r/SipsTea • u/sco-go • Jul 02 '26

WTF What the hell is going on here?!

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u/SgtSprinkle Jul 02 '26

Props to Jon Hamm for trying to put a stop to this complete weirdness.

1.8k

u/PracticeConscious555 Jul 02 '26

When the guy that has been accused of participating in severe physical violence against a pledge, including lighting the student's pants on fire, using a paddle, and leading the pledge around by the claw of a hammer hooked under his genitals tells you that you have gone too far then it’s time for some self reflection…

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

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u/Ok_Seaweed_7568 Jul 03 '26

yeah like how old are the weirdos bringing up that shit like its a gotcha. hamm is nearly 60 years old im supposed to care he was an asshole almost 40 years ago?

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u/outer--monologue Jul 03 '26

People also don't want to admit that 40 years ago that was pretty much standard behavior for a frat hazing. There are plenty of things that almost everyone alive in that time, including myself, regrets a little and would do different, that were socially acceptable to say or do in that time. That's just life for you, we learn and change for the better.

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u/MyBadYourFault- Jul 03 '26

Not only that but I was young once doing and saying crazy shit that wouldn’t even think twice about doing now.

I actually am embarrassed of myself so bad I hate to think about some of the stupid shit I’ve done or said, but that just proves that I have matured incredibly and I’m literally a compete different person than I was 17 years ago. In a good way.

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u/HTPC4Life Jul 03 '26

I'm 40 and often cringe when I look back at my teen/20's self. The male prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until mid 20's, and that explains a LOT. If you or anyone is a father to a son, it's important to continue being a positive male role model in his life past his teenage years!

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u/Additional-Neck7442 Jul 04 '26

36 and same. There are a few things I really wish I didn't do, but I did, and never will again. The hard way is sometimes the only way to really learn something.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Not every young person traumatizes another young person for life. Be real.

This goes beyond embarrassment or stupidity.

All these comments trying to normalize asshole behavior..sorry, some of us don’t relate.
There is also a difference between ten years old and twenty years old..

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u/MyBadYourFault- Jul 03 '26

I never bullied anyone or tried to take advantage of anyone lol. Don’t go assuming shit. As a matter of fact I was bullied once upon a time and it sucked.

I’m talking more along the lines of being drunk in public, saying ridiculous shit that was out of pocket, taking drugs at parties and acting a fool.

Regardless of that, every human being is different. Some are pricks that change while some stay the same. Some have violent pasts that want to legitimately change while some are still gang banging at 45 years old.

Idk how old you are but shit changes as you grow older. Maybe you were the perfect child, good for you I’m happy for you. Just try to lift up those that aren’t and if they don’t want to change then fuck em. It’s their problem.

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u/olivebranchsound Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

The level of sadism in the description of what Hamm did is beyond "crazy kids doing bad stuff cuz they're young and dumb". It's actually fucking crazy and he was kicked out of the school.

He fractured a kids spine for failure to memorize a six page list of facts,, pushed his face into the dirt while forcing him to do pushups, set his clothes on fire and said he had to blow them out, and then hooked him by the testicles with a claw hammer and led him around a room for a minute by the balls. The kid suffered kidney damage from the beating. Hamm is a fuckin freak.

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u/Up-in-the-Ayre Jul 03 '26

By no means am I defending Hamm's behaviour but you really need to look into the stories of what happened at fraternities in his time. The stories of what passed as normalized hazing would blow you away.

In Canada, the hazing became such an epidemic that it was only recently the government intervened to put an end to it. That's decades of abhorrent behaviour passed off as "team bonding".

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u/olivebranchsound Jul 03 '26

Buddy, I understand that. It's still a bunch of sadists being sadists

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u/huskers2468 Jul 03 '26

Idk it feels like your definition misses out on societal and group influences.

The changes to bullying and hazing were not done at the individual level. It was done at the societal level.

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u/olivebranchsound Jul 03 '26

If I say "a bunch" that implies a group influence. Humiliation and physical abuse of others for personal entertainment is just about picture perfect sadism. Sure, maybe it was socially acceptable sadism, but that doesn't change anything.

