I read the article from News One about the bike debacle.
What I am getting from this is that the teenager in question is saying he had docked his bike, had not paid for additional time, but had essentially called "dibs" on it by standing beside it and told the woman that she couldn't use it. So she scanned the code to pay for it and got onto the bike. So then he got his friends to start recording and pushed the bike with her on it back into the dock.
I dunno who is telling the truth but I can definitely see how it could come across as entitled and inconsiderate to sit on a bunch of the best bikes you haven't paid for and refuse to allow others - including pregnant women coming off a hospital shift - to use them. He can say it was "his" all he likes but if he hasn't scanned and paid for it, then it's not "his bike" and others can take it.
Perhaps the way preggers lady allegedly dealt with it was out of line, but the kid could also have just accepted that somebody else had purchased the bike now - because in the grown up world you don't get to call "dibs" on things you haven't paid for, especially when you're dealing with New Yorkers - instead of escalating the situation.
I'm sure this has had a negative impact on the kid and his family, but at the same time, maybe the takeaway is try to avoid stupid arguments with strangers and if you do get into one, don't record it for the entire world.
I’m agree entirely. I also think the teenagers were ill-served by the adults around them. Adults should have told them to not put it on the Internet because once stuff gets on the internet it can rapidly spiral out from your control.
I feel bad for the teenagers and they do not deserve any abuse. However the woman was suspended without pay from her job and was reportedly getting threats. What did they expect to happen? Did they think the woman deserved that? The kid talked about how happy he was about getting support until the woman’s lawyer posted receipts. This is why it’s a good idea to think through all the possible consequences of your actions before you act.
I hate to say this but if he was trylu scared he’d get shot by the cops over a fight over a Citibike, he probably should have just walked away. Women walk away from situations where we think we’re in the right all the time because we are worried about our safety. That’s just how life is.
True, unless it's drastic life-altering gender-affirming medical interventions. Then minors are fully mature and capable of making such a decision, and any hint of concern is a violent act that will literally murder them...
Honestly I think that's why they do it. It's that vindictive, entitled behavior the same people claim makes you a Karen--"oh you pissed me off during a minor altercation? well I'm gonna post this online and ruin your life haha."
I’m completely in agreement with the idea that kids, including teens (and even, hell, most legal adults in their late teens and early 20s) are not mature enough to understand certain topics thoroughly or how to act appropriately in certain situations. This is not one of those cases. The kid is 17. Most ordinary 17-year-olds do not act like entitled assholes in the way that this kid did. If he were my son, I’d be ashamed.
You don't think the boys were maybe a touch sociopathic? What would an appropriate response be? What actual abuse have they experienced? Only getting 80k so far instead of over 100k?
I’m not someone who thinks that a 17-year-old should have the judgment of a mature adult. Of course not. But by golly, his name has not been made public, except perhaps his first name (if it really is Michael), and that was done by his own family. It was the kids who put that video out in the world. These days, no 17-year-old expects that a video is going to stay private on the Internet! They probably hope for some degree of virality. They are undoubtedly shocked by how big it became. But this is a FAFO situation, I’m afraid.
The Go Fund Me for the kid is an absolute cash grab. It’s going directly to the family, not to an attorney. There’s some vague verbiage on the GFM regarding a defamation suit. But given that the kid’s name isn’t public, there’s no way he can be defamed. Nor has Comrie or her lawyer said anything negative about him. If his name does become public, it will be because of his sister’s and/or mother’s actions. There’s no grounds for a defamation suit. The GFM money is going to be a windfall, pure and simple. Whether it’ll even go to the kid is an open question. The sponsor of the GFM is identified only by initials.
I’m a bleeding heart liberal when it comes to race. At least I was until seeing how the story unfolded. The amount of overt, hateful race grifting I’ve witnessed on Twitter is hair-raising. If anyone has put the kid in the limelight, it’s these grifters - Ben Crump, Tariq Nasheed, et al. It certainly wasn’t the pregnant physician’s assistant.
If I turn into a MAGA chud, this will be my origin story!
If we want to be generous here, then I guess we could point out that riding e-bikes round the city isn't the worst way for underprivileged teenage boys without a lot of money to spend their free time. People - most of them probably working class - rely on those bikes for actual transport, though, and those kids taking the nicest bikes out of commission so they can basically game the system for cheaper fees isn't fair to those people. The pregnant hospital worker probably coming off a 12 hour shift wasn't having it, at least. Maybe the city needs to look into a program to fund these sorts of kids to get their own e-bikes? I dunno.
Agree with your overall sentiment, Kittywampus, but you don't have to actually name somebody to defame them. The question is whether the person would be identifiable by somebody who knows him or her, as I think would probably be the case here. On the other hand your second point is well taken - not at all clear what she has actually said or done to harm his reputation, rather any damage flows directly from witnessing what he did.
People on the internet will literally do anything except acknowledging that men are intimidating and that some lone woman is going to be terrified by half a dozen thugs harassing her.
It seems pretty clear that people in general don’t care about men intimidating women/women being fearful unless maybe she dies even though women are constantly told stupid shit to make sure they’re safe from men.
Absolutely. And if a woman’s fear can be reduced to “privilege” because she’s white, ridiculing her earns applause.
I know this wasn’t a case of sexual harassment, but Carolyn Bryant’s name was invoked a lot. A lot of the discourse around this case, but also anytime conflict goes viral between a white woman and black man, weaponizes “privilege” to shutdown real concerns of women. It’s really upsetting. Emmitt Till’s murder was horrible, and, 70 years later, black men and boys being lynched in the streets because of white women is fortunately virtually unheard of. But we, now more than ever, absolutely police women’s discomfort and ability to speak up. This piece is from 10yrs ago, but I’ll never forget catcalling and other forms of street harassment finally getting attention— only to be immediately racialized.
Oh man even 10 years ago …” For trans women of color, street sexual harassment is often a matter of life and death. It’s their safety and comfort that gets lost when we allow street sexual harassment to be cast as a threat to white gentrifiers. ”. Good to know. I also like that they don’t cover what I like to call “harassment chicken” - like you don’t know if that guy is going to stop with you saying thank you because it could easily escalate until the guy gets the reaction he wants. Like logically the guy following you down the street probably isn’t going to rape you in the middle of the day, but he is going to keep pushing that fear button because he can and wants to. And it’s impossible to know which dude is just the hi pretty (which still invasive) or the high harassment.
I do think that along with white women, women of color’s issues do get swept under the rug if it’s a man of color doing it. See the case of Jacob Blake where he was just an innocent peace keeper and not a dude threatening his ex and about to take off with one of their kids.
Yes. Obviously this is subjective, but watching that video sent shivers down my spine. When I was younger, I was often bullied and harassed by groups of teenage boys (white and middle eastern, if we must bring race into it), and the boys in this video talked in the EXACT same playfully mocking tone I remember hearing from those bullies. It’s a tone that says “your pain is funny to us” and coming from a group of men, it is absolutely terrifying. Even if it was all a misunderstanding, I absolutely understand how someone would become scared and act out in that situation, especially once the camera comes out and you know you’re about to be made a Karen.
Mmm, yes. About 20 years ago I was in Lyon, France - early evening I think - and got followed by a group of guys for ten minutes or so as I walked from the metro station to my friend's front door. They were catcalling, being generally obnoxious, but not touching me or anything. Oh - and they were probably all around 10-12 years old. I was in my early twenties. I was (and still am!) probably a bit of a wimp, but I was terrified about what might happen. Still remember the fear now!
Probably trying to "bracelet rape you" and then ask you for money. That happens a lot in the tourist areas of Paris, particularly North African immigrants.
When I was in Paris with my wife and another couple ~12 years ago we were walking down a street and a group of North African men came up and tried to start braiding bracelets onto our wrists as we walked. The other husband and I said no, but the women didn't resist as strongly. So the guys started (with amazing skill and speed) braiding bracelets right onto their wrists in a really short time. Before we even fully understood what was happening they were ~1/4 done. I would guess it took them a minute or two total.
Now the bracelets were nothing of value, the sort of thing you can get in Mexico for $.05 and the US for $.50.
So ok fine how much money do they want for this? $10, $20? Nope like $160. I refused, the other husband is sort of hesitant, the dudes start making a HUGE scene and claiming we stole from them and are racists. Things get very heated, they don't seem interested in negotiating, (I think I would have given them $40, and my friend seemed willing to go even higher).
I had a very hard time convincing my group that the only thing to do was just ignore them and leave, which we eventually did. But police were responding even when we left. I later found out this was super duper common.
I once heard a cop say that as a cop, you're often meeting people on the worst day of their life. People on social media sometimes think they're St. Peter judging people on the worst day of their lives.
I could totally see myself acting like a nut job after a 12 hour hospital shift. It can be physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually exhausting.
I don't think her behaviour was that strange. A bunch of teenage boys had decided to physically block access to a bit of public infrastructure for their own gratification. And she was like "I'm not putting up with this bullshit, and other people should help me stand up to them."
Maybe some of her reactions were impulsive or foolhardy, but she was angry for good reason.
I've shared that anger many times. Having been in public and seeing a small group of people acting in antisocial ways with impunity, because they know they can be physically intimidating.
Whilst a whole crowd of people just surrender to their behaviour, because they're not willing to stand up to them collectively.
Until sometimes a physically more intimidating man threatens them into behaving reasonably.
Developed societies should not function on that "Might Makes Right" principle. And it can be pretty dismaying seeing (for example) a whole busload of adults cowed into submission by a few teenagers because they're so afraid of conflict.
Some things struck me about the News One article. They said they grabbed frozen yogurt then docked the bikes. It's not easy to ride or move a bike around while eating frozen yogurt. I suspect they docked the bikes then got the frozen yogurt and were sitting around eating.
He docked the bike at 7:19 and she paid for it at 7:24. It was then redocked within the minute. So he left the bike for 5 minutes and pushed it back in the dock after she'd paid for it. That's kind of an aggressive move IMHO.
After a long shift in a hospital and chocked full of pregnancy hormones it stands to reason she'd be very emotional.
There's nothing in that article that makes him look good if I'm honest. And her lawyer has been very careful NOT to blame the young men but the outlets such as TYT which made the usual cry bully noises.
Imagine the outrage if a bunch of white kids were guarding a swing set they weren’t even actively using and on video prevented a black kid from having a go on the swing.
That seems like there was a a lot going on. It’s almost as if every petty squabble isn’t indicative of a large scale battle between good and evil and doesn’t need to be elevated to a global scale. But no. That can’t be right.
The two different receipts do show a gap of 6 minutes between him docking it and her paying for it. There was something about them getting frozen yogurt too, so maybe they were eating froyo when she came up to the bike?
As you say, she was pregnant, he could easily have ridden an regular bike. I'm 58 and I would have offered the ebike to a woman who is pregnant and ridden on the normal bike.
Yeah I read it after listening to the episode because I thought, “Let me hear this kid out, maybe my instincts were off here.”
All I got from the article is that he and his friends are bike hogs who are doing exactly the opposite of what the Bike Angels program is intended for in order to get free rides. Which is fine, game the system if there are plenty of bikes around, but they basically pulled the equivalent of not giving up their seat on the train for a pregnant woman and then they tried to ruin her life when she got justifiably annoyed about that. I ride Citi Bikes pretty frequently and this is definitely not cool, but they’re teenagers and teens can be assholes. It’s pretty normal for adults to tell asshole teenagers to stop doing stupid shit and there’s no reason for it to become some giant viral scandal.
The take was just...really weird to me this episode. Am I missing something here?
Like how long was the boy sitting on that bike to call "dibs" on it? If it's a couple of minutes, maybe that's fair enough. We generally accept that the first person to see a parking-space or take an item off a shelf has fair claim to it even if they haven't paid yet. But if he's obstructing people from using the service, that's not reasonable.
Also, how did she approach the conflict? Was she like "Can I please have that have that e-bike? I'm pregnant." or was she immediately like "Give me that. It's not yours."
It's pretty bizarre how people take sides in arguments like this without knowing the context.
I’m curious, why is it so important to you that she was polite and nice and if she wasn’t, it’s her fault? (Although as your name points out below, she was). Like clearly the kids weren’t being good citizens to start with since they were hogging up the bikes, why is it on what is probably a very tired woman to be polite to get her damn bike?
Because I wouldn't condemn a bunch of kids for exploiting a loophole in a rental scheme to get e-bike rides for free. I'd put that squarely in the category of "mischievous but forgivable teen hijinks".
So if an adult approaches them with immediate judgment and castigation. I can understand why they might stubbornly refuse to cooperate.
Except it appears that wasn't the case. It sounds like they aggressively physically blocked everyone from accessing the e-bikes, including the pregnant nurse who asked politely, so that they could play around on them for free.
If so, that's not mischievous hijinks. That's shitty antisocial behaviour and they're plenty old enough to know better.
Even if the PA wasn't particularly polite, they were in the wrong. Getting yelled at for their antics by annoyed adults is a normal part of the teenage experience. I would understand them not taking it well, but still it would be wrong for them to refuse her the bike.
Idunno. Courtesy costs nothing, and I think you have to forgive teens a bit of mischief.
Maybe I'm a stubborn prick. But as a teenager, and still, if someone orders me to do something reasonable in an unreasonably rude tone, I'll probably refuse to do it on principle.
Though by the sounds of it, she was unduly polite to them at first, and they were selfish and aggressive in response.
There’s a difference between taking advantage of a loophole and physically taking over the bikes blocking people from using them to start with. There’s also a big difference between castigating them right away and being polite. Like she could say if you’re not about to check out that bike I’m taking it, which is both not polite and not chiding them.
