countries that are on land that wasn’t originally theirs. Stealing isn’t sufficient for evil on it’s own.
I think you dropped your /s