this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Yup and the way this stuff can dictate lives is honestly sad. It's been interesting to follow how people locally have been made to think they are constantly in some kind of danger to a point where they replicate that feeling in their communication with other people all the time, warning others of burglers or "youth gangs" (there isn't any). Buying expensive security systems or services to feel safe when in fact it is very safe. Opting for nato and so forth.
But they have been consuming the tabloids warning about someone stealing their shit or attacking them in the dark or those scary russians for so long that the danger becomes real in their minds. And then gets replicated in the everyday by mouth to mouth warnings like "you shouldn't leave your bike outdoors here because x and y" yet when you ask if anyones bike has ever been stolen it typically turns out it hasn't. Same with all these things "human nature" where the media loves to push that one anecdotal story of the shitties behaviour that then gets turned into how the world works, when it in fact doesn't. The term moral panic fits this very well too, it's what so many of the lib "dangers" are.
you make a good point, but this made me chuckle.
I know multiple people who've had bikes stolen and I had one stolen off my my front porch, and another cut off the racks at my uni dorm (they cut the lock). I know this is just anecdotal.
Honestly fair enough, bikes do get stolen a lot. But I kind of think it's still less than how much the stories of stolen bikes get popularized. Anecdotally me and mine have always had such old crappy basic bikes that nobody has bothered. I keep mine in front of my door outside and my racist neigbours have told me many times how I shouldn't and how it will get stolen by immigrants. They told me that I shouldn't even put flowers by my front door because those will get stolen for sure.
At this point my bike has stood by the door a year, same as my flower pots. And if someone is in such a dire need of a bike or a flower pot, I think I'll live.
When I did community gardening the racist boomers there told me to not even leave a bucket at my plot because "the russian women steal even soil". Then I ran out of spoons and forgot all my stuff on the plot for two years, went to see it this spring and all my crap was still there.😂
But yeah, this is more about the mindset of "this is known" and how it feeds things like racism. I think this is why the media loves making a big deal of those anecdotal events and then they seem common. When they in fact are not.
Another anecdotal story about this. There are cows on pasture in my city, always has been. I took a pic of them and sent it to my family chat. The first question was "don't people hurt them". There's been maybe one or two stories about people being dumb and harassing some pasturing sheep near an urban area or something and it was all over the news as an example of "human nature as evil". And now it's common knowledge. Of course the cows are ok and people just love them, nobody hurts them. But this is a good example of what I am trying to say. It's the Parenti "Gaddafi is in your house"-rant applied to all things news.
Honestly, whenever I hear someone say things like this I can't help but think they'd be perfectly ok with doing that thing themselves - or at least being ok with someone they know doing it because, "the rest of them do it"