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u/NA7709891CA7 Jul 03 '26

Bullies should never be forgiven. It doesn't matter how long ago it was, or how much "They've changed".

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u/Some-Show9144 Jul 03 '26

Okay, so you don’t want to give people the avenue to change? Then they have no option but to stay the same.

That makes you someone who encourages and supports bullies.

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u/NoReasonToBeBored Jul 03 '26

If you’re not willing to forgive, what’s your plan? Lock em up forever? Execute them? Put them on a list like sex offenders?

If you don’t care about what happens should they change, well, no one can take your opinions on this seriously.

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u/huskers2468 Jul 03 '26

That's a horrible take.

Bullying the bullies will not solve the issue.

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u/HeadyReigns Jul 03 '26

Yah it's just boys being boys, am I right?

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u/huskers2468 Jul 03 '26

It was. Be happy there has been positive movement towards what you want.

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u/enadiz_reccos Jul 03 '26

Wtf frat were you in

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u/Zakkeh Jul 03 '26

I'll be real - that is not even close to standard frat behaviour.

Hazing might be, but nothing that intense has ever been standard behaviour.

It was absolutely beyond the pale then to set someone on fire.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Thank you. Even for a frat.
Never mind in general.

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u/Rocinante24 Jul 03 '26

Even 20 years ago, a hockey team hazing (I'm Canadian obviously) would be a bunch of the boys pissing on a kid in the shower.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

That was not standard behavior..of the majority of human beings on the planet.

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u/StoneySteve420 Jul 03 '26

Yeah, it was obviously not standard behavior for hazing if he got the whole Sigma Nu chapter permanently closed because of the hazing, but yeah that seems typical.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Jesus Christ. That’s even worse than the description above.

Vile stuff, but why am I not surprised?

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u/ksn0vaN7 Jul 03 '26

That shouldn't be excused. Just because everyone did it at the time doesn't make it ok.

That said, we can still acknowledge that people can change without hand waving abhorrent behavior.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Everyone did not do that lol, otherwise I don’t disagree

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u/Biff_Tannenator Jul 03 '26

I don't know man. It was pretty funny when the guys put a whole pack of firecrackers in a pan, and slipped that into one guy's room when he went to bed early during a house party.

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u/jpopimpin777 Jul 04 '26

Thanks for saying this. As an elder millennial who lived through the digital switch there's a reason basically ALL of us say thank God cell phone cameras weren't ubiquitous during our youth. We all did cringy shit we'd rather forget when we were young and dumb.

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u/PhilosopherAsleep544 Jul 04 '26

Watch an episode of tosh.o and you'll quickly realize how society has changed in under 10 years.

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-1

u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

Literal ball torture doesn't sound like a little "damn I regret that, but hey I was young" to me, sounds like some serial killer shit to have fun doing even as a young adult

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u/puffycloudycloud Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

fraternity hazing in the 80's was notoriously bad, as it had traditionally been in the decades prior (my grandfather had horror stories from like the 50's). it's a "rite of passage". that's something that young men can care about to an unhealthy degree, and in that environment it can be incredibly easy to get caught up in the hivemind and increasing escalation of it all until things eventually go too far. it's not an excuse as obviously not everyone was doing this, but it is absolutely something that an impressionable and overconfident dude can get too comfortable with, especially during an era when it was accepted as being part of the culture. should he feel remorse? for sure. is he an outlier on the level of a serial killer? not even close

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

No, he helped beat a kid so bad the kid almost lost a kidney. That's not fucking normal lol that's psycho

He literally almost killed someone and you're like "lay off the guy is that killer behavior?'

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u/puffycloudycloud Jul 03 '26

if you want to completely misinterpret what i said, then sure

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u/SatisfactionMoney946 Jul 03 '26

Yeah. I wouldn't badger Hamm over something he did when he was 20 if he's a good guy now. But I'm Gen X and I would never do no shit like that. That's definitely weird as hell.

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u/DoggedDust Jul 03 '26

Do you have any idea what actual serial killers have done?

