'AITA for telling my friend that it was pretty funny that her friend got arrested?'
"AITA for telling my friend that it was pretty funny that her friend got arrested?"
I (27M) was talking to one of my friends let's call her Katie and she was telling me about how she was very worried for her friend Giulla who called her worried because she got arrested in Japan and was embarrassed.
She is a somewhat mid sized twitch streamer and was with another streamer at a car meet-up. She got in the driver seat when the car was parked and the other streamer was away and when she came back she persuaded her to move the car and for some reason she had a brain fart, thought the car was in reverse...
She accelerated when she noticed it moving in reverse and forgot she had just changed it in drive and crashed. She hit someone but he dodged and wasn't injured but caused damage to 2 other cars. The stream was still running and even though she deleted it someone captured it and reshared.
She also did not have an international driving permit necessary to drive in Japan and was arrested because that counts as unlicensed. She will now probably have to pay for the damages.
When Katie told me this and I saw the video, I laughed a lot and said that was hilarious. Like what a dumb thing to do. People were piling on her in the comments and I agreed with them. It was a small automatic car, like how stupid do you have to be to mess that up? My friend got upset and called me an ahole and claimed I was being misogynistic when I never even said anything about that.
She knows Guilia better than I do admittedly and said that she is a very sweet person and it must terrify her getting arrested and she did not want to drive it but gave in to peer pressure and that it could happen to anyone and has more to do with not having driven the car before and that if she had practiced like 10 minutes in a more open lot to get the feel of RHD and the car she would have been fine.
Now I'm wondering whether I was an ah for laughing, however what I said and my reaction was pretty similar to the majority of commentators in the video so I feel like I might be right over Katie. AITA here?
At the same time I do find it funny given Guilia's track record. She has claimed in the past to be a car enthusiast yet can't drive. Similarly she also claims to be into data science, programming and wanting to learn about machine learning yet I checked her github and it only has basic stats stuff in R and not any substantial projects.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Flat-Replacement4828 said:
YTA. Your friend was sitting there telling you how worried they are for someone, and you mocked them for it. You weren't just laughing at this chick: you were laughing at your friend for caring. Not cool.
DemonicSnow said:
YTA. Like, you can think what someone did is stupid (which I agree with you), but generally if a friend is sharing something, you can get a good handle from their tone etc which way they're leaning. If they're showing sympathy to this person and you laugh it up hysterically, you're gonna come off badly. There are ways to show how they were a dumb without also coming off like a butt.
Pootles_Carrot said:
YTA She pulled off a jolly good f up and her consequences are hers to deal with now. But your mutual friend shared this with you as they were worried and you failed to register her concern or the tone you were being giving this information in and just laughed. So, you were inconsiderate to your friend.
jyuichi said:
YTA. Giulla messed up, do the crime pay the time but laughing at her friend isn’t going to accomplish anything. You don’t have to feel sorry for her but laughing at a worried friend is AH behavior.
Also Japanese cars are right hand drive I see how someone who is already confused everything is in the wrong spot could mess that up. That is one more reason she shouldn’t have tried to drive it but I don’t think you can mock her interests for that
Blue_Fox_Fire said:
YTA - It's not that you laughed - it does sound funny! - it's that you were an ahole about it, making fun of her friend and calling her dumb. You could have easily just been "Sorry I laughed but it was funny. I'm glad she's okay though!"
madameshrimp said:
YTA your friend came to you about something she was "very worried" about, and you laughed at her.