Most Americans are wrong about crime

Better help is a scam and anyone that promotes it is contributing

Betterhelp? Seriously? Come on!

People love making other people panic. It’s an American pastime.

betterhelp is bad for patients and practitioners

it's a shame to put out a video this good that no one in the comments is talking about because of the sponsor.

To Americans poverty is a crime.

Better Help got sued for selling personal data and lost.

That's because they listen to the media and the media says crime is high so they can hook eyeballs to watch ads. As far as I'm concerned the media has destroyed their credibility.

Not the BetterHelp sponsorship

why betterhelp

Pausing a video about crime to promote a scam...bruh moment.

why on earth were those people just chanting crime in the intro?

There is a similar phenomenon when you look at the actual statistics of death versus media coverage of deaths. For example, Homicide makes up 0.9% of all causes of death and terrorism is basically almost 0%, yet the news coverage on homicide is 22% (compared to coverage on other causes) and coverage on terrorism is in the 30% (in 2017 at least). Meanwhile, heart disease makes up about 2-3% of the coverage while 30% of deaths are actually due to heart disease. The news only reports on sensational causes such as homicide, cancer, self-harm, terrorism - but never about slow systemic killers like respiratory disease, Alzheimers, pneumonia, kidney disease, etc.. They’ll also only mention drug overdoses to say it’s a problem, not who it’s happening to and why and how to solve it. Same goes with crime - they’ll report on the sensational homicides happening in populated areas, or talk about the poverty on the streets, but never about the actual systemic causes of the suffering that leads to crime, or the crime that happens on a daily basis to disadvantaged communities (unless they wanna demonize them).

unfortunate betterhelp jumpscare :/

I think a big factor in why Americans feel as though crime has been increasing is because of our media. When we turn on the tv, whether it’s the local news, or national news channels like CNN, Fox, CBS, MSNBC, etc. you’re more than likely gonna run into at least one story talking about someone getting killed, or robbed, or assaulted, or something else along those lines; and it’s because those stories interest people more than something along the lines of, “This zoo welcomed a new animal.” “Our city has just elected a new comptroller.” “The public library has bought a thousand new books.” I’m no different, in my city a security guard at my old high school was shot while breaking up a fight, and one of the first things I did when I heard that news was turn on the TV to hear my mayors press conference on the shooting. News channels jobs are to tell the people what is happening around them, but it’s also to get views, and talking about crime is one major way to get more people listening to you, and in turn get more money. But it also leads to a somewhat warped perception of reality, because when these for profit companies constantly talk about crime in order to get people to listen to them, it in turn leads people to believe that crime is everywhere, even if that isn’t true.

So I live in Philadelphia, and I've lived here for 3 years. Part of the issue with these surveys is that people will tend to remember a spike in crime for much longer than a period of relative safety, and they may believe that a crime spike is still ongoing much longer than it actually is. Around the pandemic, there was a fair bit of looting downtown--not uncommon to see a store with boarded windows after a break-in. After the pandemic, the "Kia Boys" challenge saw a spike in vehicle theft. Once Kia/Hyundai recalled the affected vehicles, there was a new issue with roaming gangs of teenagers entering stores en masse and shoplifting stuff, using their numbers to get away with it. All of those problems have subsided for the most part, but things like that stick in people's minds. People may delude themselves into thinking looters are still breaking into pandemic-shuttered stores in 2024, or car thieves are still targeting Kias and Hyundais despite them receiving a security update a year ago. Bad experiences tend to make a bigger impression on our minds than good ones.

As with numerous other issues, a big part of the problem is news networks needing to create drama in a bid for viewers. Add social media who will say anything for money to that equation, and we end up where we are now.

neoliberalism leads to homelessness. visible homelessness makes people more reactionary. they vote for more neoliberalism. repeat, repeat, repeat.

What, you mean Americans form their opinions based on what they think is true, regardless of whether it actually aligns with reality? That's a shocker.

I think that perception is also affected by how well an individual experiences crime. What I mean is that in the 90s when you saw a news story about a violent crime you would potentially see police tape or at most someone in a hospital. Now, thanks to everyone having really good cameras in their pockets and surveillance cameras being so cheap, you don't see the scene of the crime but you get to watch the crime itself. You see the gun fight or you see the person being beat with a hammer. It really changes your perception of how safe you feel. Before it was just a statistic, but with the video you see it in all of its brutality. The brutality hasn't changed but how you experience it definitely has. Edit: Also wanted to add that just because the rate is decreasing doesn't mean it still isn't too high. Our homicide rate is much higher than most developed nations with our homicide rate of 6.4/100k being much closer to Russia's 6.8 and El Salvador's 7.8 than Canada's 2.3 or Norway's 0.6. It is better but we still have a long ways to go.