What’s Actually Driving Jesse Ridgway If It Isn’t Just the Money?

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
I think the same playbook that Jesse Ridgway has run his entire career, Provoke, Collect on the Reaction, Play the Victim, is probably at play here again. But it's been going on for 20 years without stopping, and it keeps getting worse.
In this piece, we're going to be talking about what's actually driving it and whether there's any version of this, where it stops. Shavaun Scott, Psychotherapist and Author with us to help break all of this down. Robin, by the way, back tomorrow, in case you were wondering. I mean, straight up, if Jesse Ridgway is a troll, and I think that was the first thing you said to me once you had a chance to dive into the material was, oh, he's a troll, yes. I mean, or is this something the troll label doesn't cover?

**Shavaun Scott** (0:57)
I think, yeah, we can look at, I mean, sometimes, it's like anybody who disagrees with you on the internet, people say, oh, you're a troll, so it can be a gradation of how extreme is the behavior. But I think it fits because he's doing malicious things, there's an aggressive quality, there's no empathy, and he's doing it for reaction. So I think troll.
We can probably come up with a few more words to describe it, but I think it's a pretty good summation.

**Tony Brueski** (1:31)
Like I was saying, his stunts do keep getting worse.
And that looks, I guess if you're gonna be out there and keep pushing the envelope, everything you get away with ends up becoming your tolerance because, oh, okay. And it's like a drug addict needing a bigger dose.
Does attention work that same sort of way in the brain? Can a person build a tolerance to it the same way? You can build tolerance to a drug, push people, say more extreme things. They accept it. Money keeps coming in. What do we do next?

**Shavaun Scott** (2:07)
I think so.
Yeah. I think the money is an incredible reinforcer. The attention is a reinforcer. And so with that, you've got the dopamine system. And that's why addicts go to more and more and more extreme kinds of drugs or more alcohol or whatever their substance is. They develop that addiction to it. And so you can look at this similarly. It's not not this pure physiological addiction, but it's an emotional drive that can be dopamine fueled. So that makes sense.

**Tony Brueski** (2:42)
Does it take a certain sort of brain to be doing this sort of thing? Or would anyone be susceptible to to going down this path if they got that risk reward?
The equation worked out the way he seems to have.

**Shavaun Scott** (2:59)
I don't think anybody. I don't think anybody, because the other thing it speaks to me is integrity, that a person with integrity does not become a troll. You know, it doesn't it just doesn't fit. It wouldn't be rewarding for me.
I mean, I can't imagine doing that for money. There are a lot of awful things you can do for money, right? You can deal drugs or or, you know, whatever. I mean, we can all think of things you can do to get paid. But I think most people with a normal conscience, the integrity kicks in and it's like, you know, it's not worth it. I wouldn't go there. So that's one of the things that that, you know, jumped out at me about about this and about most trolls is there's just no integrity.

**Tony Brueski** (3:43)
You know, I've I've seen I saw a comment here earlier about, you know, it's basically, you know, it's it's part of society's fault that they keep clicking on him. And we're going to talk about society in a little bit. But but is it I mean, is it was it really their fault? I mean, the reason is it society's fault for not fully understanding Jesse Ridgway? I don't know. I don't know that everybody is is is capable of of seeing Jesse Ridgway for who he is. Sometimes it's you kind of got to look between the tea leaves and some of this, as obvious as it may seem to some of us. And it's not saying anybody's stupid or less intelligent. It's just, you know, some people are more trusting. Some people are are are not they don't have to critically think about others in this sort of way, because life has not dealt them the cards that has forced them to.
And I think there's probably a lot of people. There's probably a majority of people, quite honestly. Is that what makes Jesse such low hanging fruit for so many? Because he is something to be enraged about or to feel something about towards against whatever it may be, because it's just such a it is such a low hanging fruit. And it's a good escape from our own lives.