If we're going to talk about crime we also need to consider that concerns about it have risen as more people have begun consuming short form video all the time. One video of a crime completely outweighs whatever statistics you can cite for a lot of people.
Peak era for boredom fear
Especially if a participant in said crime provides a bias confirmation….which is the reason people post and repost such things.
It's the 24 hr news cycle on steriods. Once cable news stations needed to fill 24 hrs of content, repetition began. 1 event replayed, but our amygdala reacts as if it's multiple events. The world is generally safer, crime down, but we're flooded with more repetitions so our brains see crisis.
It's George Gerbner's Mean World Syndrome all hopped up on social media algos
The internet is, among other things, an availability bias exploitation machine.
Add to that the complete decontextualization of these videos both by the local news and on platforms themselves. It doesn’t matter if the crime took place 200 miles away and 2 years ago, videos make people think crime in their immediate area is rampant.
I think there's 2 things at play: 1) People perceive feeling unsafe as actually being unsafe. 2) People use safety as a reason they dislike something when often it's another reason (see: the way some people react having to interact with people experiencing homelessness)
Bah gawd that’s Stancil’s music!
I think a lot about how my Instagram algorithm shows me a lot of videos of people doing crazy things in the city because I engage with a lot of NYC content, and how a whole lot of people think NYC is just one big World Star Hip Hop compilation because of it. It's not good.
The citizen app has much to answer for
Literally saw a reel on instagram about subway crime being down over the past several years and the comments were just wall-to-wall LMFAO NO LIBS SOMEONE GOT BURNED TO DEATH I SAW IT ON THE YOUTUBE NICE TRY Fuck reality, I guess?
The plural of anecdote is statistics. The singular of anecdote, however, is something much more powerful