I think it’s important because a lot of what makes a Karen is often that her crime is simply not being polite and kind enough and simply standing up for herself in a fairly neutral way and not backing down. By judging if she’s in the wrong based simply on how polite she is, is in some ways reinforcing the belief that women owe politeness in order to be considered as worthy actors.
He ultimately left about 45 minutes after he first docked. The way Citi bike works under SNAP is that e-bikes are only free (for 45 minutes) if normal bikes aren’t available. Otherwise they’re like 6 cents a minute. if they were stopping at that station to dock before reaching the 45 minute mark to avoid 6 cent/minute charges, they likely were also waiting to undock until all the normal bikes were taken, otherwise they’d be subject to the same charge. Which would mean guarding the four to five e-bikes for however long it takes
According to his account, she said "“Can I please have this bike?...I’m pregnant. Can you help a pregnant woman out?”
That's a good point about taking an item off the shelf. Perhaps she dealt with it the wrong way by scanning it. I think ganging up on her and pushing the bike back into the dock with her on it while recording was more of a jerk move, though. As was releasing it on the internet without surrounding context knowing it would likely get her fired and ruin her reputation.
I don't see how scanning it was wrong in any way - if it was available for rent, why shouldn't she be able to rent it? And it clearly was available for rent, or else her scanning it would not have produced a receipt?
One could make the argument that the polite thing to do would be to find a push bike once the teen told her that he intended to use the e-bike. I don't think she was obligated to do that, though.
One could also make the argument that the polite thing to do is offer up one of the e-bikes to a pregnant woman.
Ultimately, the teen is the one gaming the system by redocking the bike every 45 minutes. I'm not up in arms about that, but it comes with the risk that once the bike is redocked, anybody else is within their rights to scan it and take it. Especially if you're going to sit around and "guard" the bike for a few minutes until you feel like riding again.
I think "The teenage boy hanging out with his mates should give up the e-bike he's forcefully and illicitly commandeered, to the pregnant nurse on her commute." Is unequivocally the better argument than "The pregnant nurse on her commute should should give up the e-bike to the teenage boy hanging out with his mates, who has forcefully and illicitly commandeered it."
Re-docking one bike and guarding it for a few minutes might be forgivable. But it sounds to me like there were a group of boys blocking all the e-bikes using force and intimidation, for around 40 minutes, so that they could play around on them for free.
From what I gather of the full story, it seems like both the woman and the boy were being kinda asshole-ish. The boys wanted to ride e-bikes around all day and felt they had the right to hang out on them to call dibs. The woman, after asking for an e-bike and being told no, decided to scan the most available one and take it anyway.
Where I lose basically all sympathy for the kids is when they decide to record the incident and put it on the internet. They clearly wanted her to get in trouble for their squabble. She's now on leave because she and a kid were dicks to each other at a bike rack. That's just not a reasonable reaction outcome of the incident. (Also, I like how her calling for help is a threat because the police could have come and shot him, but also her not calling the cops to file a report is proof she's in the wrong. There's just no way she could have had a conflict with the kid and not been a villain.)
I think filming and putting it on the internet was inexcusable. They were fine with the woman running into trouble with her job, having her identity exposed, and called a bitch, racist, etc. because they felt "supported." But when more information came out and the mob turned against them now it's a problem. (Although, unlike the woman, their identities have not been exposed.)
They don't seem to have learned anything, though, and are now trying to get the mob back on their side with more TikToks and interviews.
Agree with you about the cops angle and no-win situation.
The sister made a video as apparently saying that everyone who donated to her she should take the money back, and the hospital should fire her permanently.
Yeah, I do try to apply "Hanlon's Razor" and give people the benefit of doubt.
Although now the emerging picture seems to be that a group of older teenage boys decided to physically and aggressively block access to all the available e-bikes at that station, for over 40 minutes, so that they could play around on them without paying. And refused a pregnant nurse who asked politely if she could use one for her commute because the unpowered bikes are probably not suitable for her.
If that is accurate, I think that's really nasty, yobbish behaviour. And can't be excused by "maybe they were having a bad day" or "boys will be boys".
Oh yeah I’m sure the boys were a little bit getting off on people being intimidated by them but that calls for a chewing out not a national news story.
Oh, totally. But it escalated into a national news story because people turned in into a race issue and jumped to pick a side without evidence.
Either "These kids' behaviour is a damning indictment of urban decay" or "This woman's behaviour is a damning indictment of our white supremacist culture."
Not saying you’re wrong at all. I blame the people who turn it into the race narrative. But that’s so distributed across everyone it’s important to remember the kids also are just kids who acted kinda shitty .
No one chooses to have something become national otherwise pr firms wouldn’t exist and when you’re seventeen you’re an idiot. Them needing some level of discipline doesn’t mean the nation should give it to them. We should aspire to be a better country than this.
Hold up. The kid docked his bike. At that point it was no longer his bike. I have no doubt he was waiting until he could use it again. But if he docked it, how was it his anymore? Am I missing something?
Also. Why does the kid need money for fundraising,? Was he charged with anything?
I was glad Katie had the good sense to do some extra digging on NewsOne. If she hadn't have pushed back I think a lot of listeners might have figured Jesse was correct to file this in the "it's complicated" bin.
The kids get government assistance and can ride the bikes at a discounted rate for 45 minutes. Then they have to dock them. Then they have to wait a given time to recheck them out at the same lowered rate. It’s gaming the system, just like it was to record this woman and release the footage in a way that made the group of teenagers look like the victims. For a guy who says it’s complicated all the time, the NewsOne story Jesse parroted did not complicate anything. The woman reserved that particular bike. The teenagers sat on them because they wanted to continue riding around at a reduced rate. This is a New York City story of someone putting a garbage can out to hold a parking spot and someone moves the garbage can and takes the spot. The person who puts the garbage can there is an asshole. There’s nothing complicated about it.
Just squeezing in here! My name is Karen. I work at a very left leaning org. It’s been so shocking - I get the joke - but man, hearing people spout the name with such venom and then preach acceptance and kindness has been so disorienting.
Introducing myself gave me such anxiety. I thought I was totally losing it at one point (there was so much anger out there around this time) that I called a therapist who laughed and told me to get comfortable with white privilege (honestly I had already attended workshops and read so many books).
The only person who understood was the IT guy who changed his name too to fit in (I eventually started going by something else - ppl were mad at me for doing that too but it wasn’t good for me). He told me not to worry, it’ll become normal soon, give it time.
I’ll never ever forget that type of kindness - he totally could’ve shat on me.
That is a fucking awful therapist. Like it’s not that you’re white - there are plenty of non-white Karens after all — it’s that literally everyone hates your name and is shit talking your name constantly. It’s like if you have the same name as someone who suddenly becomes infamous.
What a fucking awful therapist. I would have reported that person to their licensing board. It was completely unprofessional and based only on their own beliefs. And I think it's terrible that you've had to use a different name, but I understand. For the record I've known many a wonderful Karen.
It’s been so strange. I waited a year before talking to another person. The next therapist - actually they were all social workers, if that makes a difference - said that she totally believed me as she had gone back to school late in life and was terrified of the new ideology. She was nice but really just wanted to chat about that issue. I tried another social worker (we were lucky to be given this help for free from our work). When my name shame came up, she advised me to read White Fragility bc her white friends said it was helpful. I told her I read it and something didn’t sit totally right with me… but I couldn’t explain it. So we talked about different things. The final person I paid for was out of my own pocket, who was/is great and really helped. Incidentally, I learned five sessions in that a senior admin in the school board she works for doesn’t feel safe with her counsel as she’s a white woman. By the way, I know I sound crazy going to all these people but I’ve really never been like this before. At first it started with my own issues but then I was like - are they crazy or am I crazy?
At one time I shared a very common first and last name with a despicable criminal, which gave me an excuse to revert to my maiden name. If I hadn't wanted to do that anyway, I would have really resented the person who ruined that name for the hundreds of us who shared it.
We had a brainstorm about what values mattered to us and “kindness” and “inclusivity” were the top ones. I’m like seriously? All you guys talk about is punishing people... you are like the audience around a guillotine. I’m not sure if they are meaner than anyone else but their purported values make the actual lack of them really obvious.
My wife is a teacher and hears little boys call little girls (of all races) Karens for annoying them in whatever way. Soon enough it will have lost whatever political valence it once had and will be little more than a G-rated version of "bitch."
I think asshole is my gender neutral pronoun. Anyone can be an asshole, and I think you are right that men who tell inconvenient truths or just express a difference of opinion get similar dismissal to what we bitches get. The ad hominem attacks are one way you know your disturbing the group think waters.
And even if those little girls called themselves NBs, or trans, those same fucking little boys would still call them Karens... because everyone knows who the females (and males are).
I'm pretty sure in the UK it acquired that meaning within 5 minutes of people learning it. It's only the US where it still carries the original racially inflected meaning in some instances. I mean it still kind of means 'bitch' in all scenarios.
I swear I had heard it used as a race-neutral term of misogynistic abuse before 2020 and the claim that it was a anti-racist thing so I never believed it was anything else.
And/or racist. It’s all the exact same shit. Someone calling someone a “boomer” is literally doing the exact same dehumanizing garbage someone using a racial slur is.
If one is verboten the other should be too. End of story. If people cant see that they are moral and mental midgets, whose concerns aren’t worth caring about.
It's a dismissive, ageist term. "Baby Boomer" is the technical term ( nickname) for the generation. Shortening it to Boomer and calling someone that is a way to mock them for being old and out of touch and clueless.
I've definitely seen it used in the context you mean. I think it's more the attitude behind it than the word though. I can think of dismissive uses of 'millenial' for example, and then 'snowflake' tends to be used to mock younger generations. Although, that does seem to be more case specific.
Do we have to do the thing like when I was growing up and classes were full of Jennifers? We can have a Randolph and a Randy (or a Rand if one of you leans Libertarian).
Boomer has definitely evolved into a generally derogatory term for anyone older than the speaker. I’d wager that most people who get called boomers these days are actually Gen X.
You guys have really lost it. A woman is entitled to behave more or less any way she pleases when she’s surrounded by a group of young men who are antagonising her. This is especially true for women who are 6 months pregnant, and completely understandable of women who have just got off a 12 hour shift at the hospital.
This idea that white women have a responsibility to never attempt to involve police in a situation with black men is insane.
It kind of feels like sometimes Jesse has a hard time understanding behavior related to personalities different from his own. Some people are not so conflict avoidant that they’d just let the kids, who were obviously trying to game the system, dictate what they do or don’t do. Yes, I understand Jesse wouldn’t ever get in the same situation because he would avoid the conflict, but he’d also never try to “dibs” public bikes for 40 minutes or accost a pregnant woman when she tried to take a bike she was perfectly entitled to use. Different personalities react to situations differently, and at the end of the day she was perfectly within her rights to do what she did, and the teens were not in the right to do what they did. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
It can be difficult to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes. Although, I wouldn't think being so tall wouldn't mean being surrounded by 5/6 people can feel very intimidating. I think Jesse just hasn't had that life experience yet.
Nah bruh. 5-6 little shithead assholes high on their own farts would absolutely surround and/or beat the shit out of a bigger guy. Happens all the time. Basically getting jumped. 1 big guy has little defense against half a dozen smaller guys. It’s just a pack mentality thing at that point. I guess it only depends on the reason, if there is any at all.
Ah OK, Sorry I didn't realise that. I actually think I have heard of tall victims of bullies - they can struggle particularly because the optics shift quite quickly if they try to fight back at all.
However, you may have a point that Jesse's heigh would definitely be a factor that would cause 5/6 teens to maybe think twice about when starting a confrontation.
I’m a little over 6’4. I generally don’t get shit from the average personas much as usual but I also exist in this weird place where people I think like to try and make an example of the tall guy. I’ve had some really bullshit interactions with bouncers who get in my face when I’m not doing anything wrong.
Stealing it from Destiny because he said it best. Progressives believe men are a perpetual danger to women but they pump the breaks the moment the male happens to be Black.
Pretty sure you need to edit this immediately, or take it down. You’ve completely botched the Citi Bike story. Pretty inexcusable being that there was a thread in the Wednesday comments that understands it better.
The hack website actually subtlety but probably unintentionally reveals the kid was in the wrong. The kid cops to “doing it all the time” as an excuse for normalizing his shitty behavior with Citi Bike. The excuse is an inadvertent admission.
I don’t know how he could have read that article and not realized that the kids were clearly in the wrong. Holding assets hostage that you don’t own and haven’t paid for so no one else can use them is simply wrong. There’s no wiggle room here.
Yeah they’ve had quite a few of these “drop the ball moments” recently, bit surprising and, as you say, disappointing.
The whole reason their pod has been interesting is because they actually try to get to the bottom of a story by learning all about it without fear nor favour, but they seem to be doing more and more throat clearing recently
I’m unsure if Jesse was caught in a weird place between rapidly changing & conflicting narratives or if he was a harder-hit victim of poor reading instruction than previously surmised.
I understand where Jesse is coming from . The article that purportedly exonerates the kid - with a quick read it does seem like the kid was fucked over. It was only when I read it a second time that I realized the kid DID fuck up ,- he returned the bike, therefore it was no longer his. It is also clear he really thought the bike was his.
Honestly I hope that he has misled his mother about how the bike program works (always a strong possibility with teens & their parents). Otherwise she is enabling shitty, entitled behavior about this and who knows what else.
