The indomitable American spirit. The right to BARE ARMS. Catch these fists.
I often find Americans abroad to be quite charming in how American they are. Certainly, there are some that are obnoxious (and even their friendliness can be obnoxiousness in a way), but it can be quite endearing; Americans (especially the ones you meet while travelling) are so outgoing, and they’re so keen to make connections with people. Like, is it cringe when an American says “oh my great great grandfather was Scottish”, as if makes any difference at all that they are 1/16 Scottish? Yeah, somewhat. But after a friend explained to me that she sees it as coming from a deep desire to connect with other people, I began to see it as quite sweet.
It’s part of why I grieve for what’s going on in America right now. “American-ness” is a messy, mixed concept, and it would be unreasonable to ignore how much of that concept is deeply problematic. However, I feel that there is goodness within that concept, and the people in power at the moment seem hell bent on destroying or undermining what goodness exists there.
Plenty of us are just entitled psychopaths who ate too much lead paint as children, but I think you are correct that the rest of us are looking for connections. We come from a place where our traditions are shallow and our heritage is mostly just awful. We are not only looking to connect, but we are also essentially a bunch of orphans trying to desperately figure out who we are and where we belong.
I know most other people find it obnoxious, so I never really bring it up, but I do, it’s also an invitation to tell me more about who you are and where you come from.As an (expat) American I have always felt a desire to connect with my heritage and experience the old world, despite never having the chance to. It feels crazy to me that people are overseas living where so much history played out, walking old streets past ancient walls and buildings, and often within a short journey to Neolithic sites and old ruins. There are quiet men herding sheep in a windswept field with mossy rock formations just chilling over there beside their prized lamb, Ollie. Americans removed themselves from all of that and over a couple of centuries it became something mythical and out of reach. We are essentially cut off from our own heritage, and are strangers to our own people, but we’ve been brought up in a culture that makes us quite alien to them when we do make the pilgrimage.
It’s kind of a sad thing, but I’ve been away from America long enough to understand why Europeans are so put off. Even the most left-leaning Americans need a lot of de-programming. I know I did. Now when my mother visits I am hyper-aware of how different we have become.
Not too surprised. Living in the US, giving a shit about the safety of owned property is pretty much the only thing you can count on.
Because replacing said property costs money, money they generally don’t have. Being poor in the US is a cruel hell and they don’t seem to plan on fixing it any time soon so violence it is.
Yep. Don’t ever bother with de-escalation when you know no safety net will save you. You have to go all in, or you are left behind, or dead.
Not the world I like living in, but that’s the world I’m currently living in. Hell, my father was robbed several times growing up, so he made sure to teach my sibling and I how to be wary and catch people in the act.
Yep. Don’t ever bother with de-escalation when you know no safety net will save you. You have to go all in, or you are left behind, or dead.
I love love love how everyone just assumes they will win these fights and they won’t end up dead anyway trying to protect their pittance of property. What a fucking unhinged way to live.
Guess what, you don’t always win just because you’re in the right.
I certainly don’t like the situation, but the amount of people who are chomping at the bit to attack others are far greater than those who don’t want to. I would likely have to hand over everything if I had a gun pointed at me, but usually the best way to avoid that risk is to avoid being there. Staying away from crowds, either trying to bluff/strike/capitulate with those who try to attack you, or just not trusting anyone.
This is why bystander effect is a real issue when it comes to situations in the US where people are injured or need help - the risk of being robbed, defrauded, or sued means it’s a far easier choice to keep moving and not think about those around you.
Property is more important than lives. Where else would people literally say they’d shoot someone for going on “their” land.
In the US, we have a phrase for the mindset you’re describing:
“Fuck you, I got mine.”
That phrase is absolutely not said about self defense…
Classic American, extending their personhood to the items they own. Get a grip, your wallet is not you and you’re not defending yourself if it’s stolen.
Your inability to grasp that people value the product of their time as much as their time itself shows you are pathetically disconnected from reality yourself. Grow up and stop relying on mommy and daddy’s allowance they give you for doing nothing with your sad life.
