Everyone who’s had to deal with these grots: shoulda let the Americans finish the job
The pickpocket has already failed if the mark sees them, so not sure what was happening here. And people who are not used to pick pockets would not likely be looking out for them. Were they going around in groups wearing “Official Paris Olympics Pickpocket” hi-vis vests?
On the contrary, I’m American and agree with the experience of never having things taken off me, however I’m still always thinking about it when I’m in a crowded area, even more so when I’m traveling. If I was in Europe where I know pickpocketing is actually more of a problem, I’d be doubly cautious. All this and I’m not racist or xenophobic like a lot of Americans.
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.
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.
This is definitely a win for the Americans, beating the shit out of pickpockets is awesome.
Unfortunately it has an unintended consequence of criminals being more aggressive. If you as a potential pickpocket know they will throw hands regardless, you might as well start with maximum violence, save yourself some trouble.
Parisian pickpockets are quite unpleasant but at least you know they will not go beyond stealing your wallet while you’re distracted.Yes, of course, capitulation always works…
Or just deciding your wallet wasn’t worth getting punched in the face.
They have the advantage here. The alternative is getting blindsided with a haymaker.
Nah, the whole advantage of pickpocketing someone is you’re away before the victim realises they’ve been robbed. If you use violence, you then have to deal with bystanders, as well as an irate victim.
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?!complaining on lemmy about twitters UI somehow earned elon musk two dollars
the only time I ever see it in the US is music festivals
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.
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.
Agreed. Grew up in dense East Coast cities in the 80s and 90s, pickpocketing was not a thing that happened.
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.
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!
We do seem to enjoy locking up and deporting the people who do the actual work around here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. I
Nobody ever said anything about superhuman. Put the strawman away.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
No, it is because pickpocketing can be argued as being an assault in the US. If you catch someone pickpocketing you it is legal to defend yourself and your property.
…and that’s why they start with maximum violence out of the bat. If for you as a criminal the outcome is the same, why risk it and start with random pickpocket, when you will be tried as if you assaulted a person, start with an assault, safer for you, same risk.
I am flabbergasted you think that a petty assault charge for pickpocketing is even in the same building as pre meditated murder with a lethal weapon.
The us is bad sure, but not the only nation with a similar system (I know here someone will take a swing at a pickpocketer) and yet the murder rate is not higher then average in the world.
That is entirely dependent on the state you live in, and not all states have the same kind of interpretation.
I was thinking it was because, in many places people are carrying in public, and if you steal from the wrong person, you’re dead.
Yeah that’s why crime has plummeted /s
I mean, its not like thoae fascist pigs will do anything to help. Shoot first ask later is the 'Murican way.
Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
Well, I imagine this culture change happened a long time ago, and it never came back because of… well the implication.
Change happened alright. The murder rate in my city rose 20% after the outgoing republican governor permitted conceal and carry by executive order on his way out the door after losing reelection (2007)
I went through paris in a jacket with a vertical zippered breast pocket. I was bumpchecked so damn many times, I just wanted to get a little baggie of grease it put it in there, give me a little fun for their trouble.
when was this? i was in paris in november, and had no issues. granted, i heard pickpockets were an issue, so i just used my phone for payments, but no one bumped me or anything.
, so i just used my phone for payments
Let’s just say long before mobile phones could be used as payments :)
I kept my cash and passport on one of those neck lanyards underneath my shirt.
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.
I live in a tourist trap area of the US and got pick pocketed once shortly after moving here. So I am real cautious of strangers getting close. After doing to Pokemon go rounds one night some dude started following me, and the girl I was dating at the time, from the gas station. I come from a much more densely populated area of the US so I immediately recognized it as a threat, and told her to keep walking and I would catch up. I’ll admit I was a little too aggressive given the situation, cause I saw a “come to God” moment in homie’s eyes when he realized how big the dude he was stalking was(I’m easily two standard deviations to the right of bell curve in terms of largeness, but I’m also proportional so most don’t realize it on sight).
I would say I felt bad, but after getting my walker taken and having to go through the bullshit involved, I wasn’t about to take a chance. Funny thing is, the girl actually broke up with me cause of that incident and immediately got with a meth head who took her and her family for what they could.
This story, much like life, has no point other than keep your wallet in a very noticable area.
It’s weird moving to places where the relative danger of different crimes vary.
I grew up in a place where I was mugged at knife point a couple of times. It was a pretty socioeconomically deprived area where this wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t super abnormal either. One of the times I was mugged, I was in a pretty bad place with my mental health, and I said “if you want my phone, then just fucking stab me for it, because I don’t give a fuck anymore”. The guy mugging me seemed to recognise me as someone going through some shit, and became super sympathetic. He even asked me if there was anything he could do to help. A friend who was mugged (at knifepoint) in the same rough area one responded by saying “oh come off it, mate” and continuing walking. It’s like there was a weird sense of solidarity, because we all knew we lived in a shit hole place with no prospects.
I later moved to a much safer city, where being out at night felt tremendously safe. Now, I live in a larger city, and none of my previously cultivated instincts for safety are the right fit. I know that I must be more cautious here than I was in the small, posh city I lived in, but also I feel that the kind of caution I need here is quite different to what was necessary in my home town. Without a calibrated sense of risk in this new city, I often find myself being overly cautious. I suppose that’s a safer side of caution to err on.
You know what’s funny? I got robbed at gunpoint in front of my house. I was wearing a knock off Ulysse Nardin watch, and they didn’t even touch it. They got about $30 from the wallet before being arrested. And no, the cops never gave me my $30.
If I had my wallet stolen, the worst part of it would be having to renew id and stuff. It’s a lot of faff
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?
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
That’s kinda cool seeing how apparently you guys do put your money where your mouth is 😄 I wish we talked about that kinda stuff more and not just about the bad. I feel like remembering that not every aspect of being American sucks might give people a better reason to resist too.
Americans are naturally anarchist, we just have a shitload of bootlicker propaganda shoved on us at all times and too many people buy it
What reaction were the French pickpockets expecting? Ope, lemme get that for ya?
Certainly not assault. Most (french) people catching a thief inside their pocket have a bad enough day to not risk getting injured while winning a prison ticket.
I think it’s harder to die from poor in France.
Oh. That makes sense