In 2023 non-white kids are told nothing they do is wrong, and that the entire world is stacked up against them. (Which I think sucks because it's disempowering a generation.)
Seemed well written to me. Just giving the kids story and finally cleared it all up. Wasn’t editorializing. Got facts right. The kid admits he was wrong without knowing it.
I hope Jesse doesn't just do his usual, snickering correction. He needs to acknowledge that there's something off about his worldview that has him constantly erring on the side of leftists.
Time to reevaluate his priors; he can start with Gamergate, which he got completely wrong.
He really did botch it pretty badly. Some people did behave abominably, but that is true of both sides on most politicized issues.
Meanwhile the actual interesting angle on the story got ignored by everyone (games themselves to some extent, and to a huge extent games journalists rapidly moving left at a pace that was leaving the vast majority of the actual consumers of the genre behind).
It got so bad you had say realistic games about professional racing have half the drivers be women, and when fans would complain they would basically get told “this hobby isn’t for you misogynist”. Except the people saying that and driving that narrative were the outsiders.
“Wah wah wah, why is this hobby that is dominated by young men so catered to young mens interests!”
It’s like people showing up to the Westminster dog show and saying it isn’t fully inclusive unless there are dogfighting events for all the people into dogfighting. And then those people being taken extremely seriously.
I don’t understand how Katie and Jesse had a discussion about the ethical issues of calling women Karens, criticized NewsOne’s Karen backlog, and then Jesse buys the NewsOne story as credible or somehow dispositive of the other narrative which is incredibly clear and uncomplicated. In ten minutes, Jesse made these leaps: “It’s kind of fucked up to call women Karens for these ten reasons...this paper delights in Karen narrative and is incredibly slanted...yeah she’s pretty much a Karen because this news outlet said so.”
The story is a fireside chat positioning them as a Gold Star family or some shit. It boiled down to “We pull off this Citibike scam all the time and no one else has had a problem. People are calling me names now. My family is poor. Why is everyone so racist? This is crazy.”
When Jesse was trying to figure out where he stood on the issue he called the teenagers “immigrants,” which for him tipped the scales of sympathy towards the teenagers, and I don’t understand how or why. For one, their entitled and manipulative actions place them firmly as American Zoomers. Two, the admirable drive and work ethic immigrants bring with them usually don’t last through generations. Three, Jesse doesn’t weigh the teenagers telling the woman her baby is going to come out retarded; any sympathy or nuance gets thrown out the window when that’s an off the cuff comment.
What would happen in West Africa, which is where the teenagers’ families originate, if a pregnant woman is trying to get a bike and teenagers wouldn’t allow her? This country is pretty pants-on-head stupid about identity, and this podcast is supposed to be a bulwark to these poisonous narratives; this time they are part of it and it sucks.
Dignity and sympathy can’t be tied into protected or marginalized classes. That was the origin of this podcast. The hosts were on the wrong side of a culture war issue, stuck to their guns, made a podcast examining similar instances of identarian nonsense, and for that they have my respect. With takes like these, along with the subway bullshit from last week, they are losing it.
I found this thread interesting. The guy is a lefty YIMBY that got closer to the truth than a lot of knee-jerk reactions like from Nikole hannah-jones and the like. I haven't listened to the episode yet so I can't compare it to B&R episode.
That guy gets it wrong. The teens have no right to block bikes from being used. They are violating multiple Citi Bike rules, which would be bad enough but they are part of a discounted program so that just makes it even worse because they are taking advantage of a program to take advantage of the bikes.
I expect teens to have good manners! My son and his friends wouldn't have acted like this when they were teens ( they are all around 22 now). Their parents and coaches would have come down on them for behaving like that.
The only reason it became a national news story is the kids tried to hurt the woman (potentially ruin her life, get her fired) by posting the video. That's so disgusting. And that there are so many people on the left still claiming she's a racist bitch with no evidence is a huge part of the problem. It wasn't those supporting the woman and pointing out that the teens are manipulative jerks who made this a story.
I don't think that's an excuse. Deliberately blocking a pregnant woman from her commute because you want to mess around on an e-bike for free is really shitty behaviour. A 17-year-old is plenty old enough should know better. And I think most countries and previous generations would not tolerate that.
That said, we don't know all the details. For instance, if she was rude to him from the outset, I could understand why he might respond obstinately.
Tired people don't necessarily act rationally and we have no idea what her day was like.
Also, I don't think there's conclusive evidence to show she wanted to fight anyone. We haven't seen the start of the confrontation and we only have one version of the start.
This is a bizarre take, you want teens who are old enough to drive to make the city worse for stressed out adults? I don’t know why you’re cheering on chaos?
Seriously? The woman was pregnant and getting off shift. She could have handled things with more grace. The kids were bigger jerks and ok, fucking over CitiBike is not the worst. But preventing other people from using bikes they had docked? That is a jackass move.
The kids should not be in trouble. The adult should not lose a day of work.
I’m almost with you but I think this is just not a story and it doesn’t mean anything. She was tired and pregnant and mad. They were young and entitled. Perfectly understandable from both sides.
She'd just worked a twelve hour shift, was pregnant and wanted to ride the bike. We have no way of knowing to what extent he was holding on to the bike. The sister said his hand was on the handlebars, but she also said they'd gotten frozen yogurt. I think they were sitting around eating froyo and hording the bikes. In the end they didn't even ride them home so they broke the rules, horded the bikes for no other reason than they were feeling territorial towards them is how I read that.
I don't think "they're just kids" is an excuse. If a 17-year-old boy blocks a pregnant woman from using an electric bicycle to commute, because he wants to ride it for fun and won't pay 17¢, then he's an arsehole, and plenty old enough to know better.
Though it also depends how she approached the situation. If she was rude and demanding from the outset, I could forgive him for reacting obstinately.
1. He and his friends were squatting on the bikes not paying for them but blocking others from using them. This has been proven. This breaks the terms of service for Citi Bikes.
2. They were docking them and then undocking to cheat the proper fares.
3. He and his friends are a part of a discounted program and used his privileged membership to break rules 1 and 2.
And they just accepted without investigation the story from biased parties and a bad journo that she basically grabbed the bike from him to scan it, which does not explain how she got on it. Seems more likely that he had actually walked away from the bike to get the frozen yogurt. At the least they should investigate or admit they don't know.
I know y’all are loathe to play identity politics, but I wish you’d address the Karen thing more honestly: it’s not used to disparage or dismiss “people,” as Katie repeatedly says; it’s used to disparage and dismiss *women.* Sexism actually exists, Katie. For centuries women, not men, have been punished for complaining. Calling a complaining woman a “Karen” and shaming her on social media is simply a slightly more civilized version of putting a “common scold” in the stocks.
Thanks, Avocational, I was thinking just that as well! Everybody needs to read Victoria Smith's book Hags - deals beautifully with this history and its current relevance
Everyone gets the "Karen" thing wrong. "Karen" is a misogynist weapon that's only very tangentially about race. Calling a woman "Karen" is a socially sanctioned way to tear a woman down for not womaning correctly: not being accommodating, not being attractive, not being young. The only way race comes into it is that woke leftists don't use the word against black women because they're afraid of being called racist.
That's a great point. I was just talking about this to my (male Gen X) spouse and he brought up the age thing about "Karen," because it's the part that resonates with him. (He does mostly understand the misogynist bit I think, but that's just not going to hit as hard on a male person, because male.)
I mean can you imagine how that bike scene would be interpreted if the races were reversed? Pregnant black woman trying to get home after a 12 hour shift, rents a bike so she can finally get off her feet. A group of white 17 year old boys refuse to let her take the bike she paid for, mock her, physically intimidate her and call her baby retarded. The boys film the whole encounter and then post it online for clout. It would be Covington Catholic all over again! Tomes would be written about the boys’ toxic masculinity and white entitlement.
Couldn't disagree with Jesse more. The women's reaction is totally proportionate and the guys were in the wrong. The group of guys were sitting on three e-bikes in order to exploit a loophole to make some cash at the expense of people trying to get from A to B which is the whole point of Citi Bikes in the first place.
Wait can we make the deal right now to ban child beauty pageants in exchange for also banning child drag shows?
I’d like to just take each group aside and say “I know what you’re doing is totally innocent but these other people… wow you know, you’re really sacrificing something heroic for the team here. You’re helping a lot of kids here.”
Then bring them back together and toilet flush these deeply weird fucked up practices.
I would like to use my authority as a commenter in this podcast to approve this
Lately, I’ve noticed people using “but cisgender teenage girls get cosmetic breast surgeries all the time“ as a gotcha when trans mastectomies for minors are criticized. Some Guy, please use your authority as a commenter to ban all of this shit too!
But seriously, I love when people come back to you thinking that something is fucked up by saying “oh yeah?!?!? but what about this other fucked up thing?!?!?!”
And every time it’s like they can’t even imagine that you also genuinely think that the second thing is also fucked up.
“I have a principled position that children shouldn’t be involved in any sexualized performance of any kind for any group.”
“Isn’t that just both siderism!?!??!”
We now live in the Worlds of Nazis vs Pedophiles and we are all being forced to choose a side.
I find it pretty interesting that so many surgeons were doing cosmetic procedures on minors (that were not to fix deformities or injury) for so long with no one batting an eye. Seems like the door had already been cracked open.
Yeah I have no idea how that door got opened but it needs to get shut. Imagine being the demon in a teenagers shoulder saying “oh you’re unhappy with how you look? You must be ugly. No other teenagers feel that way.”
THIS. I posted a photo of a dude holding a poster saying "if pedophilia is just sexuality then burying them all is just gardening," and I got the usual "But what about pedophile priests?!?!?!?" And I reply, "them, too." I don't see why anyone with a brain would think that one child abuser is less awful than another because he happens to be a priest.
Which is of course the whole point. Divide and conquer. Polarize the population. Make it so that you HAVE to pick a side and be treated accordingly. Distract us with petty divisiveness and spotlight our differences so we can’t band together over what we have in common.
It must be coming from a belief that all opponents are some kind of stereotyped Southern Christian conservatives who naturally endorse beauty pageants and, uh, I guess breast implants for their… all-American blonde teenage daughters?
Which, first, I’m none of those things, and neither are most of the GC people I follow, and second, I doubt there’s anything close to unanimous support for beauty pageants and boob jobs for teenagers among conservatives, because those things are gross and weird.
Thank you X! This is just what I was thinking: the hosts completely ignored another source of critique against DQST, which starts off with 'drag is a grotesque parody of femaleness and femininity, and deeply insulting to women'. Accept that for the sake of argument, and then see if it's OK for it to be normalised to children (with or without parental consent).
Alternatively, imagine a woman dressed that way, and made up that much, turning up at a library to read books to kids. We'd find it weird and inappropriate, and we'd discourage it. So why do men get a pass? Oh hang on ...
As someone who grew up in the south I can confirm that almost everyone found those beauty pageants creepy. They were also a niche thing most people didn't realize existed in their town. The southern conservatives considered breast implants for anyone--but especially kids--as a thing coastal liberals did (maybe this has changed since I moved away 20 years ago, but I doubt it).
FYI, the Southern Christians you are referring to--the ones the left hates--they don't even like the high school dance teams uniforms & suggestive dances.
I've seen people defend these cosmetic mastectomies on minors because "cis women get them for cancer treatment." And I'm thinking, "Do you honestly see no difference between women having to have a mastectomy to save her life and an elective cosmetic mastectomy? Are you THAT stupid?"
Or the "Minors aren't getting genital surgery." To which I reply with the Reuters piece that searched the Komodo insurance database and found dozens of them happened on minors. So then it's "well, that's not A LOT!" 🙄
My impression is that the majority of Conservatives don't even like child pageants, and that there aren't even that many of them anymore (I could be wrong), because people realized they're creepy.
Get rid of them both, I doubt any Conservatives would raise a fuss.
I hope everyone here appreciates how difficult it is to find 5 electric Citibikes at the same time in NY. Now I understand why, and why I see kids just sitting on them constantly.
Do parents of black teenagers really think police are going to shoot their kids? It feels exaggerated based on the data (to put it mildly), but is this what they believe?
As I always love to repeat, during the Floyd unrest you had MPR reporters uncritically repeating claims of activists that police in Minneapolis were “killing black people every day”. Just in off hand comments like it was something everyone knew.
Meanwhile in reality land police in Minneapolis kill about one person a year, and about half the time that person is black.
Obviously not, otherwise they wouldn't raise such entitled, aggressive and disrespectful kids as that group. People's belief systems are demonstrated by what they actually do rather than what they say. Those who actually fear for their kids' lives usually teach them not to antagonize others and follow the rules. But a lot of black parents seem to believe (and are not wrong) that a fat payday is only one viral video and a good race victim performance away.
Are you suggesting that most black parents are purposefully teaching their kids to act badly in hopes of viral video fame and gofundme money? Cuz that seems like maybe you took a thought thread a few inches too far.
A lot of Black people think this. I hear em say it all the time. Which is…odd because it doesn’t seem to keep anyone from going out to do the things they want.
Yes, a lot. It’s actually seeming to cause us to not like each other. I’m ADOS so from my perspective it seems they are far too eager to take stolen valor from slavery and are just as racist toward us as any other group. I admit ADOS have been mean to them in the past but I mean you eventually have to get over being called an “African booty scratcher”
When my company had its mandatory DEI training, this black woman said that every time her black husband leaves the home, she is scared he will be killed by the cops
I find it interesting to compare and contrast the central park Karen story with the Citi bike story. While I am sympathetic to the fact that Amy cooper basically had to go underground and the social consequences were too severe, I could understand why she was seen as the aggressor since she was breaking the rules of the park and called the cops on someone she merely due to finding him suspicious which does fit the Karen archetype. Sarah Comrie on the other hand was actually following the rules and did not escalate by calling the police she doesn't to me follow the script of being a Karen but I guess the definition changed again, as it tends, to do to suit the circumstances.