In another comment you talk about fascists taking over the world, yet here you are, spouting what a fascist would say in regards to private property, while a socialist would understand the difference between personal property and private property and understands the dangers of the latter. Get educated, schlub. You’re spouting the kind of idiocy that enabled the fascists to take over.
Also I’m in my forties living with cancer in the USA where the treatments cost $18k a month without insurance. Dear god I only wish I had mommy and daddy taking care of me.
I don’t know about you, but my wallet only holds plastic cards… All of which can be cancelled, replaced, and any money spent by the thief returned and restored. The only thing it takes up is a small amount of my personal time. So I really haven’t lost anything at all. I don’t know why you’re so geared up to fuck someone up over such a small inconvenience.
Your semmantic games are not appreciated. Fuck off dummy.
Not necessarily, but it’s an easy way to describe our view of others in our society in general. Not much faith in our fellow humans.
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Probably easier way of defeating pick pockets is to carry a decoy or purse wallet with a painful surprise in it.
Americans being unaware that pickpockets usually work in teams rule
So do I.
If anyone deserves a good beating it’s pickpockets.
As we say in the USA:
“The police don’t protect us, we protect us”
There are 7 police officers in my town of 13k. We say “Sometimes there’s justice and sometimes there’s just us”
Whole lee shit this is good! I’ve always heard the adage “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
And that’s true for both where I’m from(Miami) and where I moved to(the corner of bum fucked & nowhere)
I mean sure, it do be like that but also my old roommate, who never locked his car and kept weed and his work tools in it overnight, every night, walked around our neighborhood with a pistol “looking” for the guys who stole the aforementioned tools and weed.
It happened 3 times…there’s something wrong with alot of us
Did he think that gave him a legal precedent? Like isn’t owning weed and a gun a felony in and of itself?
Edit: currently depends which federal court circuit’s jurisdiction you fall under. Might get brought to the supreme court at some point? Either way there’s legal precedent that makes that iffy. Which is fair. Weed should be legal, and despite this asshole, I trust stoners more than habitual drinkers or the GOP and their constituents.
Either way the guy was obviously a fuckin’ issue, and was committing several other federal offenses lol.
In my jurisdiction, yes. Any drug offense combined with possessing a firearm is an automatic felony. Even if the drug offense by itself would have been a misdemeanor. It is a very bad idea, legally speaking.
Owning the gun is not a felony weed yes
Lol no he was just mad. And weed is legal in Cali. Guns are too but I’d be willing to be that one was street bought
It is, your just not gonna find pickpockets in rural places and most people don’t leave their county, let alone state so people are clueless how the world at large works. Go to any big city and you’ll find pick pockets at work. Further to that, many of their tourist places are far apart and remote so less likely to find them in the same kind of places as Europe, which draws large volumes of people reliably to the sames places from all over the world.
For the record, American’s don’t like anything.
While you will find pickpockets in major tourist spots in the US, they are not nearly as common as elsewhere. Here we just prefer the good ol’ stick-up.
We do seem to enjoy locking up and deporting the people who do the actual work around here.
American’s don’t like anything.
I’m offended sir, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to my hamburger!
I’m going to go eat my hamburger in my truck! Good day, sir!
I grew up in New York City and now live in Boston and I’ve never encountered a pickpocket. I’ve been mugged three times and had a mentally unbalanced homeless guy punch me in the face unprovoked, but I’ve never been pickpocketed.
Do you hang around in large crowded tourist spots a lot? Crowded subways? Because that’s where they are, not walking down main St. Go to times square during any major event and they are out there, but as others commented, not at the levels you’ll see in European countries. Why, who knows? Tactics change over the years, they’ve probably found more profitable avenues of theft in the USA, God knows it is rampant.
Yeah, I rode the Subway and T for years during rush hour, I used to work in Times Square, and I’ve of course been to tourist events in that time. In nearly 40 years of city living, I don’t know anyone who’s had their pocket picked, either in busy areas or, “Main st.”
