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.
Property is more important than lives. Where else would people literally say they’d shoot someone for going on “their” land.
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.
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
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.
Finland slaughtered them something like with a ver lopsided ratio in the winter war. The Finns are pretty white.
Yeah, but Finns are pretty nice (if socially awkward) when you don't fuck with them. Wouldn't count on that with Russians.
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.
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
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.
I interpreted it as a negative, like "Americans are violent," heh.
Is it?
I sympathize with the complex though.
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.
My wife and I were Honeymooning in Paris, purchasing subway passes from an automated kiosk, when a guy who was pretending to be really interested in his phone started getting uncomfortably close to her. She felt him touch her, so she elbowed him real hard, knocking the phone out of his hand, and yelling, "Oh no, are you OK, I'm so sorry, I broke your phone!" real loud (which was true, she cracked his screen). I don't think he was expecting a 5'2" woman to assault him, because he grabbed his broken phone and started booking it before I could react.
A very nice Parisian came over and told us we needed to be more careful and watch ouf for thieves. We thanked him, but my wife was laughing a few moments later because she just assumed he was a pervert. I thought maybe the phone screen had already been broken, and he was trying to run some sort of, "Hey, you broke my phone, give me money!" scam but chickened out when he saw how aggressively my wife reacted. We live in a major American city, so we've experienced crime before, but it never occurred to us that he was trying to pick her pocket. Felt almost quaint, like a Dickens novel.
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"
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.
How do Europeans react to pickpockets?
I caught a pickpocket in Madrid with his hand in my girlfriend’s purse. He was directly behind us on the escalator. We just kind of were like “hey not cool,” then had an awkward escalator ride. We were late for a flight, so didn’t really have time to do much anyway.
I have had stuff stolen in Paris. Mostly, you have no idea it happened until they’re long gone.
You caught a man with his hand in your girlfriend's purse, and his punishment was a "hey, not cool" and 15 seconds of awkward escalator?
No fucking wonder that happens CONSTANTLY when an awkward 15 second escalator ride is the punishment for getting caught.
Why is pickpocketing and related just like, not a thing in the US?
I call bullshit. This is the country where everybody says, don't confront or they'll shoot/stab you. I bet many other countries have more vigilantism. This is the country, where everybody has guns "to rise against tyranny" and lets a tyranny roam free. This is the country where school shootings are almost a daily event. Majority of these people won't even confront people that litter.
We don't have pickpocketing in America, we have robbery.
I had two incidents in my life where someone attempted to rob me. Like specifically requested I give them something. Both times ended with nothing, because they backed off when they realized I don't have anything worth it.
Why is pickpocketing and related just like, not a thing in the US?
I call bullshit. This is the country where everybody says, don't confront or they'll shoot/stab you.
Well, you might have your answer right there. Pickpockets risk getting shot or stabbed, so the risk/reward maths out poorly for them
Three American cities are in the top ten worldwide in fear of getting pickpocketed.
Source: https://matadornetwork.com/read/worst-us-cities-for-pickpockets/
Pickpocketing is happening in every major US city with numbers rising from year to year:
So US citizens thinking they're superior when they arent.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/pickpocket-smartphones/585997/
https://havengear.com/blog/pickpocketing/
But in the end, I believe it's the car centered cities that keep numbers relatively low. No puclic transport and less people at one place= less pickpockets.
Three American cities are in the top ten worldwide in fear of getting pickpocketed.
this is an opinion poll of tourists, not a statistic on crime data.
Omg, this turned out to be a thread with plenty explanations to USians that societies have laws, police, judges...
You can blame the orange guy all you want, but your culture is completely derailed. Murder (under whatever "reasons") can't be a national sport.
Weapon manufacturers really did a good job in the land of the free..
I mean obviously the gun laws are insane but the act of collectively beating the shit out of pickpockets has my respect.
My most American belief is that society fell apart when we got rid of dueling. Assholes need the threat of violent retribution to contain their assholery, and without that, they just shit everywhere.
Of course, that belief falls apart the minute that you realize that assholes can be good at dueling, too…
It also falls apart when dueling did not generally cross classes. If you were a rich guy your “defense of your honor” was either petty or eliminating competition, sometimes both. No poor person was going to take out a “rich asshole” by any other means than being charged with murder. The only violent retribution available to the masses is revolt accompanied by a guillotine.
In 1992, I caught an eight year old pickpocketing my friend. We were 4 18yo males from Texas. So I am holding this kid a couple feet off the ground trying to decide what the hell to do with him. My friends didn't really know what to do either. He was struggling pretty good, but not enough to get free. His mom came rushing over yelling something unintelligible, so I just threw him at her, and they took off running.
glad people are finally noticing this aspect of 2a. maybe the conversation can eventually start to touch on things like how it works for unions, reproductive rights, preventing cop fuckery, resisting environmental exploration. long story short, how the perpetrators of systemic and corporeal violence almost exclusively only target the vulnerable and unarmed.
I think the biggest factor here is the immediate and tangible aspect of this type of theft.
Wage theft and systemic things are larger and conceptual until it hits, and more often than not because it’s so vague and not “just one person” it doesn’t evoke the same visceral response in a lot of people.
Not sure how we can start reframing to do so but getting on these conversations is a good idea for sure.
sidenote, the reading of a thread on twitter is hellish. Top to bottom be damned, it's like 3 different UIs in one.
Especially if there's a little addon from Tumblr at the end of something.
why isnt the reddit type formatting good enough?!
What reaction were the French pickpockets expecting? Ope, lemme get that for ya?
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.
This is definitely a win for the Americans, beating the shit out of pickpockets is awesome.
Not entirely positive that this happened. I mean the Americans beating pickpockets. I'm sure it could have happened, but I live in France and was here and never heard about this...
There is a Medium post (https://scribe.rip/the-bad-influence/americans-in-paris-ready-to-rumble-with-pick-pocketers-f62b169abccd) but there isn't a single French news source (that I can easily find) related to this ever happening.
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.
There's no pickpocketing in the US because thieves will shoot you before taking your wallet. At that point it's murder with a motive
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