A Karen is any woman over the age of twenty that complains about anything, right or wrong. Bonus points if she is not conventionally attractive or dares not to be nice and accommodating.
One of the problems with the ACAB narrative is what are people supposed to do if they feel threatened?
If you can't or won't get the cops involved, then it's down to US Marines or social media to solve problems. Neither of these things has ever gone wrong before.
And while I am sperging, I would be interested in how many of these "Karens" come from much smaller towns than NYC. I have lived in big cities and small towns, and the rules are way different. I can see genuinely not knowing what the etiquette is in a particular situation feeding into some of these stories.
I feel like women aren't supposed to call the cops if they feel they are being threatened, especially if they are white and the person they feel threatened by is not.
I've been ACAB from my teens but there are times there really isn't any other option other than involving police-- like when you're a woman and just about any man from teens onward can overpower you and, well, it's threatening. Especially if you are alone or with your child.
You're right though leaving protecting people to marines or social media isn't the answer.
I listened to the Bari Weiss episode and remain unconvinced. Calling the cops should not be seen as a reasonable way to solve disputes that could easily be solved by just talking and using reason. Obviously police can be called if she was a victim of stalking or if things seemed like they could get physical (presence of a knife or gun etc.) but it clearly never escalated to that extent.
If she was genuinely afraid of him, not sure what talking would do. The issue really was how she would have handled things if he had been white..
People on my neighborhood blog absolutely complained about his behavior - the way he offered the dogs treats freaked them out. At the exact same time, she could have just put the dog on a leash and walked away .
Yeah I guess just walking away would solve it as well would have saved her a lot of issues in the future. I find the defenses of amy cooper's actions generally on here to be really strange though? She did not behave in a commendable manner and she mentioned race first in the phone call making it very easy to tar her as a racist Karen not doing herself any favors.
I think the defenses are because Amy Cooper did not deserve the level of condemnation she received. I want to defend her as well but the dog should have been on the leash. She was in the wrong.
Well, technically so was he, since he is not a cop or employee of the city and has no authority to enforce park regulations. He was acting as a vigilante.
I remember Amy Cooper very well. That story was way more complicated, and it was covered in my neighborhood blog. A lot of people posted that day about how they had encountered him, and he scared them, offering their dogs treats.
But yes. She 100% was breaking the law. The citibike lady did everything right.
Curious about how many people posted that Christian Cooper had threatened them? Are we talking about three or four, which would line up with Kmele‘s reporting? I believe he had one on the record - willing to speak on the podcast - and a couple others in his pocket who were not willing to come forward publicly for fear of retaliation. Were there significantly more? And did the posters say anything about how he spoke to them? Was he using a calm tone, or was he raising his voice?
In retrospect, I find it sinister how little reporting was done on Christian Cooper’s threats to Amy Cooper, which he practically bragged about on his own Facebook. Most articles didn’t give it even a passing mention. We know he threatened her because HE TOLD US. He parlayed his fame into a TV show, while she remains in hiding abroad.
I initially was 100% in his corner. I still don’t condone her playing the race card, and she should’ve kept her dog leashed. But he created a situation that was threatening to her. His sister was ready to immediately post the clip to Twitter and portray Christian as having narrowly escaped a lynching. Charles Blow compared Amy to Carolyn Bryant in his NYT column. That’s been the playbook for the past three years. It’s really ugly.
I cannot recall exactly but it was at least 2 people possibly 3. You can look it up on the West Side Rag.
I do think race played a role in that it was more likely she would have put the leash on if he were white. I also imagine that she felt more threatened because he was black.
Mentioning he was black in the phone call - either it was to make him see more threatening. Or maybe because he was a black man and the police would need to know his race.
"I do think race played a role in that it was more likely she would have put the leash on if he were white. I also imagine that she felt more threatened because he was black."
Sorry, but that's just pure speculation and rather bizarre as well. What leads you to believe that she would have been more likely to fulfill his request if he was white? And why would she have felt more threatened because he was black? Was there even the slightest evidence that race was a factor here, other than the way the story was covered by the media?
She should feel more threatened if he is black! That is sadly a brute fact about our society. black men are hugely more dangerous than any other type of person you encounter.
It isn’t by some small amount either. I want to say for violent crimes if you are a white woman walking and encounter a random black man he is 70! Times more likely to commit a crime against you than if you swap the races (black woman and white man).
That is seven zero! If it is Asian versus black the numbers are even more wild.
To a first approximation almost all the “interracial violence” in this country is coming out of the black community at other races. Until you are also willing to include that in the litany of “uncomfortable facts about race” you want to talk about, well there isn’t really much to talk about.
People behave differently around black men for extremely reality driven and sensible reasons.
Similar to how the black community rails any of the rare times an unarmed black man is killed by police, but totally ignore the black people, including children, who die as a result of gun crimes committed by black people. "Say their names!" ... unless they were killed by someone of the same race and it makes us uncomfortable remembering that.
One of the great points the hosts made (I think it was in this episode) was that stereotypes have a basis in reality. They're not myths, which kind of makes them even harder to dislodge. But we do need to have a conversation about when it's OK, and when it's not, to make assumptions about an individual based on that person's membership of a particular group. I would say a woman wanting to be safe is one situation where it just might be OK
And I think I heard in the episode J & K did on this (It actually might have been Bari Weiss) that Amy Cooper is a survivor of sexual assault. When a man says "you're not going to like what I do." she will feel that at a visceral level that No One has a right to question. No one.
Now you're a mind reader and you know that she would have put the dog on leash for a white man? Wow. You don't even realize how awful that sounds, speculating like that.
I do not know that. But given that she mentioned race first in her call to 911, I do not think it is unreasonable to speculate she may have reacted differently if he were a white man
Also. Our society IS racist and of course plenty of white people behave the same around black and white people. I am not sure if that is true for the majority of white people..
She wasn't following the original script of being a Karen, but the brief has broadened considerably (and quickly). It's now something like 'white female expressing displeasure about anything a man or a person of another race does'. Brace for scolds' bridles all-round
That still doesn't read to me as a reason to call the police. We can solve problems like this with words without the cops. I know cops aren't evil but calling them is an escalation because you think a crime is being committed or is about to be committed.
She is a survivor of sexual assault. Her reaction is totally understandable. When will women be justified in feeling fear?
Men in dresses get to colonize our bathrooms because they're scared of other men, but when we're scared of men and don't want them in our bathrooms we're the bigots.
Really fucking tired of people expecting women to be emotionless zombies and take whatever shit men do in stride as long as they're not actively in the process of beating them to death. And in both cases it's Men of the Left telling us we have no option than to accept the situation because it's what we have to Be Kind.
Yeah in the same way we have “the talk” with kids about sex they need to pull boys aside and say “I know you were eleven five minutes ago but you can genuinely scare the shit out of a woman if you approach her while she’s totally alone and there’s no one around.”
I speak for the majority of women when I say I don’t give a shit, a man threatens me I am calling the cops. I’d rather be called a Karen by 12,000 than carried by 6.
Men who threaten women on their own deserve no benefit of the doubt.
I take literally no position on the woman's behavior in the Citibike story, but it seems like even if you take the kids' story at 100% face value (1) they're clearly in violation of Citibike's terms of service for the bikes, (2) they definitely had no legal claim to deny anyone else the right to use the bike, and (3) they didn't even have a particularly valid moral/philosophical claim to the bike beyond might-makes-right.
Maybe it’s my stage of life, but I have more sympathy for the pregnant health care worker trying to get home after a twelve hour shift than the teenage boy “sitting on” a bike he didn’t pay for. I don’t think the kids are monsters either, they’re kids. No one involved deserves to have their life ruined over this. I’m not sure what is wrong with the kid’s mother though - if one of my kids treated a pregnant woman or any physically weaker person like this, I would feel like I failed utterly. Jesse, no offense but you got this one wrong!
They're probably not monsters. But they are little shits who need to be taught a lesson in basic courtesy. Whereas I can't see that she did anything unreasonable.
Well, she kind-of did though. As I understand the situation: There were a bunch of boys blocking access to the bikes for a long time. They told her they were not available. So she snuck past, scanned one, sat on it, tried to ride off, and refused to move when they stopped her.
She could've just walked away at any point. But she decided to meet their intimidation with physical resistance. And I say good for her, standing up to bullies.
So renting an unrented bike is provoking a fight? This is like saying trying to enter a gas station some thug is outside of was basically asking him to punch me.
Well, kind-of, yes. If that thug was standing outside the gas station saying "This gas all belongs to me now. Just try and take it, I dare you." And you decide to walk in out of principle, then you are making the decision to engage in physical conflict.
But in that sort of scenario, I think there's a strong argument that engaging in physical conflict is the right thing to do. I'm not a pacifist. And I wish I more often had the capacity and courage to stand up to people who are physically threatening.
Maybe I've misunderstood the order of events, but it sounds to me like she made a conscious decision to wade into the conflict rather than shrink from it. And if so, I think that's admirable.
I read the article from News One about the bike debacle.
What I am getting from this is that the teenager in question is saying he had docked his bike, had not paid for additional time, but had essentially called "dibs" on it by standing beside it and told the woman that she couldn't use it. So she scanned the code to pay for it and got onto the bike. So then he got his friends to start recording and pushed the bike with her on it back into the dock.
I dunno who is telling the truth but I can definitely see how it could come across as entitled and inconsiderate to sit on a bunch of the best bikes you haven't paid for and refuse to allow others - including pregnant women coming off a hospital shift - to use them. He can say it was "his" all he likes but if he hasn't scanned and paid for it, then it's not "his bike" and others can take it.
Perhaps the way preggers lady allegedly dealt with it was out of line, but the kid could also have just accepted that somebody else had purchased the bike now - because in the grown up world you don't get to call "dibs" on things you haven't paid for, especially when you're dealing with New Yorkers - instead of escalating the situation.
I'm sure this has had a negative impact on the kid and his family, but at the same time, maybe the takeaway is try to avoid stupid arguments with strangers and if you do get into one, don't record it for the entire world.
I’m agree entirely. I also think the teenagers were ill-served by the adults around them. Adults should have told them to not put it on the Internet because once stuff gets on the internet it can rapidly spiral out from your control.
I feel bad for the teenagers and they do not deserve any abuse. However the woman was suspended without pay from her job and was reportedly getting threats. What did they expect to happen? Did they think the woman deserved that? The kid talked about how happy he was about getting support until the woman’s lawyer posted receipts. This is why it’s a good idea to think through all the possible consequences of your actions before you act.
I hate to say this but if he was trylu scared he’d get shot by the cops over a fight over a Citibike, he probably should have just walked away. Women walk away from situations where we think we’re in the right all the time because we are worried about our safety. That’s just how life is.
It's almost like children are by definition incapable of having a mature perspective.
True, unless it's drastic life-altering gender-affirming medical interventions. Then minors are fully mature and capable of making such a decision, and any hint of concern is a violent act that will literally murder them...
I think teenagers know enough about being online to know what would cause a pile-on or a twitter storm.
Or what could get someone fired and ruin their reputation.
Honestly I think that's why they do it. It's that vindictive, entitled behavior the same people claim makes you a Karen--"oh you pissed me off during a minor altercation? well I'm gonna post this online and ruin your life haha."
The one whose age we know is 17. Not yet entirely mature, but far from a child.
I do agree teens tend to be full of themselves though.
I’m completely in agreement with the idea that kids, including teens (and even, hell, most legal adults in their late teens and early 20s) are not mature enough to understand certain topics thoroughly or how to act appropriately in certain situations. This is not one of those cases. The kid is 17. Most ordinary 17-year-olds do not act like entitled assholes in the way that this kid did. If he were my son, I’d be ashamed.
Why don’t the kids deserve abuse for acting like douchebags and the posting it to get people to rag on the lady?
You don't think the boys were maybe a touch sociopathic? What would an appropriate response be? What actual abuse have they experienced? Only getting 80k so far instead of over 100k?
I’m not someone who thinks that a 17-year-old should have the judgment of a mature adult. Of course not. But by golly, his name has not been made public, except perhaps his first name (if it really is Michael), and that was done by his own family. It was the kids who put that video out in the world. These days, no 17-year-old expects that a video is going to stay private on the Internet! They probably hope for some degree of virality. They are undoubtedly shocked by how big it became. But this is a FAFO situation, I’m afraid.
The Go Fund Me for the kid is an absolute cash grab. It’s going directly to the family, not to an attorney. There’s some vague verbiage on the GFM regarding a defamation suit. But given that the kid’s name isn’t public, there’s no way he can be defamed. Nor has Comrie or her lawyer said anything negative about him. If his name does become public, it will be because of his sister’s and/or mother’s actions. There’s no grounds for a defamation suit. The GFM money is going to be a windfall, pure and simple. Whether it’ll even go to the kid is an open question. The sponsor of the GFM is identified only by initials.
I’m a bleeding heart liberal when it comes to race. At least I was until seeing how the story unfolded. The amount of overt, hateful race grifting I’ve witnessed on Twitter is hair-raising. If anyone has put the kid in the limelight, it’s these grifters - Ben Crump, Tariq Nasheed, et al. It certainly wasn’t the pregnant physician’s assistant.
