America used to have plenty of pickpocketing, but it’s pretty much gone away for a few reasons:
- Pickpocket apprenticeships have fallen by the wayside, and the actual skills to be able to pull this off are no longer taught to young people.
- The rise of cashless payment norms reduce the reward for a successful pickpocket: canceled credit cards won’t do anything for anyone.
- America is a violent place, and it’s easier to steal with violence or the threat of violence.
- Other types of sneaky nonviolent theft have arisen, and things like identity theft or hacking or other fraud is an alternative outlet for those who might want to non-violently steal someone else’s money.
All this will likely happen in Europe, as well. Just maybe a slower transition in the pockets where cash is still common (tourist destinations with international travelers).
If anyone deserves a good beating it’s pickpockets.
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.
Killing people over things do sound american lmao
The indomitable American spirit. The right to BARE ARMS. Catch these fists.
So in the U.S. people don’t play pickpocketing, they just steal with guns in hand?
Hyper individualism. A “fuck you I got mine” mentality. In a country where there is no safety net and you have to suffer for every dime so you can pay a rent just to exist.
Edit - Human life has no value here beyond its utility to the state. Or a corp. Same difference in an oligarchy.
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.
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?
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?!This is definitely a win for the Americans, beating the shit out of pickpockets is awesome.
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 the 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 jesus” 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.
Edit: Walker=wallet, though i’m not far from a reliance on either.
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
Real talk. I would’ve gladly given up the money for an easier time getting everything back together.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Everyone who’s had to deal with these grots: shoulda let the Americans finish the job