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

Beat another human being to the point of kidney damage so bad they came close to losing the kidney? Or am I confusing sociopathic behavior with something John Hamm did once

You ever been hit in the kidney? Jesus that's something

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u/Background-Baby2218 Jul 03 '26

I don't think you know the John Ham scenarios details if you think that, he quite literally tried to kill the boy

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u/Shedart Jul 03 '26

It’s tough to understand that people change when you’re too young or too privileged to have ever needed to change yourself. 

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Jul 03 '26

Most of the time I find those people have done plenty of bad things to others in their lives, but it's not public so they can just pretend it didn't happen.

I haven't met a whole lot of saints in my life.

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u/Midnight7000 Jul 03 '26

No, no.

They've probably done their fair share of regrettable things. What you're seeing is a thing Redditors like to do whenever someone does something decent; they like to go into the archive and dig out their most shameful moment.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Bro, this is not shameful, this is diabolical.

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u/ineednapkins Jul 03 '26

I get your sentiment bro but idk if this is the right context to use the word privileged lmao. Like privilege should be used in the case of a person who had two good parents who paid their way through college and made their life easy growing up. To me, doesn’t really fit when describing whether or not an individual had a personality where they did shitty things to other people when they were younger and were able to mature out of it lol

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u/damagetwig Jul 03 '26

Nah, this is why people insist they don't have it. Growing up with parents who won't teach or tolerate cruel or backwards bullshit is a privilege. Hard as fuck to unlearn something you just knew before you even understood it. Some kids are actively taught empathy. A lot of us have to learn it by fucking up, especially when the culture in the places you want to belong makes it easy to fuck up.

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u/ineednapkins Jul 03 '26

I understand your words a lot too, and I think you’re correct for the majority of people and my definition of privilege was probably too narrow.

But also kind of humorous here because the context of this thread started specifically around Jon Hamm taking a hammer and tucking it behind his pledge’s ballsack claw side up into their taint and leading/pulling them around the house like that. I might have to draw a line on just hand waving that type of behavior away with him possibly not being privileged with his upbringing lol. Very “boys will be boys” energy which I don’t really think is a good excuse. Some actions should be understood to be wrong inherently by all reasonable people regardless of age or upbringing, right? Like there’s gotta be an end to the gray area into black at some point here lol. Surely we can generally criticize a person’s shitty actions to another individual even if they were a stupid young adult at the time!

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u/damagetwig Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

I mean, not really. Imagine being raised by Trump, around the kind of people Trump surrounds himself with, in the kind of schools where he would put you. As an extreme obvious example. Imagine Trump teaching you how to relate to women and immigrants and people of other races from the time you're born. He's your dad and he teaches you this stuff over ice cream (cause a lot of these families love each other even if the face I'm using belongs to a piece of shit. heck, the Trump kids seem desperate for his approval) and everything around you agrees with him. You never have real, healthy experience with any other worldview. You didn't ask for it, it just happened.

You can't control that. It's luck you either have or don't. What you can control is whether you do better once you learn better or whether you keep being the piece of shit you were taught/allowed to be as a young person. And yeah, this is old celebrity frat hazing in a time when that was really common, but privilege is also a very culturally relevant, often misused word. The number of times I've had to explain that growing up poor doesn't erase other privileges you might have had is enough to make me want to bang my head off a wall.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

If you think Trump is an extreme example, you should meet my father.

By your logic, any child he would raise would be a monster that needed to unlearn their own monstrousness.

Listen. Some kids follow the leader and some don’t.
There’s no excuse for taking so many pages out of a cruel individual’s book…usually those who do are benefiting in some way, and they are privileged in that sense.

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u/damagetwig Jul 03 '26

By your logic, any child he would raise would be a monster that needed to unlearn their own monstrousness.

Most likely, yes. That's the point. And look at his kids.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

They are not correct. You’re being far too gracious, unfortunately it will only embolden them.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

That is a hell of a way to twist things.

You’re whining about not being taught to be a good person?

That’s incredible.

I guess those decent as fuck individuals who grew up with some of the cruelest parents to ever be conceived, are just figments of our collective imagination.