If I turn into a MAGA chud, this will be my origin story!
If we want to be generous here, then I guess we could point out that riding e-bikes round the city isn't the worst way for underprivileged teenage boys without a lot of money to spend their free time. People - most of them probably working class - rely on those bikes for actual transport, though, and those kids taking the nicest bikes out of commission so they can basically game the system for cheaper fees isn't fair to those people. The pregnant hospital worker probably coming off a 12 hour shift wasn't having it, at least. Maybe the city needs to look into a program to fund these sorts of kids to get their own e-bikes? I dunno.
I mean, they’re 17. They could get a fucking job.
Exactly!
I agree, I don't fault them for trying to dock the bikes and use them again...but once it's docked it's free for someone else to rent
I don't disagree but also what did children in NYC ever do before free ish e bikes?
Part-time employment
Wasn't NYC terrorized by crime until fairly recently? This is the exact demo of the people plaguing the city and other American cities with crime
Agree with your overall sentiment, Kittywampus, but you don't have to actually name somebody to defame them. The question is whether the person would be identifiable by somebody who knows him or her, as I think would probably be the case here. On the other hand your second point is well taken - not at all clear what she has actually said or done to harm his reputation, rather any damage flows directly from witnessing what he did.
People on the internet will literally do anything except acknowledging that men are intimidating and that some lone woman is going to be terrified by half a dozen thugs harassing her.
It seems pretty clear that people in general don’t care about men intimidating women/women being fearful unless maybe she dies even though women are constantly told stupid shit to make sure they’re safe from men.
(Meant to edit, not delete my previous comment.)
Absolutely. And if a woman’s fear can be reduced to “privilege” because she’s white, ridiculing her earns applause.
I know this wasn’t a case of sexual harassment, but Carolyn Bryant’s name was invoked a lot. A lot of the discourse around this case, but also anytime conflict goes viral between a white woman and black man, weaponizes “privilege” to shutdown real concerns of women. It’s really upsetting. Emmitt Till’s murder was horrible, and, 70 years later, black men and boys being lynched in the streets because of white women is fortunately virtually unheard of. But we, now more than ever, absolutely police women’s discomfort and ability to speak up. This piece is from 10yrs ago, but I’ll never forget catcalling and other forms of street harassment finally getting attention— only to be immediately racialized.
https://www.thecut.com/2014/10/complaining-about-catcalling-racist.html
Oh man even 10 years ago …” For trans women of color, street sexual harassment is often a matter of life and death. It’s their safety and comfort that gets lost when we allow street sexual harassment to be cast as a threat to white gentrifiers. ”. Good to know. I also like that they don’t cover what I like to call “harassment chicken” - like you don’t know if that guy is going to stop with you saying thank you because it could easily escalate until the guy gets the reaction he wants. Like logically the guy following you down the street probably isn’t going to rape you in the middle of the day, but he is going to keep pushing that fear button because he can and wants to. And it’s impossible to know which dude is just the hi pretty (which still invasive) or the high harassment.
I do think that along with white women, women of color’s issues do get swept under the rug if it’s a man of color doing it. See the case of Jacob Blake where he was just an innocent peace keeper and not a dude threatening his ex and about to take off with one of their kids.
What a shitty article that was.
Yes. Obviously this is subjective, but watching that video sent shivers down my spine. When I was younger, I was often bullied and harassed by groups of teenage boys (white and middle eastern, if we must bring race into it), and the boys in this video talked in the EXACT same playfully mocking tone I remember hearing from those bullies. It’s a tone that says “your pain is funny to us” and coming from a group of men, it is absolutely terrifying. Even if it was all a misunderstanding, I absolutely understand how someone would become scared and act out in that situation, especially once the camera comes out and you know you’re about to be made a Karen.
Mmm, yes. About 20 years ago I was in Lyon, France - early evening I think - and got followed by a group of guys for ten minutes or so as I walked from the metro station to my friend's front door. They were catcalling, being generally obnoxious, but not touching me or anything. Oh - and they were probably all around 10-12 years old. I was in my early twenties. I was (and still am!) probably a bit of a wimp, but I was terrified about what might happen. Still remember the fear now!
At sacre couer a random dude grabbed my wrist, I yanked it away and screamed do not touch me. He told me to stop being crazy.
Probably trying to "bracelet rape you" and then ask you for money. That happens a lot in the tourist areas of Paris, particularly North African immigrants.
I believe that was the scheme/scam yeah, like he started with wanting to give me a gift, grabbed my wrist and - well, you see how it went from there.
When I was in Paris with my wife and another couple ~12 years ago we were walking down a street and a group of North African men came up and tried to start braiding bracelets onto our wrists as we walked. The other husband and I said no, but the women didn't resist as strongly. So the guys started (with amazing skill and speed) braiding bracelets right onto their wrists in a really short time. Before we even fully understood what was happening they were ~1/4 done. I would guess it took them a minute or two total.
Now the bracelets were nothing of value, the sort of thing you can get in Mexico for $.05 and the US for $.50.
So ok fine how much money do they want for this? $10, $20? Nope like $160. I refused, the other husband is sort of hesitant, the dudes start making a HUGE scene and claiming we stole from them and are racists. Things get very heated, they don't seem interested in negotiating, (I think I would have given them $40, and my friend seemed willing to go even higher).
I had a very hard time convincing my group that the only thing to do was just ignore them and leave, which we eventually did. But police were responding even when we left. I later found out this was super duper common.
The question that stands out to me as why people are so quick to judge the reaction of a stranger they don't know.
They expect everyone to act perfectly (somehow with the hindsight they would have at the end of the incident).
I once heard a cop say that as a cop, you're often meeting people on the worst day of their life. People on social media sometimes think they're St. Peter judging people on the worst day of their lives.
I could totally see myself acting like a nut job after a 12 hour hospital shift. It can be physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually exhausting.
I don't think her behaviour was that strange. A bunch of teenage boys had decided to physically block access to a bit of public infrastructure for their own gratification. And she was like "I'm not putting up with this bullshit, and other people should help me stand up to them."
Maybe some of her reactions were impulsive or foolhardy, but she was angry for good reason.
I've shared that anger many times. Having been in public and seeing a small group of people acting in antisocial ways with impunity, because they know they can be physically intimidating.
Whilst a whole crowd of people just surrender to their behaviour, because they're not willing to stand up to them collectively.
Until sometimes a physically more intimidating man threatens them into behaving reasonably.
Developed societies should not function on that "Might Makes Right" principle. And it can be pretty dismaying seeing (for example) a whole busload of adults cowed into submission by a few teenagers because they're so afraid of conflict.
And she’s pregnant.
If anyone gets a pass to act like a nut after work, it’s hospital staff.
Totally agree. Everybody ought to know better by now.
Some things struck me about the News One article. They said they grabbed frozen yogurt then docked the bikes. It's not easy to ride or move a bike around while eating frozen yogurt. I suspect they docked the bikes then got the frozen yogurt and were sitting around eating.
He docked the bike at 7:19 and she paid for it at 7:24. It was then redocked within the minute. So he left the bike for 5 minutes and pushed it back in the dock after she'd paid for it. That's kind of an aggressive move IMHO.
After a long shift in a hospital and chocked full of pregnancy hormones it stands to reason she'd be very emotional.
There's nothing in that article that makes him look good if I'm honest. And her lawyer has been very careful NOT to blame the young men but the outlets such as TYT which made the usual cry bully noises.
Imagine the outrage if a bunch of white kids were guarding a swing set they weren’t even actively using and on video prevented a black kid from having a go on the swing.
That seems like there was a a lot going on. It’s almost as if every petty squabble isn’t indicative of a large scale battle between good and evil and doesn’t need to be elevated to a global scale. But no. That can’t be right.
I have to say, I entirely agree with this.
The two different receipts do show a gap of 6 minutes between him docking it and her paying for it. There was something about them getting frozen yogurt too, so maybe they were eating froyo when she came up to the bike?
As you say, she was pregnant, he could easily have ridden an regular bike. I'm 58 and I would have offered the ebike to a woman who is pregnant and ridden on the normal bike.
Yeah I read it after listening to the episode because I thought, “Let me hear this kid out, maybe my instincts were off here.”
All I got from the article is that he and his friends are bike hogs who are doing exactly the opposite of what the Bike Angels program is intended for in order to get free rides. Which is fine, game the system if there are plenty of bikes around, but they basically pulled the equivalent of not giving up their seat on the train for a pregnant woman and then they tried to ruin her life when she got justifiably annoyed about that. I ride Citi Bikes pretty frequently and this is definitely not cool, but they’re teenagers and teens can be assholes. It’s pretty normal for adults to tell asshole teenagers to stop doing stupid shit and there’s no reason for it to become some giant viral scandal.
The take was just...really weird to me this episode. Am I missing something here?
I guess it all depends on the details.
Like how long was the boy sitting on that bike to call "dibs" on it? If it's a couple of minutes, maybe that's fair enough. We generally accept that the first person to see a parking-space or take an item off a shelf has fair claim to it even if they haven't paid yet. But if he's obstructing people from using the service, that's not reasonable.
Also, how did she approach the conflict? Was she like "Can I please have that have that e-bike? I'm pregnant." or was she immediately like "Give me that. It's not yours."
It's pretty bizarre how people take sides in arguments like this without knowing the context.
I’m curious, why is it so important to you that she was polite and nice and if she wasn’t, it’s her fault? (Although as your name points out below, she was). Like clearly the kids weren’t being good citizens to start with since they were hogging up the bikes, why is it on what is probably a very tired woman to be polite to get her damn bike?
Because I wouldn't condemn a bunch of kids for exploiting a loophole in a rental scheme to get e-bike rides for free. I'd put that squarely in the category of "mischievous but forgivable teen hijinks".
So if an adult approaches them with immediate judgment and castigation. I can understand why they might stubbornly refuse to cooperate.
Except it appears that wasn't the case. It sounds like they aggressively physically blocked everyone from accessing the e-bikes, including the pregnant nurse who asked politely, so that they could play around on them for free.
If so, that's not mischievous hijinks. That's shitty antisocial behaviour and they're plenty old enough to know better.
Even if the PA wasn't particularly polite, they were in the wrong. Getting yelled at for their antics by annoyed adults is a normal part of the teenage experience. I would understand them not taking it well, but still it would be wrong for them to refuse her the bike.
Idunno. Courtesy costs nothing, and I think you have to forgive teens a bit of mischief.
Maybe I'm a stubborn prick. But as a teenager, and still, if someone orders me to do something reasonable in an unreasonably rude tone, I'll probably refuse to do it on principle.
Though by the sounds of it, she was unduly polite to them at first, and they were selfish and aggressive in response.
There’s a difference between taking advantage of a loophole and physically taking over the bikes blocking people from using them to start with. There’s also a big difference between castigating them right away and being polite. Like she could say if you’re not about to check out that bike I’m taking it, which is both not polite and not chiding them.
Well it's all kind-of a moot discussion now, since by the sounds of it, she was very polite to them, and they were still complete pricks in response.
I think it’s important because a lot of what makes a Karen is often that her crime is simply not being polite and kind enough and simply standing up for herself in a fairly neutral way and not backing down. By judging if she’s in the wrong based simply on how polite she is, is in some ways reinforcing the belief that women owe politeness in order to be considered as worthy actors.
He has to keep anyone else from using it for 45 minutes to get another free 45 minutes.
He ultimately left about 45 minutes after he first docked. The way Citi bike works under SNAP is that e-bikes are only free (for 45 minutes) if normal bikes aren’t available. Otherwise they’re like 6 cents a minute. if they were stopping at that station to dock before reaching the 45 minute mark to avoid 6 cent/minute charges, they likely were also waiting to undock until all the normal bikes were taken, otherwise they’d be subject to the same charge. Which would mean guarding the four to five e-bikes for however long it takes
According to his account, she said "“Can I please have this bike?...I’m pregnant. Can you help a pregnant woman out?”
That's a good point about taking an item off the shelf. Perhaps she dealt with it the wrong way by scanning it. I think ganging up on her and pushing the bike back into the dock with her on it while recording was more of a jerk move, though. As was releasing it on the internet without surrounding context knowing it would likely get her fired and ruin her reputation.
I don't see how scanning it was wrong in any way - if it was available for rent, why shouldn't she be able to rent it? And it clearly was available for rent, or else her scanning it would not have produced a receipt?
One could make the argument that the polite thing to do would be to find a push bike once the teen told her that he intended to use the e-bike. I don't think she was obligated to do that, though.
One could also make the argument that the polite thing to do is offer up one of the e-bikes to a pregnant woman.
Ultimately, the teen is the one gaming the system by redocking the bike every 45 minutes. I'm not up in arms about that, but it comes with the risk that once the bike is redocked, anybody else is within their rights to scan it and take it. Especially if you're going to sit around and "guard" the bike for a few minutes until you feel like riding again.
I think "The teenage boy hanging out with his mates should give up the e-bike he's forcefully and illicitly commandeered, to the pregnant nurse on her commute." Is unequivocally the better argument than "The pregnant nurse on her commute should should give up the e-bike to the teenage boy hanging out with his mates, who has forcefully and illicitly commandeered it."
Re-docking one bike and guarding it for a few minutes might be forgivable. But it sounds to me like there were a group of boys blocking all the e-bikes using force and intimidation, for around 40 minutes, so that they could play around on them for free.