Well if you’ve never experienced it then I guess it just never happens?!
I think if I don’t know anyone it’s happened to in decades of living in large cities means its probably not very common.
Agreed. Grew up in dense East Coast cities in the 80s and 90s, pickpocketing was not a thing that happened.
I live in Canada, there’s surprisingly little pickpocketing here too, and we don’t have the same gun/weapon laws.
Like the Americans, we’ll straight up beat you to a pulp if you try some shit, and we’re very sorry about that… You motherfucker.
If you want to steal shit, at least be moral about it and go to a walmart or something. I’m sorry but I’m not even going to pretend to be sorry about a pickpocket targeting normal people getting his (or her) ass beaten.
Though, on that note, is it harder or riskier to shoplift in Europe? Maybe that’s why we have fewer pickpockets because stores are much easier and safer targets. Unless you get a particularly enthusiastic mall cop after you, even if you get caught, it’ll probably be a fairly polite interaction involving more disappointment than rage, all the way from capture to sentencing, at least in Canada.
Plus these days the odds of getting cash is low and the expensive device everyone carries has gps tracking built in, so the reward might be too low for the risk.
I’m sorry but I’m not even going to pretend to be sorry about a pickpocket targeting normal people getting his (or her) ass beaten.
What about American tourists in a foreign nation that has been historically violently repressed via the American Military and economic shock treatment by American institutions? Those American tourists enabled their government and businesses to do that, via their votes and their labor for said businesses. In this respect they are not just “regular people” in a place like Mexico, Chile, Iran, Iraq, and so on.
You know rich people have rigged our gov for ages. Those wars we fought were highly unpopular and nobody wanted them. Rich people made lots of money as a result. Believe it or not, “no more stupid wars” was part of Trump’s campaign platform. It’s about the only part that dems liked too. You can’t run for office here without being super rich unless it’s local or an anomaly.
Bernie Sanders, David Hogg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jasmine Crockett.
Stop this defeatist attitude bullshit. The real problem is people don’t vote in the fucking primaries.
Zohran Mamdani is an example of what happens when people turn out for the primary.
Upvote for being right.
I won’t try to argue about the morality of it, though I can’t agree that pickpocketing any random American does anything to fight the military industry or their imperialism, though I will grant that culpability for it is complex. But when you play with fire, you should expect to get burned occasionally.
This is bullshit logic. In the last 40 years the government has served the interests of the few and half the time is literally elected by the minority that would have lost the election in most democracies.
Also actions are a moral reflection on you alone not the victims
If you see someone shoplifting, no you didn’t.
Edit: to clarify, I agree with you, and that’s part of the intention of leaving this quip here
This is my viewpoint too.
If I’m a witness to shoplifting, I’m not a witness to shoplifting.
Unless you’re a kleptomaniac, you’re probably not stealing because you want to. You’re stealing because you have to.
Corporations have insurance, and they’re not people; so if they lose some money in the transaction, I am unbothered.
The majority of shoplifting is organized effort to sell shit online or to fund a drug habit. Why because only a drug addict will spend more hours stealing than you do working and he will by himself steal more than 40 casual thieves because he’s motivated
Seems pessimistic.
What about the people who can’t afford to live and need to steal to eat? Those downtrodden because some rich CEO asshole decided to try to replace them with AI, and they lost everything being unemployed and having the price of everything shoot through the roof for no goddamned reason?
What about those people?
I’m not saying that there aren’t people who steal to fund their addiction, but that’s not the only motivator.
We’re all humans.
Killing people over things do sound american lmao
It has little to do with Americans being violent. It comes down to population density. The US has a ton of places without the population density for pick pocketing to be effective.
People forget that a lot of the US is almost uninhabited.
Plus, personal space is a pretty big deal in most of the States. If you’re too close, I’m not watching for pickpocketing. I’m too busy working out what the hell is going on in a panic because something is already wrong.
Sure we’re a bit violent, but we’re friendly first.