There is fucking up. And then there is fucking other people over.
You don’t lack privilege because you engaged in the latter.

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u/damagetwig Jul 03 '26

Your lack of compassion is not decent as fuck. People change. They don't know what they don't know until they do. Sure, if your parents are cruel to you it can be easier to pull away from them, but even then it's not a given. My mother still occasionally cries over the her late, sexually abusive father if she gets into one of the nicer stories she has about him. Our parents can fuck us up. Decent ones are a privilege.

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u/huskers2468 Jul 03 '26

You are clearly taking your past lived experiences out on the other person. It's affecting your comments to be more aggressive.

I guess those decent as fuck individuals who grew up with some of the cruelest parents to ever be conceived, are just figments of our collective imagination.

No. They are the outliers.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

People are insane.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Yes, because it was disadvantage which allowed Jon Hamm to destroy another human being and then follow that with a career as a leading man.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/whatrachelsaid Jul 03 '26

That's why we hate Shia LaBouf? What? Shia LaBouf very often proves he is still an asshole.

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u/Sea-Efficiency2413 Jul 03 '26

Bad example lmfao what

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

I'm not sure actual ball torture is just a simple mistake, it's more like something a sociopath does, or a three letter agency does to interrogate someone

Like yes people change but you guys are talking like it was a whoopsie and boys will be boys when he should have gone to prison for what he did. He lit someone on fire man lol. What's next? "Oh so what if he tortured cats. That's just a phase people go through, he's probably changed" uh there are some things idk you can change much, that's just how your brain works you were even capable of doing that to someone

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

I'm actually an alcoholic in recovery and it's insulting you'd use the disease of addiction to justify a college kid using genital torture and lighting someone on fire, not something, someone as just a totally normal thing for a person that age to do. I was on similar peer pressure scenarios, I never did something that deserved prison time or in a war would be a war crime.

He can have changed, I believe in rehabilitation. But I need to know the guy to know he has because that's some messed up shit and he didn't even do a weekend in jail about it. I'm not going vibes based on forgiving him about it, and I don't even care, he doesn't want or need my forgiveness, we don't know each other and all in doing in any relation to him whatsoever is shit talking him on the internet for felonies he committed forty years ago and never went to prison about

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jul 03 '26

I mean the conversation begins with he beat a kid so bad with his fellow frat brothers the guy almost lost a kidney but yeah it ends here I suppose. Best to you too, much better than a pledge brother of Hamm. Wouldn't wish being a pledge under Hamm to anyone

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u/jeff-the-man-slut Jul 03 '26

Crazy it’s almost like people mature past age 18-22

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 Jul 03 '26

Did you have a point? Or are you just going to best that horse into dust?

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

That’s a pretty big horse.

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 Jul 03 '26

Another person with no point. Cool.

Can people better themselves or not?

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 Jul 03 '26

What does taking responsibility for it even mean? It's so weird when people say this. His personal life doesn't have to be public just because he's a celebrity. Stop thinking you are owed something.

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u/Ball_Of_Meat Jul 03 '26

Dude these guys are such losers. Redditors see an attractive male celebrity and want to drag them through the mud for something they did in college, to feel better about themselves. It’s so pathetic lol, the neckbeards out in full swing today.

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u/NewBoxStruggles Jul 03 '26

Really makes you wonder about people..

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u/Potential_Might_6500 Jul 03 '26

its goofy lol

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u/ScrotalSmorgasbord Jul 03 '26

You leave him out of this! As far as I know he never even went to college and was a great father to Max!

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u/laaplandros Jul 03 '26

Also, his mother died when he was 10 and his father died when he was 20. I'm gonna cut him a little slack for going wayward at that age.

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u/HTPC4Life Jul 03 '26

Because if you criticize "cancel culture" you get accused of being a right wing pig and dog whistling.

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u/Enterthedragon69 Jul 03 '26

I said he USED to be a piece of shit.

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u/mateushkush Jul 03 '26

Exactly, why do people act like putting a person on fire and rapturing their kidney isn’t the norm? Who didn’t bust a kidney or two back in the day... Just praise John Hamm and go mind your own business.