From what I gather of the full story, it seems like both the woman and the boy were being kinda asshole-ish. The boys wanted to ride e-bikes around all day and felt they had the right to hang out on them to call dibs. The woman, after asking for an e-bike and being told no, decided to scan the most available one and take it anyway.
Where I lose basically all sympathy for the kids is when they decide to record the incident and put it on the internet. They clearly wanted her to get in trouble for their squabble. She's now on leave because she and a kid were dicks to each other at a bike rack. That's just not a reasonable reaction outcome of the incident. (Also, I like how her calling for help is a threat because the police could have come and shot him, but also her not calling the cops to file a report is proof she's in the wrong. There's just no way she could have had a conflict with the kid and not been a villain.)
I think filming and putting it on the internet was inexcusable. They were fine with the woman running into trouble with her job, having her identity exposed, and called a bitch, racist, etc. because they felt "supported." But when more information came out and the mob turned against them now it's a problem. (Although, unlike the woman, their identities have not been exposed.)
They don't seem to have learned anything, though, and are now trying to get the mob back on their side with more TikToks and interviews.
Agree with you about the cops angle and no-win situation.
The sister made a video as apparently saying that everyone who donated to her she should take the money back, and the hospital should fire her permanently.
Maybe they were both just not having a great day and couldn’t meet each other on the best terms?
Yeah, I do try to apply "Hanlon's Razor" and give people the benefit of doubt.
Although now the emerging picture seems to be that a group of older teenage boys decided to physically and aggressively block access to all the available e-bikes at that station, for over 40 minutes, so that they could play around on them without paying. And refused a pregnant nurse who asked politely if she could use one for her commute because the unpowered bikes are probably not suitable for her.
If that is accurate, I think that's really nasty, yobbish behaviour. And can't be excused by "maybe they were having a bad day" or "boys will be boys".
Oh yeah I’m sure the boys were a little bit getting off on people being intimidated by them but that calls for a chewing out not a national news story.
Oh, totally. But it escalated into a national news story because people turned in into a race issue and jumped to pick a side without evidence.
Either "These kids' behaviour is a damning indictment of urban decay" or "This woman's behaviour is a damning indictment of our white supremacist culture."
I don't know if either of those came first.
Not saying you’re wrong at all. I blame the people who turn it into the race narrative. But that’s so distributed across everyone it’s important to remember the kids also are just kids who acted kinda shitty .
No one chooses to have something become national otherwise pr firms wouldn’t exist and when you’re seventeen you’re an idiot. Them needing some level of discipline doesn’t mean the nation should give it to them. We should aspire to be a better country than this.
YES
Hold up. The kid docked his bike. At that point it was no longer his bike. I have no doubt he was waiting until he could use it again. But if he docked it, how was it his anymore? Am I missing something?
Also. Why does the kid need money for fundraising,? Was he charged with anything?
You’re not missing anything. They got this one wrong.
Jesse got it wrong, as usual.
I was glad Katie had the good sense to do some extra digging on NewsOne. If she hadn't have pushed back I think a lot of listeners might have figured Jesse was correct to file this in the "it's complicated" bin.
The kids get government assistance and can ride the bikes at a discounted rate for 45 minutes. Then they have to dock them. Then they have to wait a given time to recheck them out at the same lowered rate. It’s gaming the system, just like it was to record this woman and release the footage in a way that made the group of teenagers look like the victims. For a guy who says it’s complicated all the time, the NewsOne story Jesse parroted did not complicate anything. The woman reserved that particular bike. The teenagers sat on them because they wanted to continue riding around at a reduced rate. This is a New York City story of someone putting a garbage can out to hold a parking spot and someone moves the garbage can and takes the spot. The person who puts the garbage can there is an asshole. There’s nothing complicated about it.
Calling people a Karen or a TERF is just a way for people on the left to be viciously sexist.
Just squeezing in here! My name is Karen. I work at a very left leaning org. It’s been so shocking - I get the joke - but man, hearing people spout the name with such venom and then preach acceptance and kindness has been so disorienting.
Introducing myself gave me such anxiety. I thought I was totally losing it at one point (there was so much anger out there around this time) that I called a therapist who laughed and told me to get comfortable with white privilege (honestly I had already attended workshops and read so many books).
The only person who understood was the IT guy who changed his name too to fit in (I eventually started going by something else - ppl were mad at me for doing that too but it wasn’t good for me). He told me not to worry, it’ll become normal soon, give it time.
I’ll never ever forget that type of kindness - he totally could’ve shat on me.
Anyway, I’m confused by everyone now.
That is a fucking awful therapist. Like it’s not that you’re white - there are plenty of non-white Karens after all — it’s that literally everyone hates your name and is shit talking your name constantly. It’s like if you have the same name as someone who suddenly becomes infamous.
That IT guy sounds awesome.
What a fucking awful therapist. I would have reported that person to their licensing board. It was completely unprofessional and based only on their own beliefs. And I think it's terrible that you've had to use a different name, but I understand. For the record I've known many a wonderful Karen.
It’s been so strange. I waited a year before talking to another person. The next therapist - actually they were all social workers, if that makes a difference - said that she totally believed me as she had gone back to school late in life and was terrified of the new ideology. She was nice but really just wanted to chat about that issue. I tried another social worker (we were lucky to be given this help for free from our work). When my name shame came up, she advised me to read White Fragility bc her white friends said it was helpful. I told her I read it and something didn’t sit totally right with me… but I couldn’t explain it. So we talked about different things. The final person I paid for was out of my own pocket, who was/is great and really helped. Incidentally, I learned five sessions in that a senior admin in the school board she works for doesn’t feel safe with her counsel as she’s a white woman. By the way, I know I sound crazy going to all these people but I’ve really never been like this before. At first it started with my own issues but then I was like - are they crazy or am I crazy?
It's not crazy going to different people. You have to find a therapist that is a good fit, and sometimes that's what it takes.
This is what therapy has become so reporting her probably would change nothing. I have a wonderful cousin named Karen. I really feel for her.
At one time I shared a very common first and last name with a despicable criminal, which gave me an excuse to revert to my maiden name. If I hadn't wanted to do that anyway, I would have really resented the person who ruined that name for the hundreds of us who shared it.
Ava Dahmer?
Ava Kazcynski?
Bundy?
Gacy?
Manson?
Trump?
We had a brainstorm about what values mattered to us and “kindness” and “inclusivity” were the top ones. I’m like seriously? All you guys talk about is punishing people... you are like the audience around a guillotine. I’m not sure if they are meaner than anyone else but their purported values make the actual lack of them really obvious.
My wife is a teacher and hears little boys call little girls (of all races) Karens for annoying them in whatever way. Soon enough it will have lost whatever political valence it once had and will be little more than a G-rated version of "bitch."
I wild argue it’s already a slightly more polite version of “bitch.” A bitch and a Karen are both complaining women.
And a bitch and a Karen are also women who tell it like it is. I have been called a bitch simply for telling the truth - proud to wear the badge!
A few years back I had a wall calendar called something like ' You call me a bitch ... like that's a bad thing?'
"Asshole" is less gendered, but the same thing does happen to men.
I think asshole is my gender neutral pronoun. Anyone can be an asshole, and I think you are right that men who tell inconvenient truths or just express a difference of opinion get similar dismissal to what we bitches get. The ad hominem attacks are one way you know your disturbing the group think waters.
And even if those little girls called themselves NBs, or trans, those same fucking little boys would still call them Karens... because everyone knows who the females (and males are).
I'm pretty sure in the UK it acquired that meaning within 5 minutes of people learning it. It's only the US where it still carries the original racially inflected meaning in some instances. I mean it still kind of means 'bitch' in all scenarios.
I swear I had heard it used as a race-neutral term of misogynistic abuse before 2020 and the claim that it was a anti-racist thing so I never believed it was anything else.
And/or racist. It’s all the exact same shit. Someone calling someone a “boomer” is literally doing the exact same dehumanizing garbage someone using a racial slur is.
If one is verboten the other should be too. End of story. If people cant see that they are moral and mental midgets, whose concerns aren’t worth caring about.
Even Swedes can be taught to behave like human beings. There is no reason to treat anyone, even Italians, like they’re less than the Irish.
Well Boomer is a technical term for a generation. Not quite the same as a derogatory term like Karen
It's a dismissive, ageist term. "Baby Boomer" is the technical term ( nickname) for the generation. Shortening it to Boomer and calling someone that is a way to mock them for being old and out of touch and clueless.
It is, but plenty of people will apply that term to themselves ("I'm a boomer"). Nobody says "I'm a Karen". That's how you know which is worse.
Well, nobody except Katie
I've definitely seen it used in the context you mean. I think it's more the attitude behind it than the word though. I can think of dismissive uses of 'millenial' for example, and then 'snowflake' tends to be used to mock younger generations. Although, that does seem to be more case specific.
Wait a minute you're not me
No you're not me
Well it looks like we got an old fashioned standoff
Missed opportunity for the best line from "Shanghai Noon":
It's a Mexican standoff, only we ain't got no Mexicans.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzQzyKAUqxM)
Do we have to do the thing like when I was growing up and classes were full of Jennifers? We can have a Randolph and a Randy (or a Rand if one of you leans Libertarian).
It’s not generally used that way, and knowingly so. Baby boomers are quite old these days.
Boomer has definitely evolved into a generally derogatory term for anyone older than the speaker. I’d wager that most people who get called boomers these days are actually Gen X.
Yes, and to completely dismiss us wholesale in every way. As a friend of mine said recently, who is a total liberal, sometimes Karen has a point.
Correct.
You guys have really lost it. A woman is entitled to behave more or less any way she pleases when she’s surrounded by a group of young men who are antagonising her. This is especially true for women who are 6 months pregnant, and completely understandable of women who have just got off a 12 hour shift at the hospital.
This idea that white women have a responsibility to never attempt to involve police in a situation with black men is insane.
It kind of feels like sometimes Jesse has a hard time understanding behavior related to personalities different from his own. Some people are not so conflict avoidant that they’d just let the kids, who were obviously trying to game the system, dictate what they do or don’t do. Yes, I understand Jesse wouldn’t ever get in the same situation because he would avoid the conflict, but he’d also never try to “dibs” public bikes for 40 minutes or accost a pregnant woman when she tried to take a bike she was perfectly entitled to use. Different personalities react to situations differently, and at the end of the day she was perfectly within her rights to do what she did, and the teens were not in the right to do what they did. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
But also he is a very large man. It doesn't hurt that he is white. So a lot of shit like this would not happen to him
It can be difficult to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes. Although, I wouldn't think being so tall wouldn't mean being surrounded by 5/6 people can feel very intimidating. I think Jesse just hasn't had that life experience yet.
I'm sure when he was younger he could've been stuffed into a locker, too, as slender as he is.
I meant that due to his size, 5 or 6 teens wouldn't surround him
Nah bruh. 5-6 little shithead assholes high on their own farts would absolutely surround and/or beat the shit out of a bigger guy. Happens all the time. Basically getting jumped. 1 big guy has little defense against half a dozen smaller guys. It’s just a pack mentality thing at that point. I guess it only depends on the reason, if there is any at all.
Ah OK, Sorry I didn't realise that. I actually think I have heard of tall victims of bullies - they can struggle particularly because the optics shift quite quickly if they try to fight back at all.
However, you may have a point that Jesse's heigh would definitely be a factor that would cause 5/6 teens to maybe think twice about when starting a confrontation.
I’m a little over 6’4. I generally don’t get shit from the average personas much as usual but I also exist in this weird place where people I think like to try and make an example of the tall guy. I’ve had some really bullshit interactions with bouncers who get in my face when I’m not doing anything wrong.
Stealing it from Destiny because he said it best. Progressives believe men are a perpetual danger to women but they pump the breaks the moment the male happens to be Black.
Or trans
Yeah...the contradictions make it all feel very disingenuous sometimes.
THANK YOU.
Pretty sure you need to edit this immediately, or take it down. You’ve completely botched the Citi Bike story. Pretty inexcusable being that there was a thread in the Wednesday comments that understands it better.
Agreed. Jesse, dude... what the hell? He trusted this weird article written by a hack journalist. He’s better than this.
The hack website actually subtlety but probably unintentionally reveals the kid was in the wrong. The kid cops to “doing it all the time” as an excuse for normalizing his shitty behavior with Citi Bike. The excuse is an inadvertent admission.
It took me two reds of the article to understand what he had done.
I think the issue is that the kid truly thinks the bike was his, as all he did was dock it. And every other time he just kept using it.
The fact that the publication had a Karen archive should have pointed to a very potential lack of objectivity in this case.
Progressives: I won't read an article at (Conservative Outlet) even if it links to source documents backing up the story.
Also Progressives: Let me rely on this article from a random website that has an archive of Karen stories.
I don’t know how he could have read that article and not realized that the kids were clearly in the wrong. Holding assets hostage that you don’t own and haven’t paid for so no one else can use them is simply wrong. There’s no wiggle room here.
I'm disappointed that if they were going to cover the citbike incident, they didn't do their own journalistic research.
Yeah they’ve had quite a few of these “drop the ball moments” recently, bit surprising and, as you say, disappointing.
The whole reason their pod has been interesting is because they actually try to get to the bottom of a story by learning all about it without fear nor favour, but they seem to be doing more and more throat clearing recently
I’m unsure if Jesse was caught in a weird place between rapidly changing & conflicting narratives or if he was a harder-hit victim of poor reading instruction than previously surmised.
I understand where Jesse is coming from . The article that purportedly exonerates the kid - with a quick read it does seem like the kid was fucked over. It was only when I read it a second time that I realized the kid DID fuck up ,- he returned the bike, therefore it was no longer his. It is also clear he really thought the bike was his.