I’ll say that I’ve never been to Europe, but I’ve been out and about in central and South America and as far as I know I’ve never run into a pickpocket. Maybe it’s just a European thing.
In São Paulo it was a little mini-assault.
You’d get shoved from behind, maybe bumped into from the side, while yet another guy is actually taking your shit. Extra credit if you’re at a curb so you stumble.
Then everybody splits, your instinct is to turn around to see the guy who shoved you, by the time you’ve done that and realized what happened, your shit is goooone.
What are they doing in Paris that the mark has a chance to grab them? I guess if you’re in a reasonably athletic pack of 4-5, but at that point surely there are easier targets?
I suppose people who don’t watch American sports don’t appreciate that there are many obese Americans who can still run 40 yards in six seconds and expertly smash you into the ground when they get there.
In my city in the UK, there have been a lot of thefts recently where someone will grab a phone out of someone’s hand and then escape on a moped or bike. Sometimes they start out on foot and hop on a vehicle, but sometimes it’s a “drive by” pickpocketing, so to speak (though calling it pickpocketing feels a tad erroneous if there are no pockets involved).
In big European cities, a more subtle version of what you describe can be quite common. Like if a suspicious person bumps into you (in a manner that’s fairly common in a big city), people who suspect that they have been pickpocketed may pat the pocket that their phone or wallet is in to check that things are still there. This is then observed by someone working with that first person, and they watch and wait for an opportunity to surreptitiously swoop in. When it happens, even if you immediately feel that you have been pickpocketed, it can be difficult to discern who it was.
Over here in nyc we dont really got pick pockets, if think it has to do with how the city for a while used to be really fucked up, and for those of us who grew up here having habits were we pay attention to what going on around us, making it harder to pick pocket. This only really applies to ny and maybe areas like it. Everything changed alot in the past 20 years.
I was almost pickpocketed in Paris when I was out late at night and stupid drunk to the point I was seeing double. I had sat down on the curb because standing wasn’t great. They came up behind me and crouched down without me noticing until they made their move. I instantly went into fight mode and almost stabbed them. Super dumb but I was very drunk and it was just like instinct that they were trying to steal my knife so the only option was stab them in the face with it before they could use it to stab me. As soon as I got the knife back I had the blade open and they jumped back looking terrified like I was a wild animal about to attack, which is kind of what I felt like. Super weird experience. I think they were really just grabbing what they could and happened to get my knife instead of my wallet but being a drunk American my first instinct was kill or be killed.
You learned that in a crisis your mode is fight. Better than freeze and fawn for sure, flee is safer.
Why do you carry a knife in the first place?
Because it’s a tool I use often during the day. I might open a package with it, scrape some gasket material off of some parts, whittle a stick, de-burr a piece of metal, cut an apple or sandwich. Bunches of uses. At 5:30am this morning, I cut open a package a bacon for my breakfast with it. Why don’t you carry one?
If I don’t have a pocket knife on me, I should probably go back home and put my pants on…
I used to carry one, I thought <it’s ought to be useful sometime>, and it could be. But most packets are easy to open ny hands, and utilty knives become become progressively less useful as you get used to the.
I was checking and checking granpa’s garage, I found some two heavily used pocket knives in there. Rusted, shut. I restored the without losing that ‘antique’ patina. But I could never carry these. First they’re illegal around here ~ and if you want to visit any EU city they’re not things to have on yourself ~ secondly, they’re less than ideal tools in many such cases. I like harvesting and hiking, and shears are safer to use. I understand a swiss knife, but that has limits too.
A general advice is that one of these knives can put you in dangerous situations, like the one yoy described…
That story is entirely made up. A person basically unable to stand due to alcohol being able to grapple and perform knife work against a sober individual? 😂
Its just fantasy masturbation.
You have no idea how dangerous a drunk person is even without a knife.
because ive never been around violent drunk people. 🤣
i never said drunk people are not dangerous. I said the idea that a drunk person who admitted they could barely stand up and seeing double then goes on to tell how they managed prevent a pick pocket from stealing their knife and then attempted to stab said person is pure fantasy. welcome to the internet where people make up stories all the time.