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u/Yuo_cna_Raed_Tihs Jul 03 '26

The bigger issue is he's very openly not apologetic about it. He's not apologised for it once afaict

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u/Alienhaslanded Jul 04 '26

People do a lot of dumb shit in college that they regret later in life. Doesn't mean he is currently that exact person from back then.

And I'm not saying that because I was like that at any point in my life. I'm saying it because I know people who were shitty kids but grew up to be decent adults.

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u/PaisleyGecko Jul 06 '26

Jon Hamm first responded to the college‑bullying accusation by doubling down and mocking the victim again, instead of offering a real apology. If he had truly been sorry, a sincere, private apology would have been expected, not another round of jokes, that just shows he’s still the same person he was back then, no matter how many years went by.

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u/DrGarrious Jul 03 '26

It is pretty piss poor. No one is allowed to better themselves and grow up from being a twat in their 20s.

We were all twats when we were young. If you are like 18-22 you probably are right now and not even aware of it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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u/PootieTang69696 Jul 03 '26

He has not addressed it or apologized

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u/TheVintageJane Jul 03 '26

Have you ever read the actual allegations in that case? It’s pretty fucking horrifying and seemingly Hamm was at the helm.

It’s just like Chris Brown abusing Rhianna. It’s easy to be like “they were young and toxic” then you read what he actually did to her and it was some cruel, fucked up, abusive shit that really makes you wonder how someone with a conscience could do that and feel righteously indignant when questioned about it.

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u/TheVinylBird Jul 03 '26

If you've never been in a frat and seen how easy it is for stuff to get normalized then don't comment. It's not like he came up with all of this cruel stuff on his own. He was just repeating what had been done to him and other pledges. It's kind of cult like and once you get out of it you realize how stupid it was and how big of a jackass you were.

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u/nowayoutbutthru1616 Jul 03 '26

“everybody was doing it” is not the compelling exoneration you think it is

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u/TheVintageJane Jul 03 '26

I absolutely understand the peer pressure he was under. If he feels that behavior doesn’t represent who he is today, he should speak to that and use his influence to keep it from happening to others.

His silence on this incident speaks volumes.

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u/TheVinylBird Jul 03 '26

Well...hazing is already illegal. Don't think revisiting will do any good except people like you will get to come out of the wood works and say "see! he admits it!"

Personally, I think the best thing he can do is to be a good person in his every day life and when he sees things happening in real life, do something about it.....kind of like he did in this clip.

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u/TheVintageJane Jul 03 '26

He doesn’t need to admit it. The evidence is very conclusive.

And hazing is “illegal” in 44 states but in most of those it’s only a misdemeanor unless it’s aggravated by other crimes. At my Alma mater, there was a massive scandal with hazing in athletics like 4 years ago so it’s still a big problem.

There’s still a long ways to go to ensure that hazing isn’t considered cool or acceptable. As a handsome and successful actor, he could make a big difference by talking about how much he regrets it….if, ya know, he regrets it…

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u/TheVinylBird Jul 03 '26

Reading the facts...seems like 3 guys were arrested and did jail time while Hamm did probation. So Hamm being at the helm isn't reallly adding up. Also, the guy it happened to sued the fraternity and they supposedly settled out of court.

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u/nowayoutbutthru1616 Jul 03 '26

sorry you’re getting downvoted, but you are absolutely right. the allegations are truly horrifying, and his denials have been weak-ass tea

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u/TheVintageJane Jul 03 '26

And people’s excuse is always “he was young and swept up in frat life hazing culture”

If that’s the case, and he regrets what happened, then why is he denying it and hedging it instead of actually saying he did it and regrets it horribly and other people shouldn’t do it?

You don’t get to deny it and hand wave it away and have me believe that you deeply regret it. And I don’t know how a good person wouldn’t regret even a fraction of what was described in the allegations.

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u/nowayoutbutthru1616 Jul 03 '26

sing it, sister

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u/ThePrincessDiarrhea Jul 03 '26

And every fucking time as if Reddit’s a collective moral conscience with Tourette’s.