Honestly I hope that he has misled his mother about how the bike program works (always a strong possibility with teens & their parents). Otherwise she is enabling shitty, entitled behavior about this and who knows what else.
In 2023 non-white kids are told nothing they do is wrong, and that the entire world is stacked up against them. (Which I think sucks because it's disempowering a generation.)
The one thing BARpod never used to be was hot takes based on a “quick read”
Seemed well written to me. Just giving the kids story and finally cleared it all up. Wasn’t editorializing. Got facts right. The kid admits he was wrong without knowing it.
I hope Jesse doesn't just do his usual, snickering correction. He needs to acknowledge that there's something off about his worldview that has him constantly erring on the side of leftists.
Time to reevaluate his priors; he can start with Gamergate, which he got completely wrong.
He really did botch it pretty badly. Some people did behave abominably, but that is true of both sides on most politicized issues.
Meanwhile the actual interesting angle on the story got ignored by everyone (games themselves to some extent, and to a huge extent games journalists rapidly moving left at a pace that was leaving the vast majority of the actual consumers of the genre behind).
It got so bad you had say realistic games about professional racing have half the drivers be women, and when fans would complain they would basically get told “this hobby isn’t for you misogynist”. Except the people saying that and driving that narrative were the outsiders.
“Wah wah wah, why is this hobby that is dominated by young men so catered to young mens interests!”
It’s like people showing up to the Westminster dog show and saying it isn’t fully inclusive unless there are dogfighting events for all the people into dogfighting. And then those people being taken extremely seriously.
if you hate the host so much, unsubscribe.
I don’t understand how Katie and Jesse had a discussion about the ethical issues of calling women Karens, criticized NewsOne’s Karen backlog, and then Jesse buys the NewsOne story as credible or somehow dispositive of the other narrative which is incredibly clear and uncomplicated. In ten minutes, Jesse made these leaps: “It’s kind of fucked up to call women Karens for these ten reasons...this paper delights in Karen narrative and is incredibly slanted...yeah she’s pretty much a Karen because this news outlet said so.”
The story is a fireside chat positioning them as a Gold Star family or some shit. It boiled down to “We pull off this Citibike scam all the time and no one else has had a problem. People are calling me names now. My family is poor. Why is everyone so racist? This is crazy.”
When Jesse was trying to figure out where he stood on the issue he called the teenagers “immigrants,” which for him tipped the scales of sympathy towards the teenagers, and I don’t understand how or why. For one, their entitled and manipulative actions place them firmly as American Zoomers. Two, the admirable drive and work ethic immigrants bring with them usually don’t last through generations. Three, Jesse doesn’t weigh the teenagers telling the woman her baby is going to come out retarded; any sympathy or nuance gets thrown out the window when that’s an off the cuff comment.
What would happen in West Africa, which is where the teenagers’ families originate, if a pregnant woman is trying to get a bike and teenagers wouldn’t allow her? This country is pretty pants-on-head stupid about identity, and this podcast is supposed to be a bulwark to these poisonous narratives; this time they are part of it and it sucks.
Dignity and sympathy can’t be tied into protected or marginalized classes. That was the origin of this podcast. The hosts were on the wrong side of a culture war issue, stuck to their guns, made a podcast examining similar instances of identarian nonsense, and for that they have my respect. With takes like these, along with the subway bullshit from last week, they are losing it.
https://twitter.com/IDoTheThinking/status/1661989925112414211?s=20
I found this thread interesting. The guy is a lefty YIMBY that got closer to the truth than a lot of knee-jerk reactions like from Nikole hannah-jones and the like. I haven't listened to the episode yet so I can't compare it to B&R episode.
That guy gets it wrong. The teens have no right to block bikes from being used. They are violating multiple Citi Bike rules, which would be bad enough but they are part of a discounted program so that just makes it even worse because they are taking advantage of a program to take advantage of the bikes.
Yeah. Teens are assholes. The kid was not a victim of anything. That is the problem
I expect teens to have good manners! My son and his friends wouldn't have acted like this when they were teens ( they are all around 22 now). Their parents and coaches would have come down on them for behaving like that.
I do too but it’s not a national news story if they’re not. I think people are mapping other stuff onto this.
The only reason it became a national news story is the kids tried to hurt the woman (potentially ruin her life, get her fired) by posting the video. That's so disgusting. And that there are so many people on the left still claiming she's a racist bitch with no evidence is a huge part of the problem. It wasn't those supporting the woman and pointing out that the teens are manipulative jerks who made this a story.
I don't think that's an excuse. Deliberately blocking a pregnant woman from her commute because you want to mess around on an e-bike for free is really shitty behaviour. A 17-year-old is plenty old enough should know better. And I think most countries and previous generations would not tolerate that.
That said, we don't know all the details. For instance, if she was rude to him from the outset, I could understand why he might respond obstinately.
You sound like a teen
How would she get home?
Tired people don't necessarily act rationally and we have no idea what her day was like.
Also, I don't think there's conclusive evidence to show she wanted to fight anyone. We haven't seen the start of the confrontation and we only have one version of the start.
Yeah, pregnant women generally don't want to take on a group of older teenagers for kicks.
Adults be mad at shitty teen behavior is new? Are you like 12 years old?
What's new is that said adult loses her job for getting mad at shitty teen behavior
This is a bizarre take, you want teens who are old enough to drive to make the city worse for stressed out adults? I don’t know why you’re cheering on chaos?
Seriously? The woman was pregnant and getting off shift. She could have handled things with more grace. The kids were bigger jerks and ok, fucking over CitiBike is not the worst. But preventing other people from using bikes they had docked? That is a jackass move.
The kids should not be in trouble. The adult should not lose a day of work.
So I guess you're not too concerned about the actual facts of what happened? You have your narrative that she's a Karen, so end of story...
Why so dickish, Mike? Whenever I see a white man being a dick, I'm going to call him a Mike. She was penalized at her job, FFS.
*rolls eyes* Another Mike.
I’m almost with you but I think this is just not a story and it doesn’t mean anything. She was tired and pregnant and mad. They were young and entitled. Perfectly understandable from both sides.
She'd just worked a twelve hour shift, was pregnant and wanted to ride the bike. We have no way of knowing to what extent he was holding on to the bike. The sister said his hand was on the handlebars, but she also said they'd gotten frozen yogurt. I think they were sitting around eating froyo and hording the bikes. In the end they didn't even ride them home so they broke the rules, horded the bikes for no other reason than they were feeling territorial towards them is how I read that.
I don't think "they're just kids" is an excuse. If a 17-year-old boy blocks a pregnant woman from using an electric bicycle to commute, because he wants to ride it for fun and won't pay 17¢, then he's an arsehole, and plenty old enough to know better.
Though it also depends how she approached the situation. If she was rude and demanding from the outset, I could forgive him for reacting obstinately.
I haven't listened to the episode yet, so I would just like to know what they got wrong.
I’ll edit my original comment but I’ll add here:
1. He and his friends were squatting on the bikes not paying for them but blocking others from using them. This has been proven. This breaks the terms of service for Citi Bikes.
2. They were docking them and then undocking to cheat the proper fares.
3. He and his friends are a part of a discounted program and used his privileged membership to break rules 1 and 2.
And they just accepted without investigation the story from biased parties and a bad journo that she basically grabbed the bike from him to scan it, which does not explain how she got on it. Seems more likely that he had actually walked away from the bike to get the frozen yogurt. At the least they should investigate or admit they don't know.
I know y’all are loathe to play identity politics, but I wish you’d address the Karen thing more honestly: it’s not used to disparage or dismiss “people,” as Katie repeatedly says; it’s used to disparage and dismiss *women.* Sexism actually exists, Katie. For centuries women, not men, have been punished for complaining. Calling a complaining woman a “Karen” and shaming her on social media is simply a slightly more civilized version of putting a “common scold” in the stocks.
Thanks, Avocational, I was thinking just that as well! Everybody needs to read Victoria Smith's book Hags - deals beautifully with this history and its current relevance
Kathleen Brown's book Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs covers this history in a lot of detail also.
This is correct.
Everyone gets the "Karen" thing wrong. "Karen" is a misogynist weapon that's only very tangentially about race. Calling a woman "Karen" is a socially sanctioned way to tear a woman down for not womaning correctly: not being accommodating, not being attractive, not being young. The only way race comes into it is that woke leftists don't use the word against black women because they're afraid of being called racist.
Best Karen insights ever. It is a new socially sanctioned way to attack women for all the same old things.
"Karen" is misogyistic, yes. It's also ageist. Race is tertiary, in my analysis.
It’s often an opportunity to make fun of a woman’s look, as was originally pointed out. Karen is never hot, according to the current standards.
Remember all the Karen haircut jokes?
That's a great point. I was just talking about this to my (male Gen X) spouse and he brought up the age thing about "Karen," because it's the part that resonates with him. (He does mostly understand the misogynist bit I think, but that's just not going to hit as hard on a male person, because male.)
I mean can you imagine how that bike scene would be interpreted if the races were reversed? Pregnant black woman trying to get home after a 12 hour shift, rents a bike so she can finally get off her feet. A group of white 17 year old boys refuse to let her take the bike she paid for, mock her, physically intimidate her and call her baby retarded. The boys film the whole encounter and then post it online for clout. It would be Covington Catholic all over again! Tomes would be written about the boys’ toxic masculinity and white entitlement.
It would be way worse. Way way worse. A pregnant black woman - that would be that "white boys attempt genocide."
Couldn't disagree with Jesse more. The women's reaction is totally proportionate and the guys were in the wrong. The group of guys were sitting on three e-bikes in order to exploit a loophole to make some cash at the expense of people trying to get from A to B which is the whole point of Citi Bikes in the first place.
Can’t recommend this comment enough
Wait can we make the deal right now to ban child beauty pageants in exchange for also banning child drag shows?
I’d like to just take each group aside and say “I know what you’re doing is totally innocent but these other people… wow you know, you’re really sacrificing something heroic for the team here. You’re helping a lot of kids here.”
Then bring them back together and toilet flush these deeply weird fucked up practices.
I would like to use my authority as a commenter in this podcast to approve this
Lately, I’ve noticed people using “but cisgender teenage girls get cosmetic breast surgeries all the time“ as a gotcha when trans mastectomies for minors are criticized. Some Guy, please use your authority as a commenter to ban all of this shit too!
Step 1) Gonna block it Step 2) Gonna report it.
But seriously, I love when people come back to you thinking that something is fucked up by saying “oh yeah?!?!? but what about this other fucked up thing?!?!?!”
And every time it’s like they can’t even imagine that you also genuinely think that the second thing is also fucked up.
“I have a principled position that children shouldn’t be involved in any sexualized performance of any kind for any group.”
“Isn’t that just both siderism!?!??!”
We now live in the Worlds of Nazis vs Pedophiles and we are all being forced to choose a side.
I find it pretty interesting that so many surgeons were doing cosmetic procedures on minors (that were not to fix deformities or injury) for so long with no one batting an eye. Seems like the door had already been cracked open.
People batted eyes, Your Name. They were called feminists. And nobody listened to what they were saying.
Nobody who could make a difference might be more accurate.
But that would be quite a different statement
Yeah I have no idea how that door got opened but it needs to get shut. Imagine being the demon in a teenagers shoulder saying “oh you’re unhappy with how you look? You must be ugly. No other teenagers feel that way.”
It’s pretty damn evil.
THIS. I posted a photo of a dude holding a poster saying "if pedophilia is just sexuality then burying them all is just gardening," and I got the usual "But what about pedophile priests?!?!?!?" And I reply, "them, too." I don't see why anyone with a brain would think that one child abuser is less awful than another because he happens to be a priest.
Which is of course the whole point. Divide and conquer. Polarize the population. Make it so that you HAVE to pick a side and be treated accordingly. Distract us with petty divisiveness and spotlight our differences so we can’t band together over what we have in common.
It must be coming from a belief that all opponents are some kind of stereotyped Southern Christian conservatives who naturally endorse beauty pageants and, uh, I guess breast implants for their… all-American blonde teenage daughters?
Which, first, I’m none of those things, and neither are most of the GC people I follow, and second, I doubt there’s anything close to unanimous support for beauty pageants and boob jobs for teenagers among conservatives, because those things are gross and weird.
Thank you X! This is just what I was thinking: the hosts completely ignored another source of critique against DQST, which starts off with 'drag is a grotesque parody of femaleness and femininity, and deeply insulting to women'. Accept that for the sake of argument, and then see if it's OK for it to be normalised to children (with or without parental consent).
Alternatively, imagine a woman dressed that way, and made up that much, turning up at a library to read books to kids. We'd find it weird and inappropriate, and we'd discourage it. So why do men get a pass? Oh hang on ...
Excellent question, Hard Man
As someone who grew up in the south I can confirm that almost everyone found those beauty pageants creepy. They were also a niche thing most people didn't realize existed in their town. The southern conservatives considered breast implants for anyone--but especially kids--as a thing coastal liberals did (maybe this has changed since I moved away 20 years ago, but I doubt it).
FYI, the Southern Christians you are referring to--the ones the left hates--they don't even like the high school dance teams uniforms & suggestive dances.
I've seen people defend these cosmetic mastectomies on minors because "cis women get them for cancer treatment." And I'm thinking, "Do you honestly see no difference between women having to have a mastectomy to save her life and an elective cosmetic mastectomy? Are you THAT stupid?"