Facinating. Never mind that I’ve seen one trying to break into my house but fine. Alcohol is one of those things that are both a poison of the body and of the mind.
You probably shouldn’t interact W/ people on the Internet. You lack the ability to detect and handle basic sarcasm and nonsense stories.
Ive obviously been around violent drunk people, many times. It was sarcasm. Much like the story of the op’s magical ability to simultaneously be unable to stand up and ward off pick pockets is complete nonsense.
Its a useful tool and carrying one is common practice in many parts of the US. I had it on me out of habit at the time and after this incident mostly stopped carrying one in public except when necessary.
Righto, but before going out you should be aware of the laws elsewhere.
people who don’t watch American sports
I’m gonna go out on a fucking limb and say people playing professional sports are not representative of the average obese assholes who have to walk around with a fucking oxygen tank lmao.
expertly smash you into the ground
Seriously, why do Americans all think they’re the best fighters around? Is it too much television and action movies? You’re in America, you really think an American pickpocket isn’t going to be packing some kind of weapon and if they clock that they’re being chased they are afraid to use it or something? I dunno, it seems to me the vast majority love just fantasizing about this while in reality they’d be bleeding out on the pavement before they had a chance to touch the person who swiped their shit.
The American dudes who played sports in high school and are now in their 20s and 30s haven’t had their health collapse yet.
European cops are way more intimidating than American cops, by and large. I’m not trying to be jingoistic, I’m just saying that running after someone who is carrying something is the version of the national sport the vast majority of us actually play.
European cops are way more intimidating than American cops
That has not been my experience
There are way too many American cops operating on the notion that they have far fewer rules of engagement than we military servicemembers did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Human life in general appears to have very little value to them.
I do not recall ever meeting a similar police officer in Europe, I’m sure they probably exist, but are definitely far less common.
Being a vicious cold hearted murderous bastard doesn’t necessarily depend upon their level of physical fitness
Your national sport is walking from office to a car to drive home to sit on a couch. Average American walks three hundred meters per week, the second you stop training for the sport you played once a week as a child 10 years ago, you stop being able to run any reasonable distance.
I guess another national sport of yours is overestimating how strong and powerful you actually are.The average american walks about 2 miles a day. 22km a week is definitely not 300 meters.
*citation needed
The average american has never walked a meter in their whole life. We’ll be dead in the cold cold ground before we measure distances in things easily divisible by 10.
Don’t join the military then.
I mean, yeah, good advice in general.
Yeah, that was a bad idea when the military members were being sacrificed to protect profits. It’s worse now that they will be used to attack their fellow citizens at home.
The only reference that that I could find quickly googling, is the repost of repost of repost of some unspecified study that someone did, measuring readings from some unspecified fitness bracelet. Even if we assume it exists, even if we assume it measures correctly, even if we assume it’s not an ad for something, it is a study about people health conscious enough to buy and regularly wear a fitness bracelet. And among this cohort, the average is just 3.2 km.
I agree, it’s a bit more that 300 meters, but not by much actually.I took the lowest end measurement of the worst cohort in the study, actually, and even then they did over ten times the amount of walking you claimed. That’s not a ‘bit’ wrong, that’s off by an entire order or magnitude. And for the record, the entire rest of your post is made up as well- the studies are easily available, the fitness bracelet was given to them, it clearly delineates what bracelets are used, and a wide variety of ages, sexes, occupations, etc etc were studied.
This isn’t about standing up and doing axe kicks and shit, this is about chasing somebody down and getting the ball back from them.
I’ve personally chased somebody down who assumed they could outrun me because I was fat, ten years after the last time I played gridiron.
My knees were wobbly and I was a little lightheaded afterward, but it’s the one athletic ability your stereotypical dumbass American will have. We’ll literally break our own ankle trying to do a stepover. Or maybe that’s just me. 😄
This assumes that you can do it perfectly every time, not that you’ll sometimes be outclassed by someone who is actually in shape, actually faster than you, or has better control over their motor skills and can dodge or jump to escape you. Your little anecdote about the one time you tackled someone without breaking your body trying to do it doesn’t prove anything.
Sure.
I totally agree that absolutely anybody with current training in anything would have made me pay dearly for my stupidity.
However, because I’m a random American who played football, I was the one with the scintilla more experience, and I got to keep my teeth.
Nobody said anything about professionals until you came along. And you don’t have to be the best. You just have to be enough. In fact nobody claimed anyone was the best until you came around. It seems like you just wanted an opportunity to insult Americans.
I literally am an American. I live amongst these mouth breathing knuckle dragging idiots daily. Trust me I know a little bit about how fucking stupid, vengeful, and thoughtless they are and how they all see themselves as an action hero in their own story that will somehow always come out on top.
I’m sure you blend in fine in the wild.
Pretty sure they were talking about football players. Not really a fighting thing. That’s literally half the game.
Football players still very often fail to actually tackle someone even when they try.
I think what you’re missing is that waaay more Americans than you think played sports as a kid (well over 60% of the population iirc), and still know how to tackle someone. Football is huge here, and baseball can get pretty nasty too (source: other kids would see the armor and think ‘well if I can knock the ball out of his glove I’m safe!’)
Yes, there are a lot of obese assholes, but it turns out lugging around an extra 100lb of weight is actually pretty good strength training for the legs. Yes, they’re going to be gassed nigh instantly because their cardio is shit, but they’re probably fast off the mark and weigh enough that just running into you will slam you into the ground pretty badly.
Weight classes exist for a reason, and most Americans are going to be in a much higher weight class than the average pickpocket. Absent any weapons, as long as they can catch them, the American has a decent chance of winning, statistically speaking. Paris pickpockets found that out to their detriment.
This all continues to rely on an erroneous set of thinking that because you’re the victimized party that automatically you will come out on top. It assumes that the pickpocket isn’t in any way considering that they might need to deal with someone catching them in the act, and that they won’t have a knife or a gun that they could pull far faster than some obese fuckwit can run them down. It also assumes that “they still know how to tackle someone” even matters. Plenty of people “know how to tackle someone” in professional football and still fail to do it regularly because their opponent is either faster than them, stronger than them, or more agile and can dodge. Every single suggestion from my fellow Americans in this thread rests upon faulty assumptions that the other party is somehow unable to defend themselves or is unable to escape a tackle. It’s fucking absurd. Everyone in this country thinks they are fucking John fucking McClane. Well yippee ki-yay motherfucker, guess what none of you are.
None of that was an assumption I made, and I also very clearly stated that all of what I said was absent a weapon, like the knife you’re referring to.
Pickpockets typically aren’t trying to run, because that’s INCREDIBLY suspicious, they’re trying to slink away, and they certainly aren’t trying to slip or break a tackle that they probably don’t even see coming- again, they’re not going to be staring at the person they just pickpocketed.
Nobody is trying to pretend Americans are john mcclane. I’m simply pointing out a possible explanation for what has already happened. You can argue all you want, but the fact is, american tourists regularly do catch and win against pickpockets. That’s literally the entire point of this lemmy post.
It’s not going to be a MMA fight between an american and a pickpocket, except the american has to run down and catch the sprinting pickpocketer first, it’s probably going to be some 250lb dude wheezing for breath blindsiding him out of nowhere in something that is more accurately described a high-speed trip into inadvertent body slam, but it’s still gonna work.
american tourists regularly do catch and win against pickpockets
I’m gonna need a lot more evidence than a single article posted on… *checks notes… medium.com, a site where literally anyone can post a story.
It was a Whole Thing on tiktok, with people filming the altercations/aftermath, to the point of where it became a meme and trended during the olympics.
Reading shit like this, I am no longer surprised so many Americans think they can overpower an elephant and outrun a bear. Yeah, buddy, the fact that you occasionally run on a field as a child, 20 years and 100 kilos ago, makes you superhuman now.