Or the "Minors aren't getting genital surgery." To which I reply with the Reuters piece that searched the Komodo insurance database and found dozens of them happened on minors. So then it's "well, that's not A LOT!" 🙄
My impression is that the majority of Conservatives don't even like child pageants, and that there aren't even that many of them anymore (I could be wrong), because people realized they're creepy.
Get rid of them both, I doubt any Conservatives would raise a fuss.
Yeah I’ve not ever met a fan of them in real life.
Deal!
Done.
Same.
I hope everyone here appreciates how difficult it is to find 5 electric Citibikes at the same time in NY. Now I understand why, and why I see kids just sitting on them constantly.
Do parents of black teenagers really think police are going to shoot their kids? It feels exaggerated based on the data (to put it mildly), but is this what they believe?
Seemingly a fair amount of people seem to think at least hundreds if not thousands of black men are shot by the cops every year 🤷🏻♀️. https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf
As I always love to repeat, during the Floyd unrest you had MPR reporters uncritically repeating claims of activists that police in Minneapolis were “killing black people every day”. Just in off hand comments like it was something everyone knew.
Meanwhile in reality land police in Minneapolis kill about one person a year, and about half the time that person is black.
It's like Oprah Winfrey claiming that *millions* of Black Americans were lynched in the South.
https://parade.com/58556/katherineheintzelman/oprah-winfrey-forest-whitaker-talk-lee-daniels-the-butler-racism-and-the-n-word/
Note that Parade Magazine printed her statement without questioning it.
(See Wikipedia for more credible numbers about how many people were actually "lynched" during this admittedly awful time in American history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20Tuskegee%20Institute%20has%20recorded,increasing%20political%20suppression%20of%20blacks.)
Obviously not, otherwise they wouldn't raise such entitled, aggressive and disrespectful kids as that group. People's belief systems are demonstrated by what they actually do rather than what they say. Those who actually fear for their kids' lives usually teach them not to antagonize others and follow the rules. But a lot of black parents seem to believe (and are not wrong) that a fat payday is only one viral video and a good race victim performance away.
Are you suggesting that most black parents are purposefully teaching their kids to act badly in hopes of viral video fame and gofundme money? Cuz that seems like maybe you took a thought thread a few inches too far.
Where did I say "most"? Seems like maybe you're taking a thought thread too far.
The amount of resistance during police stops would suggest otherwise.
A lot of Black people think this. I hear em say it all the time. Which is…odd because it doesn’t seem to keep anyone from going out to do the things they want.
Do you think there are differences between American descendents of slaves and the American children of African and/or Caribbean immigrants?
Yes, a lot. It’s actually seeming to cause us to not like each other. I’m ADOS so from my perspective it seems they are far too eager to take stolen valor from slavery and are just as racist toward us as any other group. I admit ADOS have been mean to them in the past but I mean you eventually have to get over being called an “African booty scratcher”
Yes. Absolutely yes.
Yes, because it's one of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories but also one of the most believed.
It also doesn't help that the disparity in literacy rates does have a consequence when it comes to critical thinking.
When my company had its mandatory DEI training, this black woman said that every time her black husband leaves the home, she is scared he will be killed by the cops
She meant it.
I find it interesting to compare and contrast the central park Karen story with the Citi bike story. While I am sympathetic to the fact that Amy cooper basically had to go underground and the social consequences were too severe, I could understand why she was seen as the aggressor since she was breaking the rules of the park and called the cops on someone she merely due to finding him suspicious which does fit the Karen archetype. Sarah Comrie on the other hand was actually following the rules and did not escalate by calling the police she doesn't to me follow the script of being a Karen but I guess the definition changed again, as it tends, to do to suit the circumstances.
A Karen is any woman over the age of twenty that complains about anything, right or wrong. Bonus points if she is not conventionally attractive or dares not to be nice and accommodating.
Correct.
Bari Weiss had a good interview with Amy Cooper.
One of the problems with the ACAB narrative is what are people supposed to do if they feel threatened?
If you can't or won't get the cops involved, then it's down to US Marines or social media to solve problems. Neither of these things has ever gone wrong before.
And while I am sperging, I would be interested in how many of these "Karens" come from much smaller towns than NYC. I have lived in big cities and small towns, and the rules are way different. I can see genuinely not knowing what the etiquette is in a particular situation feeding into some of these stories.
I feel like women aren't supposed to call the cops if they feel they are being threatened, especially if they are white and the person they feel threatened by is not.
I've been ACAB from my teens but there are times there really isn't any other option other than involving police-- like when you're a woman and just about any man from teens onward can overpower you and, well, it's threatening. Especially if you are alone or with your child.
You're right though leaving protecting people to marines or social media isn't the answer.
I listened to the Bari Weiss episode and remain unconvinced. Calling the cops should not be seen as a reasonable way to solve disputes that could easily be solved by just talking and using reason. Obviously police can be called if she was a victim of stalking or if things seemed like they could get physical (presence of a knife or gun etc.) but it clearly never escalated to that extent.
If she was genuinely afraid of him, not sure what talking would do. The issue really was how she would have handled things if he had been white..
People on my neighborhood blog absolutely complained about his behavior - the way he offered the dogs treats freaked them out. At the exact same time, she could have just put the dog on a leash and walked away .
Yeah I guess just walking away would solve it as well would have saved her a lot of issues in the future. I find the defenses of amy cooper's actions generally on here to be really strange though? She did not behave in a commendable manner and she mentioned race first in the phone call making it very easy to tar her as a racist Karen not doing herself any favors.
I think the defenses are because Amy Cooper did not deserve the level of condemnation she received. I want to defend her as well but the dog should have been on the leash. She was in the wrong.
Well, technically so was he, since he is not a cop or employee of the city and has no authority to enforce park regulations. He was acting as a vigilante.
Yeah I said that in the first comment yet people in the replies still think I was too harsh on her.
Nah. They have all been living in NYC. They aren't visiting.
I remember Amy Cooper very well. That story was way more complicated, and it was covered in my neighborhood blog. A lot of people posted that day about how they had encountered him, and he scared them, offering their dogs treats.
But yes. She 100% was breaking the law. The citibike lady did everything right.
Curious about how many people posted that Christian Cooper had threatened them? Are we talking about three or four, which would line up with Kmele‘s reporting? I believe he had one on the record - willing to speak on the podcast - and a couple others in his pocket who were not willing to come forward publicly for fear of retaliation. Were there significantly more? And did the posters say anything about how he spoke to them? Was he using a calm tone, or was he raising his voice?
In retrospect, I find it sinister how little reporting was done on Christian Cooper’s threats to Amy Cooper, which he practically bragged about on his own Facebook. Most articles didn’t give it even a passing mention. We know he threatened her because HE TOLD US. He parlayed his fame into a TV show, while she remains in hiding abroad.
I initially was 100% in his corner. I still don’t condone her playing the race card, and she should’ve kept her dog leashed. But he created a situation that was threatening to her. His sister was ready to immediately post the clip to Twitter and portray Christian as having narrowly escaped a lynching. Charles Blow compared Amy to Carolyn Bryant in his NYT column. That’s been the playbook for the past three years. It’s really ugly.
I cannot recall exactly but it was at least 2 people possibly 3. You can look it up on the West Side Rag.
I do think race played a role in that it was more likely she would have put the leash on if he were white. I also imagine that she felt more threatened because he was black.
Mentioning he was black in the phone call - either it was to make him see more threatening. Or maybe because he was a black man and the police would need to know his race.
I really don't know. They were both assholes
"I do think race played a role in that it was more likely she would have put the leash on if he were white. I also imagine that she felt more threatened because he was black."
Sorry, but that's just pure speculation and rather bizarre as well. What leads you to believe that she would have been more likely to fulfill his request if he was white? And why would she have felt more threatened because he was black? Was there even the slightest evidence that race was a factor here, other than the way the story was covered by the media?
It is speculation.you are right. It is entirely possible she would have behaved the same regardless of race.
She should feel more threatened if he is black! That is sadly a brute fact about our society. black men are hugely more dangerous than any other type of person you encounter.
It isn’t by some small amount either. I want to say for violent crimes if you are a white woman walking and encounter a random black man he is 70! Times more likely to commit a crime against you than if you swap the races (black woman and white man).
That is seven zero! If it is Asian versus black the numbers are even more wild.
To a first approximation almost all the “interracial violence” in this country is coming out of the black community at other races. Until you are also willing to include that in the litany of “uncomfortable facts about race” you want to talk about, well there isn’t really much to talk about.
People behave differently around black men for extremely reality driven and sensible reasons.
Similar to how the black community rails any of the rare times an unarmed black man is killed by police, but totally ignore the black people, including children, who die as a result of gun crimes committed by black people. "Say their names!" ... unless they were killed by someone of the same race and it makes us uncomfortable remembering that.
One of the great points the hosts made (I think it was in this episode) was that stereotypes have a basis in reality. They're not myths, which kind of makes them even harder to dislodge. But we do need to have a conversation about when it's OK, and when it's not, to make assumptions about an individual based on that person's membership of a particular group. I would say a woman wanting to be safe is one situation where it just might be OK
And I think I heard in the episode J & K did on this (It actually might have been Bari Weiss) that Amy Cooper is a survivor of sexual assault. When a man says "you're not going to like what I do." she will feel that at a visceral level that No One has a right to question. No one.
Now you're a mind reader and you know that she would have put the dog on leash for a white man? Wow. You don't even realize how awful that sounds, speculating like that.
I do not know that. But given that she mentioned race first in her call to 911, I do not think it is unreasonable to speculate she may have reacted differently if he were a white man
Also. Our society IS racist and of course plenty of white people behave the same around black and white people. I am not sure if that is true for the majority of white people..
He's got an article in the NYT today and a TV show so it turned out super great for him.
She wasn't following the original script of being a Karen, but the brief has broadened considerably (and quickly). It's now something like 'white female expressing displeasure about anything a man or a person of another race does'. Brace for scolds' bridles all-round
That still doesn't read to me as a reason to call the police. We can solve problems like this with words without the cops. I know cops aren't evil but calling them is an escalation because you think a crime is being committed or is about to be committed.
I would have called the police in the same situation.
She is a survivor of sexual assault. Her reaction is totally understandable. When will women be justified in feeling fear?
Men in dresses get to colonize our bathrooms because they're scared of other men, but when we're scared of men and don't want them in our bathrooms we're the bigots.
Really fucking tired of people expecting women to be emotionless zombies and take whatever shit men do in stride as long as they're not actively in the process of beating them to death. And in both cases it's Men of the Left telling us we have no option than to accept the situation because it's what we have to Be Kind.
You call the cops to convince the person threatening your dog to leave. It's a de-escalation.
Yeah in the same way we have “the talk” with kids about sex they need to pull boys aside and say “I know you were eleven five minutes ago but you can genuinely scare the shit out of a woman if you approach her while she’s totally alone and there’s no one around.”
The 'please call the police' line should be an indicator that he's not really interested in hurting her and makes her look worse.
I speak for the majority of women when I say I don’t give a shit, a man threatens me I am calling the cops. I’d rather be called a Karen by 12,000 than carried by 6.
Men who threaten women on their own deserve no benefit of the doubt.
I take literally no position on the woman's behavior in the Citibike story, but it seems like even if you take the kids' story at 100% face value (1) they're clearly in violation of Citibike's terms of service for the bikes, (2) they definitely had no legal claim to deny anyone else the right to use the bike, and (3) they didn't even have a particularly valid moral/philosophical claim to the bike beyond might-makes-right.
OMG you guys got the Citi Bike thing all wrong, Come on.
Maybe it’s my stage of life, but I have more sympathy for the pregnant health care worker trying to get home after a twelve hour shift than the teenage boy “sitting on” a bike he didn’t pay for. I don’t think the kids are monsters either, they’re kids. No one involved deserves to have their life ruined over this. I’m not sure what is wrong with the kid’s mother though - if one of my kids treated a pregnant woman or any physically weaker person like this, I would feel like I failed utterly. Jesse, no offense but you got this one wrong!
They're probably not monsters. But they are little shits who need to be taught a lesson in basic courtesy. Whereas I can't see that she did anything unreasonable.
How many will be convicted of a crime before 25? 20%, 40%?
Jesse got the bike story so wrong.
Under what circumstance is a 6-month pregnant woman going to pick a fight with five teenagers?
Well by the sounds of it, that's exactly what she did. But I think she was probably in the right to do so. It was a bold move, albeit risky.
No, she did not.
Christ cocksucking Jesus, what a stupid thing to say.
Well, she kind-of did though. As I understand the situation: There were a bunch of boys blocking access to the bikes for a long time. They told her they were not available. So she snuck past, scanned one, sat on it, tried to ride off, and refused to move when they stopped her.
She could've just walked away at any point. But she decided to meet their intimidation with physical resistance. And I say good for her, standing up to bullies.
So renting an unrented bike is provoking a fight? This is like saying trying to enter a gas station some thug is outside of was basically asking him to punch me.
Well, kind-of, yes. If that thug was standing outside the gas station saying "This gas all belongs to me now. Just try and take it, I dare you." And you decide to walk in out of principle, then you are making the decision to engage in physical conflict.
But in that sort of scenario, I think there's a strong argument that engaging in physical conflict is the right thing to do. I'm not a pacifist. And I wish I more often had the capacity and courage to stand up to people who are physically threatening.
Maybe I've misunderstood the order of events, but it sounds to me like she made a conscious decision to wade into the conflict rather than shrink from it. And if so, I think that's admirable.
You’re victim blaming. That’s not how any type of society beyond apes act.
No