Nobody ever said anything about superhuman. Put the strawman away.
It’s a literary device known as exaggeration for comedic effect. Fucking hell, what the discourse on the internet came to, should I start speaking trumpian now so brainfried crowd will understand? Double plus bigly ungood.
Yeah as an American myself, let me tell you: These people are dipshits, but there’s enough of them to sway the discussion into both 1. It’s totally valid to try to kill a person over petty theft and 2. They will definitely will win that fight every time. They have the most upvotes, so they must be right, right?? It couldn’t be that they’re collectively jackasses and Donald Trump represents their unrestrained fucking Id.
Again with the strawman. Nobody said anything about fighting every time time, and nobody especially has said anything about killing anyone. Maybe try reading what people say, instead of just responding to whatever you hallucinate them saying.
Thanks to tourists getting all the pickpockets attention, french locals are mostly safe. I never had an issue. That’s why I’d like to say to American tourists: come on, just need to chill out. It’s just a wallet and phone. Give it away, you’ll have a great story to share when you get back home.
How enlightened of you. After all, it’s not like Americans really need their documents, money, or phones in a foreign country.
You’re not really into sarcasm, aren’t you.
“I just got back from France! The nicest local I met was the guy that picked my pocket and never said anything to me”
Thieves in the US will just pull a gun on you and turn it into a robbery. It’s simply safer for them to come out of the gate with you at an obvious disadvantage.
Can you draw your weapon before they can pull their trigger? Go ahead, punk. Make my day.
When US Americans get painted this way, it feels like a “Humans- Fuck Yeah” story. Like I’m just so used to us having our downsides highlighted that it feels special to be seen for a positive attribute
I feel like these stories provide second-hand catharsis, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily a positive light.
Yeah seems like committing a violent crime in response to a petty crime to me.
I don’t agree with characterizing being robbed from as not a big deal, especially when it’s as physically intimate as pickpocketing.
Maybe it’s no big deal to lose a bit of money if you’re rich, but I would be truly fucked to lose my phone or wallet, and more than inconvenienced to lose money or objects which would need to be replaced with money.
But more than that is the sense of violation. What gives someone the right to come into my home or put hands on my body and take my personal things? It’s dehumanizing. It feels disgusting to be treated that way. Of course I’m going to defend myself.
Humans work off of incentives and risk. If there’s essentially no consequences for pickpocketting and the incentive is quite high with expensive phones and cash potential, the balance is way out of proportion. A good chance of getting your shit rocked brings it a bit more in line.
The possibility of getting shot or stabbed is way out of proportion the other way. That’s the problem with America. You can’t even give someone the bird when they nearly crash into you without fear of getting shot.
Yes, but in America it is acceptable to shoot an unarmed teenager running away for stealing a candy bar, so not exactly preaching to the choir here
Hell, there’s at least one story of a black teenager being shot because he rang someone’s doorbell to ask for help.
I think that’s a positive. Americans, in the absence of law enforcement, will fight to defend themselves and their property (and vicariously, the property of others).
Stopping thievery, is, unto itself, a just cause.
I interpreted it as a negative, like “Americans are violent,” heh.
Is it?
I sympathize with the complex though.
There’s a significant percentage of Americans that wouldn’t take that as a negative. As in, aren’t just violent, but are proud of being violent and consider it to be a positive quality. Not all of us, but a fair few. Hence you get things like some gun people fantasizing about having someone break in to their house so that they have a justification to shoot someone and feel righteous about it.
We have a hyper sense of justice instilled in us from a young age. It’s like the basis of our country (or so we’re taught).
I’d say it’s more about retribution. There’s a craving for punishment against perceived wrongs.
I don’t disagree. Basically what we’re told justice is.
There’s nothing perceived about someone snatching my wallet. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I get it, but it has to be obvious how quickly this logic can spiral, though.
If I come around a corner and find you putting the boots to someone begging you to stop, you’re getting smoked by the biggest thing I can find. I don’t know the context. Violence to stop violence is measured.
Being wronged isn’t a carte blanche. As soon as you introduce violence, suddenly violence actually becomes the measured response against YOU.
Being wronged isn’t a carte blanche. As soon as you introduce violence, suddenly violence actually becomes the measured response against YOU.
am i supposed to ask the robber nicely to give me my stuff back?
I mean, it’s a reasonable place to start at the very least?
We’re talking about pickpockets, right?
Someone tried to pickpocket me in Europe on the train. I blocked the door and, despite having no common language, I left them know I was aware they had taken my stuff. I’m pretty sure they understood it was my intention to get it back and that was going to be a hassle for everyone.
They just handed it back and left.
Should I have just started swinging?
Live by the sword, die by the sword, somehow still relevant.
You realise beating up a pickpocket is itself a stupid game that will get you in jail, right?
If the idea is that I can’t defend my own property then I understand why pickpocketing is so rampant elsewhere.
I don’t want to kill anybody, but I’m not gonna just hand it over with a smile on my face.
Yeah I feel like I am in crazy town. If you don’t want your ass kicked keep your hands out of my pocket. There will be consequences and they will be lopsided.
You don’t have to want to kill anybody, but it’s still a crime to violently assault someone. Further, you can still kill someone without trying, say you punch him once and he goes lights out and his head hits the concrete so hard it kills him. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t want to, you just killed someone.
Now if you used something defensive like pepper spray so you can escape with your wallet? That’s a different story. There’s a wide gap between protecting your property and assaulting someone.
So committing a crime yourself, assault (and/or assault with a deadly weapon), in response to the first crime, pickpocketing, is suddenly totes okay then? I don’t get it. Seems like retributive extrajudicial punishment to me. Just because it’s a real thing that happened and not just perceived doesn’t suddenly absolve you of committing violent crime in return. If you hospitalize the pickpocket and give them a lifelong limp, you’ve given them far more severe and retributive punishment than just taking their wallet in return.
I mean, who knew, maybe this is why we have laws and shit.
why are we defending thieves?
Yes it is totes ok. Encouraged even. Fuck a thief.
If I beat the shit out of a pickpocket and give them a lifelong limp too bad so sad, they have a permanent reminder of the principle of fuck around find out or FAFO. I was minding my own business right until they decided to make themselves my business.
Legality is stupid and does factor into 99% of my actions so I will disregard it as a decision making factor.
I was minding my own business right until they decided to make themselves my business.
Poetry
Lmao you’re unhinged dude. Get a grip and maybe realize the shit in your wallet isn’t more valuable than a human life.
Especially considering its probably all credit and debit cards that you can cancel almost immediately and get any money spent by a thief returned to your accounts. But yeah, someone deserves a lifelong limp because they inconvenienced you. Get the fuck outta here lmao.
You might not support someone like Trump politically but you’re no better than those who voted for him. These attitudes are 100% why US society is deeply fucked, the politics are just a symptom of this violent brainrot.
It’s not a crime. You can use force to reclaim stolen property. Legally, it gets ‘interesting’ when you involve a weapon in your use of force, because some areas allow the threat of deadly force far before it can actually be used and you’re probably going to expose yourself to legal avenues if the police don’t like you when they show up. But simply kicking someone’s ass after they stole from you? Perfectly permissible.
If you want to talk about the morality of it, that’s a different conversation.
It’s a bit like learning that Russian cargo ships don’t get boarded by pirates because they’ll just start fucking shooting.
Say what you want about Russians, but that kind of rules.
Russians are the scariest white people.
Only if you’re their wives after a few bottles.
Russians are pathetic malnourished drunkards, not scary.
Hey, nothing scarier than a drunk dumbass with little to lose. Same reason crossing the wrong Americans is trouble, too.
Finland slaughtered them something like with a ver lopsided ratio in the winter war. The Finns are pretty white.
TIL Ukrainians aren’t white
/S
